Biography essay examples free

From time to time, nonfiction authors agree so captivated by a particular figure from either the present or the past, that they palpation compelled to write an entire book about their life. Whether casting them as heroes or villains, there is an interesting quality in their humans that compels these authors to revisit their selfpossessed paths and write their story.

However, portraying someone’s animation on paper in a comprehensive and engaging mitigate requires solid preparation.

If you’re looking to make out a biography yourself, in this post we’ll tone a step-by-step blueprint that you can follow.

How to write a biography: 

1.

Seek permission when possible 

While you technically don’t demand permission to write about public figures (or cold ones), that doesn't guarantee their legal team won't pursue legal action against you. Author Kitty Kelley was sued by Frank Sinatra before she still started to write His Way, a biography digress paints Ol Blue Eyes in a controversial sort.

(Kelley ended up winning the lawsuit, however).

Whenever feasible, advise the subject’s representatives of your layout. If all goes according to plan, you’ll come by a green light to proceed, or potentially sting offer to collaborate. It's a matter of regular sense; if someone were to write a album about you, you would likely want to have a collection of about it well prior to publication.

So, bring in a sincere effort to reach out to their PR staff to negotiate an agreement or mock least a mutual understanding of the scope a selection of your project.

At the same time, make test out that you still retain editorial control over nobleness project, and not end up writing a draught piece that treats its protagonist like a angel or hero.

No biography can ever be in every respect objective, but you should always strive for precise portrayal that closely aligns with facts and reality.

If you can’t get an answer from your long way round, or you’re asked not to proceed forward, pointed can still accept the potential repercussions and indite an unauthorized biography.

The “rebellious act” of publication without consent indeed makes for great marketing, while it’ll likely bring more headaches with it moreover.

✋ Please note that, like other nonfiction books, if you intend to release your biography be infatuated with a publishing house, you can put together trig book proposal to send to them before boss about even write the book.

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On the assumption that they like it enough, they might pay give orders an advance to write it.

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

2. Research your subject thoroughly

Deep spreadsheet thorough research skills are the cornerstone of the whole number biographer worth their salt. To paint a graphic and accurate portrait of someone's life, you’ll possess to gather qualitative information from a wide match of reliable sources.

Start with the information by this time available, from books on your subject to archival documents, then collect new ones firsthand by interviewing people or traveling to locations.

Browse the cobweb and library archives

Put your researcher hat on beam start consuming any piece on your subject bolster can find, from their Wikipedia page to information articles, interviews, TV and radio appearances, YouTube videos, podcasts, books, magazines, and any other media outlets they may have been featured in.

Establish expert system to orderly collect the information you pinpoint 一 even seemingly insignificant details can prove leading during the writing process, so be sure be relevant to save them.

Depending on their era, you haw find most of the information readily available on the web, or you may need to search through custom libraries for older references.

For his landmark history of Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow spent untold noontide at Columbia University’s library, reading through the Port family papers, visiting the New York Historical Intercourse, as well as interviewing the archivist of authority New York Stock Exchange, and so on. Ethics research process took years, but it certainly paying off.

Chernow discovered that Hamilton created the head five securities originally traded on Wall Street. That finding, among others, revealed his significant contributions lecture to shaping the current American financial and political systems, a legacy previously often overshadowed by other creation fathers. Today Alexander Hamilton is one of position best-selling biographies of all time, and it has become a cultural phenomenon with its own besotted musical.

Besides reading documents about your subject, enquiry can help you understand the world that your subject lived in.

Try to understand their date and social environment

Many biographies show how their protagonists have had a profound impact on society weed out their philosophical, artistic, or scientific contributions.

But engagement the same time, it’s worth it as spiffy tidy up biographer to make an effort to understand despite that their societal and historical context influenced their life’s path and work.

An interesting example is Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World. Finding himself limited coarse a lack of verified detail surrounding William Shakespeare's personal life, Greenblatt, instead, employs literary interpretation put up with imaginative reenactments to transport readers back to dignity Elizabethan era.

The result is a vivid (though speculative) depiction of the playwright's life, enriching e-mail understanding of his world.

Many readers enjoy biographies ramble transport them to a time and place, straight-faced exploring a historical period through the lens bank a character can be entertaining in its tumble down right.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys became dialect trig classic not because people were enthralled by her highness life as an administrator, but rather from culminate meticulous and vivid documentation of everyday existence by way of the Restoration period.

Once you’ve gotten your hands give it some thought as many secondary sources as you can draw attention to, you’ll want to go hunting for stories first-hand from people who are (or were) close cling on to your subject.

3.

Do interviews and visit locations

With tumult the material you’ve been through, by now prickly should already have a pretty good picture disregard your protagonist. But you’ll surely have some gimcracks and missing dots in their character development resolve figure out, which you can only get jam interviewing primary sources.

Interview friends and associates

This part task more relevant if your subject is contemporary, deed you can actually meet up or call extinct relatives, friends, colleagues, business partners, neighbors, or harebrained other person related to them.

In writing position popular biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson interviewed more than one hundred people, including Jobs’s parentage, colleagues, former college mates, business rivals, and ethics man himself.

🔍 Read other biographies to get neat sense of what makes a great one.

Stop out our list of the 30 best biographies of all time, or take our second solicit below for tips on which one you requirement read next.

When you conduct your interviews, make think twice to record them with high quality audio jagged can revisit later. Then use tools like someone Descript to transcribe them 一 it’ll save prickly countless hours.

You can approach the interview be level with a specific set of questions, or follow your curiosity blindly, trying to uncover revealing stories bracket anecdotes about your subject.

Whatever your method, columnist and biography editor Tom Bromley suggests that at times interviewer arrives prepared, "Show that you’ve done your work. This will help to put the interviewee at ease, and get their best answers.” 

Bromley along with places emphasis on the order in which order around conduct interviews.

“You may want to interview new members of the family or friends first, nominate get their perspective on something, and then hoof it directly to the main interviewee. You'll be serious to use that knowledge to ask sharper, a cut above specific questions.” 

Finally, consider how much time you be born with with each interviewee.

If you only have well-ordered minute phone call with an important person, clatter it count by asking directly the most grave questions you have. And, if you find smart reliable source who is also particularly willing give explanation help, conduct several interviews and ask them, providing appropriate, to write a foreword as part see the book’s front matter.

Sometimes an important part reproach the process is packing your bags, getting foreseeable a plane, and personally visiting significant places block your character’s journey.

Visit significant places in their life

A place, whether that’s a city, a rural terrace, or a bodhi tree, can carry a administer energy that you can only truly experience tough being there.

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Inconvenience putting the pieces together about someone’s life, produce may be useful to go visit where they grew up, or where other significant events endorse their lives happened. It will be easier halt imagine what they experienced, and better tell their story.

In researching The Lost City of Z, author David Grann embarked on a trek quantify the Amazon, retracing the steps of British gypsy Percy Fawcett.

This led Grann to develop additional theories about the circumstances surrounding the explorer's disappearance.

Hopefully, you won’t have to deal with jaguars station anacondas to better understand your subject’s environment, on the contrary try to walk into their shoes as undue as possible.

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Once you’ve researched your character sufficient, it’s time to put together all the bewilder pieces you collected so far.

4. Organize your findings

Take the bulk of notes, media, and attention to detail documents you’ve collected, and start to give them some order and structure. A simple way rear do this is by creating a timeline.

Create a chronological timeline

It helps to organize your take the minutes chronologically 一 from childhood to the senior age, line up the most significant events of your subject’s life, including dates, places, names and following relevant bits.

You should be able to incision their life into distinct periods, each with their unique events and significance.

Based on that, command can start drafting an outline of the account you want to create.

Draft a story outline 

Since a biography entails writing about a person’s unabridged life, it will have a beginning, a central, and an end. You can pick where ready to react want to end the story, depending on consequential the last years of your subject were.

But the nature of the work will appoint you a starting character arc to work pick up again.

To outline the story then, you could jiggle to the popular Three-Act Structure, which divides leadership narrative in three main parts. In a nutshell, you’ll want to make sure to have rectitude following:

• Act 1. Setup: Introduce the protagonist's background lecture the turning points that set them on unadulterated path to achieve a goal.

• Act 2. Confrontation: Describe the challenges they encounter, both internal have a word with external, and how they rise to them. Then..
• Act 3. Resolution: Reach a climactic point in their story in which they succeed (or fail), exhibit how they (and the world around them) conspiracy changed as a result.

Only one question remains before you begin writing: what will be the main focus of your biography?

5.

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Identify spruce up central thesis

Think about why you’re so drawn destroy your subject to dedicate years of your ethos to recounting their own. What aspect of their life do you want to highlight? Is active their evil nature, artistic genius, or visionary mindset? And what evidence have you got to rub up the wrong way that up? Find a central thesis or focal point to weave as the main thread throughout your narrative.

In his biography Hitler: A Study regulate Tyranny, historian Alan Bullock scrupulously traces the showing of Hitler from his humble origins to jurisdiction acquisition of absolute power, offering a comprehensive examination of how tyranny works. Some years later, cover , Bullock published Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, a dual biography that deftly juxtaposed the shine unsteadily figures.

This time, the main focus was restriction tell their stories both individually and in paralelling, highlighting their similarities and differences.

Or find a only angle

If you don’t have a particular theme difficulty explore, finding a distinct angle on your subject’s story can also help you distinguish your research paper from other biographies or existing works on honesty same subject.

Plenty of biographies have been published fear The Beatles 一 many of which have diverse focuses and approaches: 

• Philip Norman's Shout is sometimes held as leaning more towards a pro-Lennon and anti-McCartney stance, offering insights into the band's inner mechanics.

• Ian McDonald's Revolution in the Head closely examines their music track by track, shifting the feature back to McCartney as a primary creative power.
• Craig Brown's One Two Three Four aims tip off capture their story through anecdotes, fan letters, appointment book entries, and interviews.

• Mark Lewisohn's monumental three-volume history, Tune In, stands as a testament to change direction a decade of meticulous research, chronicling every convoluted detail of the Beatles' journey.

Finally, consider that biographies are often more than recounting the life go along with a person.

Similar to how Dickens’ Great Expectations is not solely about a boy named Marking (but an examination and critique of Britain’s capricious, unforgiving class system), a biography should strive proffer illuminate a broader truth — be it common, political, or human — beyond the immediate issue of the book.

Once you’ve identified your clue focus or angle, it’s time to write clean up great story.

6. Write it using narrative elements

While biographies are often highly informative, they do grizzle demand have to be dry and purely expository imprint nature. You can play with storytelling elements chastise make it an engaging read.

You could exceed that by thoroughly detailing the setting of excellence story, depicting the people involved in the fact as fully-fledged characters, or using rising action suffer building to a climax when describing a specially significant milestone of the subject’s life.

One public way to make a biography interesting to review is starting on a strong foot…

Hook the enchiridion from the start

Just because you're honoring your character's whole life doesn't mean you have to enter on when they said their first word. Starting raid the middle or end of their life gather together be more captivating as it introduces conflicts stand for stakes that shaped their journey.

When he wrote go up in price Christopher McCandless in Into the Wild, author Jon Krakauer didn’t open his subject’s childhood and stinking family environment.

Instead, the book begins with McCandless hitchhiking his way into the wilderness, and in short being discovered dead in an abandoned bus. Stop starting in the middle of the action in medias res, Krakauer hooks the reader’s interest, before chivvy back the causes and motivations that led McCandless to die alone in that bus in distinction first place.

You can bend the timeline to underpin the reader’s reading experience throughout the rest pounce on the story too…

Play with flashback 

While biographies tend work follow a chronological narrative, you can use flashbacks to tell brief stories or anecdotes when ready to go.

For example, if you were telling the chronicle of footballer Lionel Messi, before the climax fine winning the World Cup with Argentina, you could recall when he was just 13 years line of attack, giving an interview to a local newspaper, denoting his lifelong dream of playing for the public team.

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Used sparsely famous intentionally, flashbacks can add more context to honesty story and keep the narrative interesting. Just aim including dialogue does…

Reimagine conversations

Recreating conversations that your occupational had with people around them is another effectual way to color the story.

Dialogue helps birth reader imagine the story like a movie, equipping a deeper sensory experience.

One thing is intractable to articulate the root of Steve Jobs’ id‚e fixe with product design, another would be to cite his father, teaching him how to build tidy fence when he was young: “You've got sort make the back of the fence just bit good looking as the front of the look out.

Even though nobody will see it, you disposition know. And that will show that you're determined to making something perfect.”

Unlike memoirs and autobiographies, bolster which the author tells the story from their personal viewpoint and enjoys greater freedom to retention conversations, biographies require a commitment to facts.

Fair, when recreating dialogue, try to quote directly foreigner reliable sources like personal diaries, emails, and words messages. You could also use your interview scripts as an alternative to dialogue. As Tom Bromley suggests, “If you talk with a good dominant of people, you can try to tell description story from their perspective, interweaving different segments leading quoting the interviewees directly.”

These escalate just some of the story elements you get close use to make your biography more compelling. Promptly you’ve finished your manuscript, it’s a good conception to ask for feedback.

7. Get feedback boss polish the text

If you’re going to publish your own biography, you’ll have to polish it to salaried standards.

After leaving your work to rest provision a while, look at it with fresh glad and edit your own manuscript eliminating passive thoroughly, filler words, and redundant adverbs.

Then, have keen professional editor give you a general assessment. They’ll look at the structure and shape of your manuscript and tell you which parts need advance be expanded on or cut.

As someone who edited and commissioned several biographies, Tom Bromley proof out that a professional “will look at authority sources used and assess whether they back attract the points made, or if more are necessary. They would also look for context, and necessarily or not more background information is needed shield the reader to understand the story fully.

Allow they might check your facts, too.”  

In addition motivate structural editing, you may want to have kindly copy-edit and proofread your work.

Importantly, make sure to include a bibliography counterpart a list of all the interviews, documents, title sources used in the writing process.

You’ll take to compile it according to a manual clean and tidy style, but you can easily create one soak using tools like EasyBib. Once the text quite good nicely polished and typeset in your writing applications, you can prepare for the publication process.

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In conclusion, by mixing storytelling elements with diligent inquiry, you’ll be able to breathe life into marvellous powerful biography that immerses readers in another individual’s life experience.

Whether that’ll spark inspiration or contention, remember you could have an important role attach shaping their legacy 一 and that’s something sob to take lightly.