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A biography summarizes a person's entire life in an informative, yet still captivating, manner. But how do you toe the line between listing raw facts and telling a good story? This page will introduce you to all the methods you'll need to write a comprehensive and entertaining biography.
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How to Write a Biography Tips
- Find primary and secondary sources.
- Read other biographies on the subject.
- Find a theme that differs from current biographies.
- Research the subject's historical time.
- Get authorization from the subject or his/her estate.
- Take some limited artistic license, but keep it factual.
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eHow: Writing Lessons : How to Write a Biography
John Graden, a speaker, author and entrepreneur tells us his tips for writing biographies in this 2 minute video. He gives you a conceptual background for biographies and walks you through the thinking processes in planning to write your biography. He also talks about problems you may face and how to overcome them. An excellent, thoughtful and practical introduction to writing biographies.
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Introduction
- The biography is a unique type of historical writing: an analysis of a person's life. A biography will usually center around someone who had a profound impact on his or her time, though this is not always the case. Depending on where the subject fits in history, the biographer's job is to find as much information as possible about that person and condense it into a book. It's a challenging process, but the end result can illuminate readers about a person's life and accomplishments.
Step 1: Finding Sources
- Finding sources is an enormously important part of writing a biography. The source material will depend on the era when the person lived. For example, contemporary figures will have modern sources, such as email or video, whereas older figures will have journals or letters. Sources come in three forms: primary, secondary and tertiary.Auburn University Libraries: Identifying Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources
Primary Sources
- A primary source is anything written by the subject or during the time the subject was alive.Matthewson-IGT Knowledge Center: What is a Primary Source? For instance, a factual article in a contemporary newspaper about the subject is a primary source. A different biography is a secondary source.Alabama Department of Archives and History: Secondary Sources
- Types of primary sources:
- Letters/Email
- Journals or diariesPikle: The Diary Junction
- Published workLitWeb: Your Source for Author Biographies and Bibliographies
- Interviews
- Television appearancesPaley Center for Media: About Us
- Contemporary fact-based articles (as opposed to editorials)Cornell University Library: Finding Periodicals and Periodical Articles
- Just because a person did not live in the recent past does not mean there are no possibilities for interviews. You can also interview authorities on a particular subject, such as college professors and the person who oversees a subject's estate.Scholastic: Write a Biography
Secondary Sources
- The basic rule for primary vs. secondary source material is if the material is fact-based or an interpretation of life events.Alabama Department of Archives and History: Secondary Sources Secondary sources will include:
- Interviews with close friends or acquaintancesFreelance Writing Jobs: 8 Great Places to Find Interview Subjects
- Interviews with scholarsThink Quest New York City: How to Find and Interview an Expert
- Editorial articles
- Other biographies of the subject or related subjects
- It's also recommended that a biographer research the entire historical moment when the subject lived.42explore: The Topic: Biographies So if the subject lived through World War II, extensive research on World War II may be necessary, separate from researching the subject directly. Also, if a biography already exists on the subject (as is very common) you should compare your biographical project to biographies that have already been written.H.W. Wilson: Biography Reference Bank What's your unique spin on the subject? A biography is an interpretation, as much as it is based on facts, so the biographer's own take on the subject is important.42explore: The Topic: Biographies
- Reading unrelated work, such as other well-written biographies, can help you get a handle on what it takes to compose a long-form biography.Metafilter: Great Biographies?
Tertiary Sources
- Finally, tertiary sources include:
- Encyclopedias
- Almanacs
- Bibliographies
- Textbooks
- ManualsUniversity of Maryland: Tertiary Sources
- These are very helpful for basic research. There are a number of tertiary sources available online, such as:
- The Encyclopedia BritannicaBritannica: Britannica Online Encyclopedia
- BibliographiesLitWeb: Your Source for Author Biographies and Bibliographies
- DictionariesDictionary.com: Dictionary
- Be aware that an online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia oftentimes contain user-generated content, so information is not guaranteed to be accurate.Ars Technica: Wikipedia founder: "don't cite"
Step 2: Getting Authorization
- There are two major types of biographies: authorized and unauthorized. An unauthorized biography is one that has not been approved by the subject or the subject's estate, if he or she is deceased.The Publishing Law Center: Publication Of An Unauthorized Biography It can be difficult to get access to primary sources if you do not first get approval from the subject's estate or relatives.
- For this reason it is useful to have credentials before researching a biographical subject, as it can be difficult to find people who are open to being interviewed if you do not have a publisher or a list of credits.Behler Blog: Credentials It can also be difficult to get access to a biographical subject's private journals or letters without proper authorization. However: it's not mandatory to have a publisher. In order to get access to private records or to conduct interviews you should:
- Have a proposal ready for the book, showing how you intend to tackle the subject.prlit.com: Writing a Book Proposal
- If possible, show past publishing credits.
- Conduct your interview professionally.Free Management Library: General Guidelines for Conducting Interviews
Contacting Subjects
- Contacting a subject depends if he or she is still living. If the subject is still alive, you should contact him/her via email or telephone.Access Washington: Request an Informational Interview Obviously, if the person is very famous, this will be difficult, so you will need to contact the subject through other means:
- Through an agent (literary, talent, sports, etc.)
- Through a publisher.WritersNet: Directory of Publishers
- Through a webmaster or contact info on a website.
- If the subject is deceased, you need to find contact information about the subject's estate. If the subject did not leave behind a significant estate, you need to contact relatives. Again, this can be done through a publisher or you can find relatives or acquaintances online or via a printed directory.About.com: Top Ten Ways to Do a Free People Search On the Web Yellow Pages: Find a Person
Researching Without Authorization
- It is not a prerequisite to have a publisher lined up, but it is helpful, as this can gain you increased credibility as a researcher.Behler Blog: Credentials If you are unable to gain access to personal files, you will have to look elsewhere for source material. The main places to conduct research are:
- The library, including both book and periodical resources.Cornell University Library: The Seven Steps of the Research Process
- The InternetAbout.com: Top Ten Ways to Do a Free People Search On the Web
- Fieldwork, such as visiting the subject's hometown or other places where the subject lived.The American Folklife Center: How to Do Fieldwork
- Important Note: an unauthorized biography can result in legal action, even if there is nothing libelous in the biography.The Publishing Law Center: Publication Of An Unauthorized Biography The subject can sue for invasion of privacy. However, unauthorized biographies are also protected by the first amendment, so an authorized biography won't necessarily guarantee a lawsuit.
Step 3: Conducting Interviews
- As you conduct your research into a person's life, you should have a number of questions at the ready.Web-Biography.com: Some Biography Interview Questions In conducting your research you should be looking to prove a thesis, rather than just dryly listing facts about a person's life. What this means is that you should be coming to your primary and secondary source material looking for certain answers.Shaping a Life: Descriptive Questions These questions can be answered via:
- Phone
- Email
- Sending every question at once
- Sending a new question based on the previous response
- In person with a method of transcription:
- Recording device (also applies to phone conversations)
- Video
- Notepad
- When you interview acquaintances or scholars you should be looking to answer set questions: such as how childhood impacted the person later in life.North Virginia Community College: Tips for Preparing Your Biography Interview As you continue researching a subject, your thesis will expand, or even change.
Step 4: Writing the Biography
- You've got your research materials together: periodicals, interviews, and other source material, as well as your outline and notes, and you're ready to write. The writing of the book should be looking to provide basic biographical information, as well as a unique take on the person's life.
- The trick to writing a successful biography is to not be overly dry. Avoid merely listing a sequence of dates: a biography is meant to be an objective look at a person's life filtered through the biographer's interpretation.WritersServices.com: Writing Biography and Autobiography Of course you don't want to fictionalize, but the biographer can take some artistic license. So long as you have ample evidence from your research, you can fictionalize to some degree: write about what the subject might have been feeling or thinking at a certain point. However, you don't want to make anything up out of whole cloth.
- Here are the main points to determine about a subject's life.About.com: How to Write an Interesting Biography
- Important dates in the person's life
- How the historical time impacted the subject.
- How he/she impacted history.
- How he or she learned from life experiences.
- Major events in the person's life.
- Most influential relationships.
- Major and minor accomplishments.
- Generally, biographies are written in chronological order. However, it's not uncommon for the biography to begin with a major event from the person's life and then backtracking to how it all began.
Conclusion
- Biographies can be several volumes or just several pages. Condensing a lifetime within the confines of a printed work can be a very challenging undertaking. So long as you research a biographical subject through a wide variety of sources, you'll be able to write an authoritative, and hopefully entertaining, biography.
References for How to Write a Biography
Questions and Answers About How to Write a Biography
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