Bobette Buster: Tell your story so the world listens

As part of my two weeks reading, I have just finished Bobette Buster’s ‘Do/ Story/ How to tell your story so the world listens’, a short-stop book focusing on storytelling. It guides the reader on how to tell their own story with emotion and craftsmanship. I have picked out some of my favourite quotes from the book…

‘All good stories possess structure. They have a beginning, middle and end’

pg 13

This proclamation about narrative structure was born of Aristotle. When telling a story, there must be unity in the fact that each part is different. Each section should react in a cause-and-effect nature to the previous, that’s what completes a story. I like the universality of the structure, over 2000 years later all good stories still take the same from. I feel it demonstrates how pivotal storytelling is to humanity in all forms; familial, literature, entertainment, oral, business ect. Storytelling is the very essence of living, ‘native to all of us’. From the generations before Aristotle stories have been passed all the way until the present day.

‘Real adventure is defined best as a journey from which you may not come back alive, and certainty not as the same person’ pg 83

This quote comes from Yvon Chouinard, a rock climber, environmentalist, and founder of Patagonia. Through use of this quote, Buster is trying to push the reader to live and be open to an adventure or journey. By living fearlessly, you’re opening yourself up to the possibilities of your story. Storytelling is pivotal to our existence, but we need to experience and feel before we tell our story.

Buster speaks of ‘handing over the spark’ in a business context too. She explains that use of raw emotion to move the audience is more successful than throwing statistics at them. The audience is asking ‘please tell me a story that ennobles me’ (pg42), they want to be moved. When thought of in terms of perfume, a brand is telling a single narrative to consumers the whole time. From the bottle, to the scent, to the way it’s marketed, the storyline has to relate to the consumer. If they can see themselves in a specific perfume, they will buy it. The story of a scent has to be genuine and authentic otherwise the consumer won’t be ‘ennobled’ enough to invest in the brand.

Perfume evokes and heightens the sense of smell, the ‘simple act of isolating one sense somehow does provide the most direct emotional connection to your audience’. This brought me back to what Christopher Brosius said in the BBC perfume documentary. A scent can transport a person back to a pivotal memory they had maybe forgotten. The memory could be of a different decade but scent has the power to unlock the subconscious suppression of memories.

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