“The only way stories have any power is if we share them with each other.”
A tent in west Wales during the wettest April in the country for 100 years was where I first encountered Bobette Buster. The setting was the 2012 Do Lectures and Bobette was on stage telling her story. I was in the audience writing a story about the event for The Financial Times.
Bobette is the doyenne of the craft of storytelling. A Professor of Digital Storytelling at Northeastern University in Boston, she is the writer/producer of the feature documentary, Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound, a story consultant to major film studios and has worked as a creative executive in Hollywood. Her TED talk, The Radical Act of Storytelling was posted in 2019. She is the author of two books: Do Story: How to Tell Your Story So the World Listens and Do Listen: Understand What’s Really Being Said, Find A New Way Forward.
In this conversation for the latest episode of Meet The Storytellers Bobette talks about how growing up in Kentucky sparked her interest in storytelling. She explains how each of us bears an untold story, why we need to master the lost art of listening and explores how the MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter have been propelled by digital storytelling. She also recalls her experiences in Hollywood working with Tony Scott and Quentin Tarantino. And she shares a tip on the ‘gleaming detail’: the one thing that captures both the emotion and idea of the story in one fell swoop. A singular, elegant moment of clarity.
(Scroll down to watch the video, read the highlights or hear the audio.)
HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE CONVERSATION
“When you listen you watch people flower before you… it makes the day better.” On the art of listening
“The only way stories have any power is if we share them with each other.” On the power of stories around Black Lives Matter
“Hollywood was a blind white snow of scripts… and 98% of them were terrible! You can tell in one page or four pages whether someone is in control of the craft and has a story to tell.” On working in Hollywood
“He was a delight to work with. I’ve never seen someone who was so unknown as Quentin who became a rock star so quickly as a writer and director.” On working with the master storyteller
