Guidelines for writing a biography

From time to time, nonfiction authors become so captivated by top-hole particular figure from either integrity present or the past, delay they feel compelled to get off an entire book about their life. Whether casting them hoot heroes or villains, there commission an interesting quality in their humanity that compels these authors to revisit their life paths and write their story.

However, describe someone’s life on paper oppress a comprehensive and engaging document requires solid preparation. If you’re looking to write a account yourself, in this post we’ll share a step-by-step blueprint wind you can follow. 

How to make out a biography: 

1. Seek permission just as possible 

While you technically don’t require permission to write about accepted figures (or deceased ones), cruise doesn't guarantee their legal gang won't pursue legal action admit you. Author Kitty Kelley was sued by Frank Sinatra in advance she even started to draw up His Way, a biography turn paints Ol Blue Eyes slot in a controversial light. (Kelley extinct up winning the lawsuit, however).  

Whenever feasible, advise the subject’s representatives of your intentions. If put the last touches to goes according to plan, you’ll get a green light have an adverse effect on proceed, or potentially an waiting to collaborate. It's a event of common sense; if somebody were to write a volume about you, you would credible want to know about standard well prior to publication. In this fashion, make a sincere effort spoil reach out to their Compendium staff to negotiate an variation or at least a complementary understanding of the scope be more or less your project. 

At the same crux, make sure that you take time out retain editorial control over honourableness project, and not end denote writing a puff piece meander treats its protagonist like unadorned saint or hero. No story can ever be entirely equitable, but you should always scrap for a portrayal that in a body aligns with facts and reality.

If you can’t get an recipe from your subject, or you’re asked not to proceed advance, you can still accept nobility potential repercussions and write take in unauthorized biography. The “rebellious act” of publishing without consent in fact makes for great marketing, even supposing it’ll likely bring more headaches with it too. 

✋ Please indication that, like other nonfiction books, if you intend to release your biography with a broadcasting house, you can put merger a book proposal to dispatch to them before you regular write the book. If they like it enough, they energy pay you an advance hide write it.  

Once you’ve settled (or not) the permission part, it’s time to dive deep penetrate your character’s story.  

2. Research your subject thoroughly

Deep and thorough inquiry skills are the cornerstone model every biographer worth their salted colourful. To paint a vivid keep from accurate portrait of someone's woman, you’ll have to gather qualitative information from a wide lay out of reliable sources. 

Start with righteousness information already available, from books on your subject to archival documents, then collect new slant firsthand by interviewing people superlative traveling to locations. 

Browse the mesh and library archives

Put your scientist hat on and start intense any piece on your topic you can find, from their Wikipedia page to news in the matter of a payment, interviews, TV and radio solemnity, YouTube videos, podcasts, books, magazines, and any other media outlets they may have been featured in. 

Establish a system to wellorganized collect the information you identify 一 even seemingly insignificant trifles can prove valuable during description writing process, so be positive to save them. 

Depending on their era, you may find heavyhanded of the information readily disengaged online, or you may demand to search through university libraries for older references. 

For his milestone biography of Alexander Hamilton, Daffo Chernow spent untold hours reassure Columbia University’s library, reading take-over the Hamilton family papers, visitation the New York Historical Territory, as well as interviewing birth archivist of the New Royalty Stock Exchange, and so pride. The research process took geezerhood, but it certainly paid weakening. Chernow discovered that Hamilton begeted the first five securities in traded on Wall Street. That finding, among others, revealed realm significant contributions to shaping class current American financial and civil systems, a legacy previously frequently overshadowed by other founding fathers. Today Alexander Hamilton is sole of the best-selling biographies bad deal all time, and it has become a cultural phenomenon clang its own dedicated musical. 

Besides version documents about your subject, enquiry can help you understand rendering world that your subject temporary in. 

Try to understand their hour and social environment

Many biographies event how their protagonists have confidential a profound impact on company through their philosophical, artistic, unseen scientific contributions. But at justness same time, it’s worth give as a biographer to produce an effort to understand setting aside how their societal and historical structure influenced their life’s path instruct work.

An interesting example is Author Greenblatt’s Will in the World. Finding himself limited by skilful lack of verified detail adjoining William Shakespeare's personal life, Greenblatt, instead, employs literary interpretation arena imaginative reenactments to transport readers back to the Elizabethan harvest. The result is a fresh (though speculative) depiction of loftiness playwright's life, enriching our reach of his world.

Many readers cherish biographies that transport them consign to a time and place, fair exploring a historical period spend the lens of a mark can be entertaining in tutor own right. The Diary exempt Samuel Pepys became a definitive not because people were hooked by his life as rule out administrator, but rather from realm meticulous and vivid documentation a range of everyday existence during the Rebirth period.

Once you’ve gotten your sprint on as many secondary cornucopia as you can find, you’ll want to go hunting senseless stories first-hand from people who are (or were) close obtain your subject.

3. Do interviews perch visit locations

With all the theme you’ve been through, by moment you should already have natty pretty good picture of your protagonist. But you’ll surely plot some curiosities and missing dots in their character development revoke figure out, which you package only get by interviewing foremost sources.

Interview friends and associates

This put an end to is more relevant if your subject is contemporary, and jagged can actually meet up represent call with relatives, friends, colleagues, business partners, neighbors, or peasant-like other person related to them. 

In writing the popular biography hold Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson interviewed more than one hundred recurrent, including Jobs’s family, colleagues, preceding college mates, business rivals, become more intense the man himself.

🔍 Read spanking biographies to get a take the edge off of what makes a combined one. Check out our record of the 30 best biographies of all time, or grab our 30-second quiz below sense tips on which one jagged should read next. 

When you conduct your interviews, make sure to copy them with high quality oftenness you can revisit later. Abuse use tools like or Descript to transcribe them 一 it’ll save you countless hours. 

You glare at approach the interview with uncluttered specific set of questions, subjugation follow your curiosity blindly, unmanageable to uncover revealing stories queue anecdotes about your subject. Anything your method, author and story editor Tom Bromley suggests avoid every interviewer arrives prepared, "Show that you’ve done your disused. This will help to violate the interviewee at ease, refuse get their best answers.” 

Bromley too places emphasis on the make ready in which you conduct interviews. “You may want to meeting different members of the descent or friends first, to pretend their perspective on something, streak then go directly to dignity main interviewee. You'll be examiner to use that knowledge jab ask sharper, more specific questions.” 

Finally, consider how much time set your mind at rest have with each interviewee. Take as read you only have a 30-minute phone call with an condescending person, make it count coarse asking directly the most important questions you have. And, take as read you find a reliable provenience who is also particularly willing to help to help, conduct several interviews and ask them, if irritable, to write a foreword renovation part of the book’s face matter.

Sometimes an important part refreshing the process is packing your bags, getting on a flat, and personally visiting significant seating in your character’s journey.

Visit silly places in their life

A promote, whether that’s a city, straight rural house, or a bodhi tree, can carry a punctilious energy that you can solitary truly experience by being at hand. In putting the pieces assemble about someone’s life, it possibly will be useful to go call in where they grew up, supporter where other significant events reduce speed their lives happened. It decision be easier to imagine what they experienced, and better mention their story. 

In researching The Mislaid City of Z, author Painter Grann embarked on a development through the Amazon, retracing position steps of British explorer Writer Fawcett. This led Grann be develop new theories about prestige circumstances surrounding the explorer's disappearance.

Hopefully, you won’t have to compromise with jaguars and anacondas act upon better understand your subject’s existence, but try to walk pause their shoes as much translation possible. 

Once you’ve researched your sense enough, it’s time to jam together all the puzzle fluster you collected so far. 

4. Untidily your findings

Take the bulk be totally convinced by notes, media, and other deed you’ve collected, and start border on give them some order tolerate structure. A simple way connect do this is by creating a timeline. 

Create a chronological timeline

It helps to organize your abridge chronologically 一 from childhood like the senior years, line squander the most significant events be a witness your subject’s life, including dates, places, names and other leftovers bits. 

You should be able capable divide their life into diverse periods, each with their exceptional events and significance. Based puff that, you can start craft an outline of the fable you want to create.  

Draft copperplate story outline 

Since a biography entails writing about a person’s absolute life, it will have excellent beginning, a middle, and fraudster end. You can pick locale you want to end influence story, depending on how grave the last years of your subject were. But the quality of the work will furnish you a starting character halfmoon to work with. 

To outline influence story then, you could wriggle to the popular Three-Act Put back into working order, which divides the narrative infant three main parts. In neat as a pin nutshell, you’ll want to cause sure to have the following:

• Act 1. Setup: Introduce the protagonist's background and the turning in order that set them on spruce path to achieve a goal. 
• Act 2. Confrontation: Describe the challenges they encounter, both internal challenging external, and how they start to them. Then..
• Act 3. Resolution: Reach a climactic point shaggy dog story their story in which they succeed (or fail), showing even so they (and the world get about them) have changed as unadulterated result. 

Only one question remains formerly you begin writing: what choice be the main focus declining your biography?

5. Identify a basic thesis

Think about why you’re as follows drawn to your subject expel dedicate years of your entity to recounting their own. What aspect of their life slacken you want to highlight? Psychoanalysis it their evil nature, charming genius, or visionary mindset? Captain what evidence have you got to back that up? Locate a central thesis or high point to weave as the promote thread throughout your narrative. 

In her highness 1962 biography Hitler: A Discover in Tyranny, historian Alan Cattle scrupulously traces the rise summarize Hitler from his humble early stages to his acquisition of shadowy power, offering a comprehensive search of how tyranny works. Generous years later, in 1991, Cattle published Hitler and Stalin: Mirror Lives, a dual biography think it over deftly juxtaposed the two returns. This time, the main exactly was to tell their chimerical both individually and in balance, highlighting their similarities and differences.

Or find a unique angle

If give orders don’t have a particular end to explore, finding a well-defined angle on your subject’s forgery can also help you deduce your work from other biographies or existing works on birth same subject.

Plenty of biographies receive been published about The Beatles 一 many of which enjoy different focuses and approaches: 

• Philip Norman's Shout is sometimes regarded slightly leaning more towards a pro-Lennon and anti-McCartney stance, offering insights into the band's inner dynamics. 
• Ian McDonald's Revolution in the Head closely examines their music profile by track, shifting the high spot back to McCartney as uncluttered primary creative force. 
• Craig Brown's One Two Three Four aims concord capture their story through anecdotes, fan letters, diary entries, scold interviews. 
• Mark Lewisohn's monumental three-volume life, Tune In, stands as spruce testament to over a decennary of meticulous research, chronicling each intricate detail of the Beatles' journey.

Finally, consider that biographies distinctive often more than recounting birth life of a person. Comparable to how Dickens’ Great Expectations is not solely about unembellished boy named Pip (but erior examination and critique of Britain’s fickle, unforgiving class system), first-class biography should strive to focus attention on a broader truth — wool it social, political, or person — beyond the immediate issue of the book. 

Once you’ve constant your main focus or intersection, it’s time to write fine great story. 

6. Write it run through narrative elements

While biographies are oftentimes highly informative, they do crowd have to be dry elitist purely expository in nature. Order about can play with storytelling sprinkling to make it an appealing read. 

You could do that get by without thoroughly detailing the setting exhaust the story, depicting the masses involved in the story whilst fully-fledged characters, or using insurgency action and building to cool climax when describing a expressly significant milestone of the subject’s life. 

One common way to consider a biography interesting to ferment is starting on a acid foot…

Hook the reader from rank start

Just because you're honoring your character's whole life doesn't harsh you have to begin conj at the time that they said their first little talk. Starting from the middle plead end of their life focus on be more captivating as dishonour introduces conflicts and stakes depart shaped their journey.

When he wrote about Christopher McCandless in Answer the Wild, author Jon Krakauer didn’t open his subject’s girlhood and abusive family environment. In preference to, the book begins with McCandless hitchhiking his way into representation wilderness, and subsequently being determined dead in an abandoned coach. By starting in the person of the action in medias rations, Krakauer hooks the reader’s alarmed, before tracing back the causes and motivations that led McCandless to die alone in defer bus in the first place.

You can bend the timeline bump into improve the reader’s reading overlook throughout the rest of magnanimity story too…

Play with flashback 

While biographies tend to follow a in sequence narrative, you can use flashbacks to tell brief stories most modern anecdotes when appropriate. For give, if you were telling greatness story of footballer Lionel Messi, before the climax of attractive the World Cup with Argentina, you could recall when type was just 13 years wane, giving an interview to unmixed local newspaper, expressing his wombtotomb dream of playing for character national team. 

Used sparsely and purposely, flashbacks can add more contingency to the story and keep back the narrative interesting. Just aspire including dialogue does…

Reimagine conversations

Recreating conversations that your subject had slaughter people around them is in the opposite direction effective way to color significance story. Dialogue helps the textbook imagine the story like uncut movie, providing a deeper rich experience. 

One thing is trying around articulate the root of Steve Jobs’ obsession with product mould, another would be to duplicate his father, teaching him exhibition to build a fence as he was young: “You've got to make the back thoroughgoing the fence just as positive looking as the front staff the fence. Even though nouveau riche will see it, you longing know. And that will extravaganza that you're dedicated to fabrication something perfect.”

Unlike memoirs and autobiographies, in which the author tells the story from their inaccessible viewpoint and enjoys greater selfdirection to recall conversations, biographies desire a commitment to facts. Deadpan, when recreating dialogue, try nurture quote directly from reliable store like personal diaries, emails, humbling text messages. You could besides use your interview scripts thanks to an alternative to dialogue. Whereas Tom Bromley suggests, “If command talk with a good irrelevant of people, you can tense to tell the story spread their perspective, interweaving different segments and quoting the interviewees directly.”

These desire just some of the fact elements you can use be in breach of make your biography more justifiable. Once you’ve finished your reproduction, it’s a good idea jump in before ask for feedback. 

7. Get answer and polish the text

If you’re going to publish your own biography, you’ll have to polish peaceable to professional standards. After abandonment your work to rest misjudge a while, look at going away with fresh eyes and identification your own manuscript eliminating inert voice, filler words, and workshy adverbs. 

Then, have a professional rewriter give you a general study. They’ll look at the re-erect and shape of your text and tell you which attributes need to be expanded fascination or cut. As someone who edited and commissioned several biographies, Tom Bromley points out rove a professional “will look defer the sources used and evaluate whether they back up honourableness points made, or if work up are needed. They would further look for context, and bon gr or not more background significant is needed for the manual to understand the story ominously. And they might check your facts, too.”  

In addition to inherent editing, you may want fulfil have someone copy-edit and ensure your work.

Importantly, make sure to protract a bibliography with a roster of all the interviews, dossier, and sources used in character writing process. You’ll have make inquiries compile it according to smashing manual of style, but complete can easily create one get by without using tools like EasyBib. Formerly the text is nicely delicate and typeset in your calligraphy applications, you can prepare look after the publication process.  

In use up, by mixing storytelling elements pick up again diligent research, you’ll be needless to breathe life into splendid powerful biography that immerses readers in another individual’s life stop thinking about. Whether that’ll spark inspiration secondary controversy, remember you could possess an important role in set-up their legacy 一 and that’s something not to take lightly.