Customer Reviews

Breathe Life into Your Life Story: How to Write a Story People Will Want to Read

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Where will your memories go when you're gone? If you follow the suggestions in this book, you'll pass them on in a lively form that people will want to read! Moreover, those readers will have a strong sense of your life: what happened to you, how you felt about it, and what you stood for.

This book is fast-paced and fun. Easy-to-follow discussions, examples and learn-by-doing exercises help you organize and write your story. Large margins livened by quotations, titles, and drawings make it easy to refer back after you've finished reading a section - a real plus for seniors!

Breathe Life into Your Life Story will show you how to use fiction-writer techniques to capture and keep reader interest. You'll bring your characters to life by letting them speak for themselves. It'll teach you to write so your readers visualize people and places exactly the way you see them in your mind's eye. Best of all, it will help you write in your own personal voice, and the honesty of that voice will touch your reader's heart.

The Thurstons have written a clever and lively how-to book with the tasty subtitle "How to Write a Story People Will Want to Read." This is harder than you may imagine. Even the most interesting life can be written in a dull, lifeless way. The Thurstons want all of us to know that there are techniques that can be learned, and practiced, in pursuit of a lively, readable story.

Much as an exercise instructor teaches his student to breathe and bend, to twist and turn, the authors transform the awesome task of writing into a series of rhetorical exercises. Step by step, they lead the prospective writer through the steps of building a proficiency in telling the story. They detail the pitfalls many writers face, and explain how to move from envisioning your project to bringing it to completion.

Each lesson has a "Learn by Doing" exercise, designed to hone the skills taught and to give the writer the confidence to move on to the next step in the writing. In the margins are quick inspirations and, at times, hilarious observations by writers we know and respect. ...

Finally, ... the authors take a holistic approach to writing. They insist, and I agree, that one's entire life must go into the project. People who read your life's history want to relive that life with you. They want to walk where you walked, even breathe the air you breathed, as much as is possible through the medium of the printed page. The authors are relentless in pushing the aspiring writer into achieving a great victory over the fear and uncertainty that face new writers.

"Breathe Life into Your Life Story" is a great introduction to writing that even experienced authors will find helpful.... Maybe we should be aiming at developing the confidence, and the skills, required to pen an exciting autobiography. This book is an excellent place to start. It is highly recommended.

I've purchased a few books in the personal history genre as gifts for friends and family. When I decided to start writing my own story, I reviewed what was available and then choose Morris Thurston's book. I'm glad I did. I'm rating this five stars even though I'm less than half way through the book so far. I do this in good conscience because I've already gained far more than I expected from the entire volume.

If taken seriously, Thurston's book is not light reading because he gives assignments that take time. I have found these assignments interesting and beneficial. This is a book one must work through rather than simply read. The benefits received will be directly proportional to the effort expended.

There are a number of products available to help people remember and record their past. While Thurston touches on the subject of recalling memories, his emphasis goes beyond that. He maintains is that it is not enough to recount memories, rehash facts, or preach wisdom. Rather, Thurston says authors will not make an impact unless they hold their readers' interest. And in order to do so, Thurston recommends understanding and employing effective story telling techniques as used by good, professional writers. In doing so, Thurston does not suggest fabricating experiences. He simply encourages and shows authors how to tell their own experiences in an interesting way.

You don't have to be a professional writer to benefit from Thurston's book. I'm no pro, and I have no ambition of sharing my (ordinary) story with anyone other than my descendents. But I didn't want to risk the effort of writing a life history without it having much impact on anyone. So I am taking his recommendations to heart.

I believe Mark Twain once said something like, "Of course, truth is stranger than fiction -- fiction has to make sense." Thurston shows authors how to tell their life stories in a way that makes sense.

Far more than just a resource book, "Breathe Life Into Your Life Story..." is entertaining enough to read in just one sitting, cover to cover. In fact, the first time I read it, I did just that.

But make no mistake about it... you will want to revisit the book several more times, as this book is also packed with a wealth of practical insight. In fact, if my copy of this book were misplaced or stolen, I would definitely have to go buy myself another copy.

This is easily the best book on the subject of memoir writing.

This book SHOWS how to write an interesting life story. If you're not particularly famous, you may wonder whether your story is worth telling. Yet, as the authors point out, many of today's most popular memoirs are written by people who are otherwise fairly anonymous--who manage to create fascinating stories out of everyday lives. This book examines how they do it.

This is a great gift for a parent or other relative whose life story you would like to read. It is constantly encouraging and is written in an easy-to-read, straightforward way. It is a fun book to browse. The artwork by Amy Hadley is catchy and appropriate and there are dozens of wonderful quotes in the extra-wide margins about writing.

If you are reading the other reviews on this book, you should be aware that Amazon seems to have mistakenly appended several reviews that do not pertain to this book. Just ignore the reviews that deal with Mormon philosophy. This is NOT a Mormon book (not that there is anything wrong with that, as Jerry Seinfeld might say) -- IT IS A BOOK ABOUT WRITING!

Writing teacher Dawn Thurston and award-winning ancestral biographer Morris Thurston present Breathe Life Into Your Life Story: How to Write a Story People Will Want to Read, a no-nonsense guide to crafting an engaging autobiography. memoir or personal history. Chapters cover how to write at the gut level and reveal one's feelings, what to do and not do when writing about specific places, connecting the events of one's life to history, using suspense and conflict to draw the reader further in, and much more. A wealth of "learn-by-doing" exercises round out this excellent self-improvement guide highly recommended for would-be biographers, and also packed with valuable tips, trips and techniques for aspiring writers of fields.

Breathe Life into your Life Story...What a lifeline for writers at all levels and stages, from wannabes to struggling to practicing.

Easy reading, the Thurstons' book is inviting, encouraging and full of
examples from the writing of their classroom students, many since published.

Excellent handbook for writers to master their craft.

J.B.Ferris,
Author, Claiming Our Pioneer Legacy

I learned of Dawn Thurston's life story writing classes through a flyer posted at my local genealogy society. Now, wherever you live, you, too, have access to this superb teacher's encouraging and practical ideas. In Breathe Life into Your Life Story, Dawn gives suggestions of topics to write, where to begin, specific methods to create a scene, how to let your feelings show, and how to write with a focus. She provides examples of effective writing from her students and recommends a reading list of published memoirs.

For me, the Thurston book is a resourceful writing companion and a reminder of the value of putting my life on paper. My mother didn't have a copy of this new book to inspire her to leave us her stories. How I would love to have her recorded memories now. For the holidays, I will send copies of Breathe Life to my sister, her daughters, and at least one cousin. If we don't write our stories, who will?

This book takes various beliefs of the LDS church such as God, Salvation, the relationship between God and man and argues for LDS beliefs using philosophy and logic. The book also discusses how early Christianity was corrupted by Pagan Greek Platonic philosophy, as the early fathers attempted to make Christianity more understandable and palatable to Pagans. The book is rather deep and involved. If you don't like philosophy or enjoy light reading, i.e. Tom Clancy, then this book is probably not for you.