How to Write a Biography: Best Practices and Tips

Curious about how to write a biography?

Here is a one-stop-shop for all things biography writing related.

What a Biography Is: Understanding the Subject’s Life

A biography is like looking though a window into a person’s life story, seen from their unique perspective.

And it is typically not just about the facts either, but the whole kit and caboodle about the person’s life. What they thought and felt, why they did the things they did, and what they’ve learned during life.

If the biography is written by someone else, that goal is to paint an accurate picture of the person’s life via other information: Such as interviewing the memoir subject themself, speaking with their family/friends/colleagues, or obtaining the information elsewhere – such as photographs, scrapbooks, a diary, or any other source relevant to the person’s life.

Why Should Someone Write a Biography?

There are many powerful reasons to write a biography including to:

1. Preserve Their Legacy and Heritage

• Writing a life story ensures that personal experiences, values, and family histories are recorded for all future generations. It also gives loved ones a way to understand where they come from, while showcasing cherished family traditions and milestones.

2. Reflect on Personal Growth

• Biography writing helps the writer to see how they’ve grown over time. Reflecting on the past often reveals how challenges were overcome, showing established patterns of resilience and character building that might not be obvious without the perspective.

3. Emotional Healing and Closure

• Writing about life experiences can be a very therapeutic process, offering a safe way to revisit and process past events, celebrate joyful memories, and let go of a lingering emotional injury.

4. Strengthen Family Bonds and Relationships

• By sharing life stories, family members can gain valuable insights, often known. Such stories often deepen family bonds and create connections across the generations.

5. Leave a Lasting Impact and Inspire Others

• Every life story is unique and contains lessons learned. By sharing personal stories, others can learn, draw inspiration, and find encouragement. Life stories often inspire readers to pursue their own dreams and embrace their own journey. Highlighting significant milestones also provides insight into what was important to the writer, and how those moments influenced their philosophy and feelings.

6. Boost Self-Esteem and Confidence

• Seeing someone’s life story laid out in a story format creates a sense of self-appreciation and accomplishment. Documenting challenges and achievements by the writer can also reinforce self-worth and a sense of pride.

7. Enhance Personal Clarity and Purpose

• Writing a life story helps to organize memories and life experiences, which often brings clarity to the unresolved aspects of the past, leading to a deeper understanding of one’s values, purpose, and goals in life.

8. Capture Unique Memories and Moments

• Our lives are filled with meaningful moments that typically fade over time. A life story memoir can preserve those details, from childhood memories to key life events – keeping them vivid for the writer and for future family generations.

9. Create a Lasting Gift for Loved Ones

• A memoir is a priceless gift that family and friends will cherish. It becomes a tangible piece of someone’s life story that their loved ones can retain and revisit, often creating an enduring family keepsake.

10. Contribute to Cultural and Historical Narratives

• Life stories add depth and context to our understanding of history and culture. Sharing personal experiences can highlight unique perspectives, and contribute to a collective narrative in ways that textbooks, media, and other channels of communication cannot.

Those reasons make biography book writing a deeply meaningful and rewarding process for oneself, and for others who read the memoir. It is a celebration of a life fully lived – with all its ups and downs, which leaves a valuable and shared legacy of human experience

Choosing Your Subject

Selecting a Compelling Life Story

When choosing a subject for your biography, you might want to select a life story or story event (partial life story) that is compelling and interesting to others. Consider the following factors:

• Interest: If you are writing someone else’s story, will their story sustain your interest throughout the research and writing process? Writing a detailed biography can be a long-term commitment if you are doing it alone and/or by hand (without a writing app) and enthusiasm is crucial in maintaining momentum.

• Merit: Is the subject’s life story worthy of the reader’s interest? A well-written biography can captivate readers by offering unique insights into the subject’s personality and life experience.

• Information: Is there enough information available on the subject to fuel the writing of an entire biography? Ensure that there are ample resources to draw from, if they are not available.

When writing your own life story, with your family and friends being the expected reading audience, the memoir quality standards are reduced significantly. Your family and friends already love you, and they will typically love your life story also (!) 

Researching the Subject’s Life

Conducting Thorough Research

Conducting research is a crucial step when writing a biography for another person. You should gather qualitative information from a wide range of reliable sources, including:

• Primary sources: Books, letters, pictures, newspapers, and/or interviews provide firsthand accounts of the subject’s life.

• Secondary sources: Books, articles, and documentaries offer interpretations and analyses of their life.

• Online sources: Websites, blogs, and social media can provide additional context and contemporary perspectives.

    When researching the subject’s life, consider the following:

• Contextualize their story by researching the time period and place they lived. Understand the social and political climate that affected their life. That can provide valuable insights into their life experience and resulting actions.

• Look for recurring events or situations in the subject’s life that can help to identify consistent themes. Those can serve as the backbone of your biography, providing a cohesive narrative structure.

Asking Engaging Questions

If you are writing a family member or friend’s biography, asking engaging questions is an essential part of the interview process. Consider asking questions such as these:

• What makes the subject’s life story worth telling? Identifying the unique aspects of the subject’s life story can help you focus on the most compelling parts.

• What were the significant events in their life? Highlighting key events can provide a clear structure for their biography.

• How did the subject’s personality and beliefs change over time? Understanding the evolution of the subject’s character can add valuable depth and context to the narrative.

• What were the major turning points in the subject’s life? Identifying those moments can help you build a dynamic and engaging story.

By asking these type of questions, you can gain a deeper understanding of the subject’s life and create a well-written biography that engages and informs the readers.

Developing a Chronological Timeline: Key Events

A timeline is often used to organize a person’s life chronologically, highlighting major life events over a decade or more. That timeline typically covers key aspects, such as the early life and education, and extends to their career, achievements, and other significant events.

In laying out the chronology, it is possible to place each event in a sequence according to when it happened. Tailoring the timeline can also give prominence where it’s due, while ensuring the story flows smoothly for the reader.

Integrating Flashbacks

Using flashbacks in a biography can enrich the narrative significantly, by strategically revealing crucial backstory elements when they are the most authentic and impactful. Those glimpses into past times can add depth, meaning, and also keep readers engaged through short, compelling story events.

By weaving those recollections together, it is possible to emphasize important events in the subject’s life story, such as their favorite childhood memory, or a key event that shaped who they became. That will ensure the biography not only informs, but also captivates the reader.

Organizing the Biography

Organizing the biography is an important step in the writing process. It involves creating a clear structure and timeline of the person’s life story, which will help to guide the narrative and ensure that all key events are covered.

Creating The Timeline

To create the timeline, begin by gathering information about the person’s life, including their birth and death dates, major life events, and other significant accomplishments. You can use notes, interviews, and other sources to gather that information.

Once you have gathered the information, create a timeline by dividing the person’s life story up into sections or time periods. For example, you might divide the timeline into childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, and mature age (or other divisions).

Within each section, list the key events and milestones that occurred during that period. Be sure to include dates, places, and names of people involved. You can also include notes about the social and political climate if applicable, because those can have a significant impact on a person’s life.

As you create the timeline, look for patterns and themes that emerge. Are there any recurring events or challenges that the person faced? Are there any significant relationships or mentors in their life? Identifying those patterns and themes can help to develop a summary statement for your biography (if you wish, it is not required)  which gives a deeper understanding of the person’s life.

Here are some tips to keep in mind when creating a timeline:

• Be thorough and detailed: Include as much information as possible about the person’s life, including dates, places, and names of people involved.

• Use a consistent format: Use a consistent format for your timeline, such as a table or a list, to make it easy to read and understand.

• Focus on key events: Focus on the most significant events and milestones in the person’s life, rather than trying to include every detail.

Outlining the Narrative

Once you have created a timeline, you can begin outlining the narrative of the biography. An outline provides a clear structure for the story, including the beginning, middle, and end.

When outlining the narrative, consider the following:

• The person’s life story: What are the key events and experiences that shaped their life?

• The person’s early life: How did their early life influence their later years?

• The writing process: How will you structure the narrative to engage the reader?

• Key events: What are the most significant events in the person’s life, and how will you describe them?

• Social and political climate: How did the social and political climate of the time affect the person’s life?

By outlining the narrative, you can create a clear and compelling story that brings the subject’s life story to life.

Adding Personal Touches

Adding a person’s authentic and revealing insight to the biography can create a deeper emotional connection with the reader. By infusing a biography with personal elements, what might otherwise have be just a list of events becomes an engaging tale that draws readers in on a more profound level, because the reader cares about and wants to learn about the subject (the person).

Reflecting on your own life experience can offer unique perspectives that enhance the story being told. When factual accounts are interwoven with personal insight, they often result in narratives that captivate readers by offering a fully immersive experience.

Refining the Biography

Refining a biography involves revising and editing the emerging story to ensure that it is clear, coherent, and engaging.

Revising for Clarity and Coherence

Revising for clarity and coherence involves reviewing the manuscript to ensure that the narrative is clear, concise, and easy to follow. When doing so, consider the following:

• A Thesis statement: What is the central argument or theme of the biography?

• Key events: Are the key events in the person’s life story clearly described and contextualized?

• Social and political climate: Is the social and political climate of the time clearly described and analyzed also?

• Research notes: Are the research notes and sources (if used) clearly cited and referenced?

By revising for clarity and coherence, you can create a well-written biography that engages the reader and provides a compelling portrait of the subject’s life.

Preparing for Publication

After the writing process is complete, get the memoir ready for family and friends by formatting it properly for both print and digital platforms. It is essential to choose text fonts that are easy to read and also compliant to book publishing licensing specifications (if you do want to sell your memoir book to the general public).

Utilizing A Memoir Book Writing App

There are a growing number of memoir writing apps available today that simplify the process, making it accessible, fast, and budget-friendly for everyone. Those apps typically offer guided prompts/questions, easy editing tools, collaboration options, and other features to bring a life story to life easily.

Memoir Book Writing Apps Typically:

• Simplify Storytelling: By using guided prompts and questioning, those apps help the writer to recall memories and document key life events without the need for a specialized writing skill.

• Offer Flexible Options: Users can often choose between writing, recording, and/or even answering life questions to create a life story memoir book automatically.

• Support Collaboration: Many apps allow family and friends to contribute to the memoir book, making the process a shared writing experience.

• Affordable and Convenient: Digital-first approaches help users to avoid high ghostwriting fees or a complicated publishing process, by offering a quick, easy, and affordable alternative to creating a memoir.

Example: The Life Writer App

The Life Writer App is a user-friendly, comprehensive approach to life story memoir book writing. What makes it unique is:

• Guided Writing Process with Hundreds of Prompts: With over 500 detailed prompts covering childhood, career, family, and other events, The Life Writer App guides the writer through the storytelling process without overwhelming them. Each question is designed to help capture the subject’s memories in an easy-to-use and understandable way.

• Customization and Control: Users can skip questions, edit responses, and even add their own questions if they wish, giving them control over the writing process. The app supports automatic voice transcription also, which converts the user’s voice to memoir text.

• Digital and Print Formats: After completing the life story, The Life Writer App assembles the narrative automatically into a formatted memoir book. That book can be shared digitally with family and friends, or printed as a physical book, enabling the final product to be  versatile and accessible.

Summary

Approach the biography writing process with joy and  enthusiasm. You already have all of the tools, skills, and insight required to tell (or capture) a compelling life story. With a little determination and passion, you are ready to create an extraordinary biography book that your readers will love and cherish.

www.thelifewriter.com