This is the first part in a series of articles about writing a biography, or a story on someone’s life. This series of articles will discuss what a biography is, how to prepare for writing a biography, and helpful strategies for good biography writing.
What is a Biography?
A biography can be a few paragraphs or it can fill an entire book. A short biography usually provides only the basic facts of someone’s life and his or her importance. It might only focus on one major aspect of their life. Longer biographies include the same basic information, but then also go into much more detail and provide the reader with a good story about the subject’s life.
Biographies, while based on facts about someone’s life, also contain an element of the author’s interpretation of events. This may or may not be intentional, but is unavoidable to a degree, particularly if the person is no longer alive and the author doesn’t necessarily have all the facts available. Much of the details of the biography might be based on other people’s recollections of events.
Biography writers sometimes try to find connections between events in a person’s life, they may look for meaning, and they may also make arguments about the significant of a person’s accomplishments.
Biographies are often written in chronological order, beginning at birth and childhood and progressing through the person’s life until their current age (or death). Some biographies focus on a specific time period, such as around a major achievement.
Let’s get started with writing a biography:
1. Select a Person that is Interesting
An author needs to feel compelled to write so it’s important, when embarking on writing a biography, that the person who will be the subject, is interesting. The author should feel strongly about the person, in either a positive or negative way, and these emotions will help drive them forward through the process. When writing a biography, an author will spend a vast amount of time researching and getting to know their subject, so if they’re going to enjoy the process, as well as feeling it’s time well spent, it’s necessary to select the right person.
Equally, if a biography is going to sell then it’s subject needs to be someone that is of interest to many people. Obviously it helps if they are famous and already have people interested in them, but that doesn’t rule out writing about people who are not famous or well known. It just means that there must be something fascinating and interesting about these people that compel others to want to hear their story.
If writing about someone with a military background Resources for Military Biography Research has useful advice.
This article is part of a series and will be continued in Writing a Biography - Get Researching.
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