— , a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The linear structure is the standard for most biographies; it starts at a specific point in the protagonist's life and moves forward in chronological order. Nonlinear structure is more complex as this style moves between time periods with time skips and flashbacks. Thematic structure strategically conveys given and new information to frame and insert specific themes.
For your biography essay, your subject will be the person whose life story you will be writing. In order for your biography essay to be effective, you will have to pick a subject who is interesting, important, or otherwise qualified to be the subject of a biography essay. You should ask yourself the question: why choose your subject, and what has your subject done that deserves to be recorded and remembered?
Of course, there's a sense in which every single human life is interesting and important. But for the purposes of your biography essay, you will want to dig deeper and consider why your subject is worthy of being remembered in the collective cultural memory.
An effective biography usually focuses on someone who has affected history, or someone who has achieved a high level of excellence within his/her discipline or field.
Søren Kierkegaard: A very important philosopher
Kierkegaard would be an example a good subject for a biography essay, because his works are generally considered a turning point in modern philosophy.
The subject of your biography essay does not necessarily need to be well-known. In fact, it can be a lot of fun to dig into the life of someone is not well known but should be. The important thing is that your subject must be compelling, and there must be a solid reason why his/her story should be told.
Also, when picking a subject, you may want to make sure that you actually like your subject. That can make writing a biography essay more fun, and your respect for the subject (or lack thereof) will also probably come across in your writing. If you want to convince others that your subject is compelling, then it would help if you find him/her compelling.
A lot can happen in a life, and it would probably be impossible for you to include everything there is to know about your subject within a single biography essay. So, you should choose the high point, or the most important points, and then focus on those.
Events in the life of Kierkegaard
These are key events that could be the focus of a biography essay on Kierkegaard.
Event | Rationale | |
Kierkegaard is born on the 5th of May, 1813. | Logical starting point for the biography essay. | |
Kierkegaard breaks his engagement with a girl named Regine Olsen on the 11th of August, 1841. | This is considered to be a turning point in his life and a major catalyst behind several of his works. | |
affair | Kierkegaard gets into a bitter public dispute with a tabloid called the . | This renewed his creativity in the later part of his life. |
Kierkegaard dies on the 11th of November, 1855. | Logical ending point for the biography essay. |
Garff, Joakim. Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography. Princeton: Princeton U P, 2007.
Now that you know about the elements of a biography essay, you can follow these steps in order to ensure that your biography essay turns out to be a success.
Next, integrate the specific biography related aspects listed below.
Again, your biography essay won't be able to include everything there is to know about your subject. So, you will want to map out the scope of your biography essay before you get started. The birth and death of your subject are the logical starting and ending points for your essay. Then, you will want to select a few events or accomplishments in the life of your subject that are worthy of remembrance.
You can develop a full-fledged outline, or you can use a table like the one developed above. Either way, though, you will have to have a clear idea of where you will begin, where you will end, and the path that you will take from the beginning to the end.
Your biography essay has to be rooted in verifiable facts about the life of your subject. This means that it is important that you identify and document the sources of your information. The essay sources should generally be scholarly in nature, and you should avoid using websites to the greatest extent possible. This is because it is often difficult to tell whether the content on websites have been drawn from credible sources.
Questions to ask when compiling sources
If there are references listed on a website about your subject, then you should trace those references back to the original academic sources. Those are the sources you should use for your biography essay.
Remember: with your biography essay, you are at least partly trying to show your reader why your subject is interesting and why he/she deserves to have an essay written about him/her.
Your interest in your subject should come across in your writing style. After all, if you feel bored with your subject, then why should anyone else pay attention?
The language you use should be scholarly (but still filled with imagery ), but you should also focus on varying sentence structure, using excellent word choice, and other writing techniques that tell the life story of your subject in a compelling way that does justice to the importance of your subject.
See the example biographical essay below for a clear example of how it needs to be written.
As the sample shows, it’s very important to be focused on true details. Please see the list of blog posts below for more examples of biography essays:
If you need more help or would like something written for your own needs, consider buying custom essays from Ultius . Our talented writes can help you get something done in as fast as three hours.
That brings us to the close of this guide on the biography essay. Here is a recapitulation of some of the best practices that have been covered here.
Develop a focused arc
You should use a linear narrative structure, starting with the birth of your subject, ending with their death, and focusing on selected key events and accomplishments in the subject's life.
Write in the scholarly mode
Although a biography essay is a kind of "story," it should still be written in a rational, scholarly way, and referencing in MLA or Chicago style is usually required for this kind of essay.
Love your subject
If you get to choose your subject, then you should pick a subject that you personally admire. This will make the writing process more fun, and your interest will also show in your writing and make the biography essay more enjoyable for the reader.
Find help if you need it
Finally, Ultius has plenty of resources that can help you write a successful biography essay and hone your skills as a writer. Please feel free to lean on us.
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Biographies are big business. Whether in book form or Hollywood biopics, the lives of the famous and sometimes not-so-famous fascinate us.
While it’s true that most biographies are about people who are in the public eye, sometimes the subject is less well-known. Primarily, though, famous or not, the person who is written about has led an incredible life.
In this article, we will explain biography writing in detail for teachers and students so they can create their own.
While your students will most likely have a basic understanding of a biography, it’s worth taking a little time before they put pen to paper to tease out a crystal-clear definition of one.
A biography is an account of someone’s life written by someone else . While there is a genre known as a fictional biography, for the most part, biographies are, by definition, nonfiction.
Generally speaking, biographies provide an account of the subject’s life from the earliest days of childhood to the present day or, if the subject is deceased, their death.
The job of a biography is more than just to outline the bare facts of a person’s life.
Rather than just listing the basic details of their upbringing, hobbies, education, work, relationships, and death, a well-written biography should also paint a picture of the subject’s personality and experience of life.
Teaching unit.
Teach your students everything they need to know about writing an AUTOBIOGRAPHY and a BIOGRAPHY.
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Before students begin writing a biography, they’ll need to have a firm grasp of the main features of a Biography. An excellent way to determine how well they understand these essential elements is to ask them to compile a checklist like the one-blow
Their checklists should contain the items below at a minimum. Be sure to help them fill in any gaps before moving on to the writing process.
Biography structure.
ORIENTATION (BEGINNING) Open your biography with a strong hook to grab the reader’s attention
SEQUENCING: In most cases, biographies are written in chronological order unless you are a very competent writer consciously trying to break from this trend.
COVER: childhood, upbringing, education, influences, accomplishments, relationships, etc. – everything that helps the reader to understand the person.
CONCLUSION: Wrap your biography up with some details about what the subject is doing now if they are still alive. If they have passed away, make mention of what impact they have made and what their legacy is or will be.
LANGUAGE Use descriptive and figurative language that will paint images inside your audience’s minds as they read. Use time connectives to link events.
PERSPECTIVE Biographies are written from the third person’s perspective.
DETAILS: Give specific details about people, places, events, times, dates, etc. Reflect on how events shaped the subject. You might want to include some relevant photographs with captions. A timeline may also be of use depending upon your subject and what you are trying to convey to your audience.
TENSE Written in the past tense (though ending may shift to the present/future tense)
Like any form of writing, you will find it simple if you have a plan and follow it through. These steps will ensure you cover the essential bases of writing a biography essay.
Firstly, select a subject that inspires you. Someone whose life story resonates with you and whose contribution to society intrigues you. The next step is to conduct thorough research. Engage in extensive reading, explore various sources, watch documentaries, and glean all available information to provide a comprehensive account of the person’s life.
Creating an outline is essential to organize your thoughts and information. The outline should include the person’s early life, education, career, achievements, and any other significant events or contributions. It serves as a map for the writing process, ensuring that all vital information is included.
Your biography should have an engaging introduction that captivates the reader’s attention and provides background information on the person you’re writing about. It should include a thesis statement summarising the biography’s main points.
Writing a biography in chronological order is crucial . You should begin with the person’s early life and move through their career and achievements. This approach clarifies how the person’s life unfolded and how they accomplished their goals.
A biography should be written in a narrative style , capturing the essence of the person’s life through vivid descriptions, anecdotes, and quotes. Avoid dry, factual writing and focus on creating a compelling narrative that engages the reader.
Adding personal insights and opinions can enhance the biography’s overall impact, providing a unique perspective on the person’s achievements, legacy, and impact on society.
Editing and proofreading are vital elements of the writing process. Thoroughly reviewing your biography ensures that the writing is clear, concise, and error-free. You can even request feedback from someone else to ensure that it is engaging and well-written.
Finally, including a bibliography at the end of your biography is essential. It gives credit to the sources that were used during research, such as books, articles, interviews, and websites.
Biography writing tip #1: choose your subject wisely.
There are several points for students to reflect on when deciding on a subject for their biography. Let’s take a look at the most essential points to consider when deciding on the subject for a biography:
Interest: To produce a biography will require sustained writing from the student. That’s why students must choose their subject well. After all, a biography is an account of someone’s entire life to date. Students must ensure they choose a subject that will sustain their interest throughout the research, writing, and editing processes.
Merit: Closely related to the previous point, students must consider whether the subject merits the reader’s interest. Aside from pure labors of love, writing should be undertaken with the reader in mind. While producing a biography demands sustained writing from the author, it also demands sustained reading from the reader.
Therefore, students should ask themselves if their chosen subject has had a life worthy of the reader’s interest and the time they’d need to invest in reading their biography.
Information: Is there enough information available on the subject to fuel the writing of an entire biography? While it might be a tempting idea to write about a great-great-grandfather’s experience in the war. There would be enough interest there to sustain the author’s and the reader’s interest, but do you have enough access to information about their early childhood to do the subject justice in the form of a biography?
While the chances are good that the student already knows quite a bit about the subject they’ve chosen. Chances are 100% that they’ll still need to undertake considerable research to write their biography.
As with many types of writing , research is an essential part of the planning process that shouldn’t be overlooked. If students wish to give as complete an account of their subject’s life as possible, they’ll need to put in the time at the research stage.
An effective way to approach the research process is to:
1. Compile a chronological timeline of the central facts, dates, and events of the subject’s life
2. Compile detailed descriptions of the following personal traits:
3. Compile some research questions based on different topics to provide a focus for the research:
As the student gets deeper into their research, new questions will arise that can further fuel the research process and help to shape the direction the biography will ultimately go in.
Likewise, during the research, themes will often begin to suggest themselves. Exploring these themes is essential to bring depth to biography, but we’ll discuss this later in this article.
Researching for biography writing is an excellent way for students to hone their research skills in general. Developing good research skills is essential for future academic success. Students will have opportunities to learn how to:
Students will have access to print and online information sources, and, in some cases, they may also have access to people who knew or know the subject (e.g. biography of a family member).
These days, much of the research will likely take place online. It’s crucial, therefore, to provide your students with guidance on how to use the internet safely and evaluate online sources for reliability. This is the era of ‘ fake news ’ and misinformation after all!
Teach your students ESSENTIAL SKILLS OF THE INFORMATION ERA to become expert DIGITAL RESEARCHERS.
⭐How to correctly ask questions to search engines on all devices.
⭐ How to filter and refine your results to find exactly what you want every time.
⭐ Essential Research and critical thinking skills for students.
⭐ Plagiarism, Citing and acknowledging other people’s work.
⭐ How to query, synthesize and record your findings logically.
Though predominantly a nonfiction genre, the story still plays a significant role in good biography writing. The skills of characterization and plot structuring are transferable here. And, just like in fiction, exploring themes in a biographical work helps connect the personal to the universal. Of course, these shouldn’t be forced; this will make the work seem contrived, and the reader may lose faith in the truthfulness of the account. A biographer needs to gain and maintain the trust of the reader.
Fortunately, themes shouldn’t need to be forced. A life well-lived is full of meaning, and the themes the student writer is looking for will emerge effortlessly from the actions and events of the subject’s life. It’s just a case of learning how to spot them.
One way to identify the themes in a life is to look for recurring events or situations in a person’s life. These should be apparent from the research completed previously. The students should seek to identify these patterns that emerge in the subject’s life. For example, perhaps they’ve had to overcome various obstacles throughout different periods of their life. In that case, the theme of overcoming adversity is present and has been identified.
Usually, a biography has several themes running throughout, so be sure your students work to identify more than one theme in their subject’s life.
While the defining feature of a biography is that it gives an account of a person’s life, students must understand that this is not all a biography does. Relating the facts and details of a subject’s life is not enough. The student biographer should not be afraid to share their thoughts and feelings with the reader throughout their account of their subject’s life.
The student can weave some of their personality into the fabric of the text by providing commentary and opinion as they relate the events of the person’s life and the wider social context at the time. Unlike the detached and objective approach we’d expect to find in a history textbook, in a biography, student-writers should communicate their enthusiasm for their subject in their writing.
This makes for a more intimate experience for the reader, as they get a sense of getting to know the author and the subject they are writing about.
“The Rock ‘n’ Roll King: Elvis Presley”
Elvis Aaron Presley, born on January 8, 1935, was an amazing singer and actor known as the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Even though he’s been dead for nearly 50 years, I can’t help but be fascinated by his incredible life!
Elvis grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi, in a tiny house with his parents and twin brother. His family didn’t have much money, but they shared a love for music. Little did they know Elvis would become a music legend!
When he was only 11 years old, Elvis got his first guitar. He taught himself to play and loved singing gospel songs. As he got older, he started combining different music styles like country, blues, and gospel to create a whole new sound – that’s Rock ‘n’ Roll!
In 1954, at the age of 19, Elvis recorded his first song, “That’s All Right.” People couldn’t believe how unique and exciting his music was. His famous hip-swinging dance moves also made him a sensation!
Elvis didn’t just rock the music scene; he also starred in movies like “Love Me Tender” and “Jailhouse Rock.” But fame came with challenges. Despite facing ups and downs, Elvis kept spreading happiness through his music.
Tragically, Elvis passed away in 1977, but his music and charisma live on. Even today, people worldwide still enjoy his songs like “Hound Dog” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Elvis Presley’s legacy as the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll will live forever.
Long Live the King: I wish I’d seen him.
Elvis Presley, the Rock ‘n’ Roll legend born on January 8, 1935, is a captivating figure that even a modern-day teen like me can’t help but admire. As I delve into his life, I wish I could have experienced the magic of his live performances.
Growing up in Tupelo, Mississippi, Elvis faced challenges but found solace in music. At 11, he got his first guitar, a symbol of his journey into the world of sound. His fusion of gospel, country, and blues into Rock ‘n’ Roll became a cultural phenomenon.
The thought of being in the audience during his early performances, especially when he recorded “That’s All Right” at 19, sends shivers down my spine. Imagining the crowd’s uproar and feeling the revolutionary energy of that moment is a dream I wish I could have lived.
Elvis wasn’t just a musical prodigy; he was a dynamic performer. His dance moves, the embodiment of rebellion, and his roles in films like “Love Me Tender” and “Jailhouse Rock” made him a true icon.
After watching him on YouTube, I can’t help but feel a little sad that I’ll never witness the King’s live performances. The idea of swaying to “Hound Dog” or being enchanted by “Can’t Help Falling in Love” in person is a missed opportunity. Elvis may have left us in 1977, but he was the king of rock n’ roll. Long live the King!
Elvis Presley: A Teen’s Take on the Rock ‘n’ Roll Icon”
Elvis Presley, born January 8, 1935, was a revolutionary force in the music world, earning his title as the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Exploring his life, even as a 16-year-old today, I’m captivated by the impact he made.
Hailing from Tupelo, Mississippi, Elvis grew up in humble beginnings, surrounded by the love of his parents and twin brother. It’s inspiring to think that, despite financial challenges, this young man would redefine the music scene.
At 11, Elvis got his first guitar, sparking a self-taught journey into music. His early gospel influences evolved into a unique fusion of country, blues, and gospel, creating the electrifying genre of Rock ‘n’ Roll. In 1954, at only 19, he recorded “That’s All Right,” marking the birth of a musical legend.
Elvis wasn’t just a musical innovator; he was a cultural phenomenon. His rebellious dance moves and magnetic stage presence challenged the norms. He transitioned seamlessly into acting, starring in iconic films like “Love Me Tender” and “Jailhouse Rock.”
However, fame came at a cost, and Elvis faced personal struggles. Despite the challenges, his music continued to resonate. Even now, classics like “Hound Dog” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love” transcend generations.
Elvis Presley’s impact on music and culture is undeniable. He was known for his unique voice, charismatic persona, and electrifying performances. He sold over one billion records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling solo artists in history. He received numerous awards throughout his career, including three Grammy Awards and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Elvis’s influence can still be seen in today’s music. Many contemporary artists, such as Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, and Justin Timberlake, have cited Elvis as an inspiration. His music continues to be featured in movies, TV shows, and commercials.
Elvis left us in 1977, but his legacy lives on. I appreciate his breaking barriers and fearlessly embracing his artistic vision. Elvis Presley’s impact on music and culture is timeless, a testament to the enduring power of his artistry. His music has inspired generations and will continue to do so for many years to come.
Use our resources and tools to improve your student’s writing skills through proven teaching strategies.
We have compiled a sequence of biography-related lessons or teaching ideas that you can follow as you please. They are straightforward enough for most students to follow without further instruction.
This session aims to give students a broader understanding of what makes a good biography.
Once your students have compiled a comprehensive checklist of the main features of a biography, allow them to use it to assess some biographies from your school library or on the internet using the feature checklist.
When students have assessed a selection of biographies, take some time as a class to discuss them. You can base the discussion around the following prompts:
Looking at how other writers have interpreted the form will help students internalize the necessary criteria before attempting to produce a biography. Once students have a clear understanding of the main features of the biography, they’re ready to begin work on writing a biography.
When the time does come to put pen to paper, be sure they’re armed with the following top tips to help ensure they’re as well prepared as possible.
This session aims to guide students through the process of selecting the perfect biography subject.
Instruct students to draw up a shortlist of three potential subjects for the biography they’ll write.
Using the three criteria mentioned in the writing guide (Interest, Merit, and Information), students award each potential subject a mark out of 5 for each of the criteria. In this manner, students can select the most suitable subject for their biography.
This session aims to get students into the researching phase, then prioritise and organise events chronologically.
Students begin by making a timeline of their subject’s life, starting with their birth and ending with their death or the present day. If the student has yet to make a final decision on the subject of their biography, a family member will often serve well for this exercise as a practice exercise.
Students should research and gather the key events of the person’s life, covering each period of their life from when they were a baby, through childhood and adolescence, right up to adulthood and old age. They should then organize these onto a timeline. Students can include photographs with captions if they have them.
They can present these to the class when they have finished their timelines.
Instruct students to look over their timeline, notes, and other research. Challenge them to identify three patterns that repeat throughout the subject’s life and sort all the related events and incidents into specific categories.
Students should then label each category with a single word. This is the thematic concept or the broad general underlying idea. After that, students should write a sentence or two expressing what the subject’s life ‘says’ about that concept.
This is known as the thematic statement . With the thematic concepts and thematic statements identified, the student now has some substantial ideas to explore that will help bring more profound meaning and wider resonance to their biography.
Instruct students to write a short objective account of an event in their own life. They can write about anyone from their past. It needn’t be more than a couple of paragraphs, but the writing should be strictly factual, focusing only on the objective details of what happened.
Once they have completed this, it’s time to rewrite the paragraph, but they should include some opinion and personal commentary this time.
The student here aims to inject some color and personality into their writing, to transform a detached, factual account into a warm, engaging story.
Teach your students to write AMAZING BIOGRAPHIES & AUTOBIOGRAPHIES using proven RESEARCH SKILLS and WRITING STRATEGIES .
Use this valuable tool in the research and writing phases to keep your students on track and engaged.
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To Conclude
By this stage, your students should have an excellent technical overview of a biography’s essential elements.
They should be able to choose their subject in light of how interesting and worthy they are, as well as give consideration to the availability of information out there. They should be able to research effectively and identify emerging themes in their research notes. And finally, they should be able to bring some of their personality and uniqueness into their retelling of the life of another.
Remember that writing a biography is not only a great way to develop a student’s writing skills; it can be used in almost all curriculum areas. For example, to find out more about a historical figure in History, to investigate scientific contributions to Science, or to celebrate a hero from everyday life.
Biography is an excellent genre for students to develop their writing skills and to find inspiration in the lives of others in the world around them.
Discover effective tips on how to start a biography essay, from choosing your subject to crafting an engaging introduction.
Writing a biography essay can be a fascinating journey through someone else's life. Whether you're exploring the life of a historical figure, a famous personality, or someone close to you, crafting a compelling biography essay requires a strategic approach. In this article, we'll dive into the nuts and bolts of how to start a biography essay, providing you with a step-by-step guide, FAQs, and essential tips to make your essay stand out.
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A biography essay is a detailed description of a person's life. It goes beyond the basic facts such as education, work, relationships, and death, but also delves into the person's experiences, contributions, and significant events that shaped their life. Writing a biography essay involves both research and narrative skills, making it an engaging project for many writers.
Writing a biography essay allows you to explore and share the life of someone you admire or find interesting. It helps in understanding the complexities of their life and the impact they had on the world. Moreover, it hones your research and writing skills, making you a better writer overall.
Starting a biography essay can be the most challenging part. Here are the key steps to help you kickstart your biography essay:
Selecting the right person to write about is crucial. Your subject should be someone whose life story is compelling and has enough available information for you to research. This could be a historical figure, a public personality, or someone who has significantly influenced your life.
Gather comprehensive information about your subject. Use a variety of sources, such as books, articles, interviews, and credible online sources. Ensure you have accurate and detailed information about their early life, major achievements, personal struggles, and contributions.
Your opening sentence should grab the reader's attention. A compelling hook could be a surprising fact, a powerful quote, or an interesting anecdote about the person.
Example: "From a penniless immigrant to a media mogul, Andrew Carnegie's journey is a quintessential rags-to-riches story."
After the hook, provide some background information about the person. Mention who they are, their significance, and why they are worth writing about.
Example: "Andrew Carnegie, known as one of the greatest industrialists of the 19th century, played a pivotal role in the expansion of the American steel industry."
Let the reader know what to expect in the essay. Will it focus on the person's achievements, their personal life, or a combination of both? Outline the main points you will cover.
Example: "This essay will explore Carnegie's journey from his humble beginnings, through his rise to wealth, to his philanthropic legacy."
Ensure a smooth transition from the introduction to the main body of the essay. End the introduction with a sentence that sets up the first major point you will discuss.
Example: "Understanding Carnegie's early life is essential to appreciating the drive and determination that fueled his success."
A well-structured essay is easier to follow and more engaging for the reader. Here’s a simple structure you can follow:
1. use vivid details.
Bring your subject's story to life by using vivid details and descriptions. This helps the reader visualize the events and connect with the person on a deeper level.
Ensure your essay flows smoothly from one point to the next. Use transitional phrases and sentences to guide the reader through the story.
While it's important to highlight the person's achievements, don't shy away from discussing their flaws or controversies. A balanced portrayal makes your essay more credible and engaging.
Using direct quotes and anecdotes can add authenticity and depth to your essay. Make sure to attribute the quotes correctly.
After completing your first draft, take the time to revise and edit your essay. Look for any inconsistencies, grammatical errors, or areas that need more detail.
Q1: how do i choose a subject for my biography essay.
A: Choose someone whose life story interests you and has enough available information for research. It could be a historical figure, a celebrity, or someone who has significantly impacted your life.
A: Use a mix of primary and secondary sources. Books, scholarly articles, interviews, and credible online sources are all valuable.
A: Start with a hook that grabs the reader's attention. This could be a surprising fact, a powerful quote, or an interesting anecdote related to your subject.
A: Your thesis statement should outline the main points you will cover in your essay. It sets the tone and gives the reader an idea of what to expect.
A: Use transitional phrases and sentences to link your paragraphs. Ensure each section logically follows the previous one.
A: Yes, including both achievements and struggles gives a balanced portrayal of your subject, making your essay more credible and engaging.
Starting a biography essay doesn't have to be intimidating. By choosing the right subject, conducting thorough research, and crafting an engaging introduction, you can set a strong foundation for your essay. Remember to use vivid details, maintain a narrative flow, and balance your portrayal of the person. With these tips and a well-structured approach, you'll be well on your way to writing a compelling biography essay that captures the essence of your subject's life.
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Blog • Perfecting your Craft
Posted on Jun 30, 2023
From time to time, nonfiction authors become so captivated by a particular figure from either the present or the past, that they feel compelled to write an entire book about their life. Whether casting them as heroes or villains, there is an interesting quality in their humanity that compels these authors to revisit their life paths and write their story.
However, portraying someone’s life on paper in a comprehensive and engaging way requires solid preparation. If you’re looking to write a biography yourself, in this post we’ll share a step-by-step blueprint that you can follow.
How to write a biography:
2. research your subject thoroughly, 3. do interviews and visit locations, 4. organize your findings, 5. identify a central thesis, 6. write it using narrative elements, 7. get feedback and polish the text.
FREE RESOURCE
Biography Outline Template
Craft a satisfying story arc for your biography with our free template.
While you technically don’t need permission to write about public figures (or deceased 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 even started to write His Way , a biography that paints Ol Blue Eyes in a controversial light. (Kelley ended up winning the lawsuit, however).
Whenever feasible, advise the subject’s representatives of your intentions. If all goes according to plan, you’ll get a green light to proceed, or potentially an offer to collaborate. It's a matter of common sense; if someone were to write a book about you, you would likely want to know about it well prior to publication. So, make a sincere effort to reach out to their PR staff to negotiate an agreement or at least a mutual understanding of the scope of your project.
At the same time, make sure that you still retain editorial control over the project, and not end up writing a puff piece that treats its protagonist like a saint or hero. No biography can ever be entirely objective, but you should always strive for a portrayal that closely aligns with facts and reality.
If you can’t get an answer from your subject, or you’re asked not to proceed forward, you can still accept the potential repercussions and write an unauthorized biography . The “rebellious act” of publishing without consent indeed makes for great marketing, though it’ll likely bring more headaches with it too.
✋ Please note that, like other nonfiction books, if you intend to release your biography with a publishing house , you can put together a book proposal to send to them before you even write the book. If they like it enough, they might pay you an advance to write it.
Book Proposal Template
Craft a professional pitch for your nonfiction book with our handy template.
Once you’ve settled (or not) the permission part, it’s time to dive deep into your character’s story.
Deep and thorough research skills are the cornerstone of every biographer worth their salt. To paint a vivid and accurate portrait of someone's life, you’ll have to gather qualitative information from a wide range of reliable sources.
Start with the information already available, from books on your subject to archival documents, then collect new ones firsthand by interviewing people or traveling to locations.
Put your researcher hat on and start consuming any piece on your subject you can find, from their Wikipedia page to news articles, interviews, TV and radio appearances, YouTube videos, podcasts, books, magazines, and any other media outlets they may have been featured in.
Establish a system to orderly collect the information you find 一 even seemingly insignificant details can prove valuable during the writing process, so be sure to save them.
Depending on their era, you may find most of the information readily available online, or you may need to search through university libraries for older references.
For his landmark biography of Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow spent untold hours at Columbia University’s library , reading through the Hamilton family papers, visiting the New York Historical Society, as well as interviewing the archivist of the New York Stock Exchange, and so on. The research process took years, but it certainly paid off. Chernow discovered that Hamilton created the first five securities originally traded on Wall Street. This finding, among others, revealed his significant contributions to shaping the current American financial and political systems, a legacy previously often overshadowed by other founding fathers. Today Alexander Hamilton is one of the best-selling biographies of all time, and it has become a cultural phenomenon with its own dedicated musical.
Besides reading documents about your subject, research can help you understand the world that your subject lived in.
Many biographies show how their protagonists have had a profound impact on society through their philosophical, artistic, or scientific contributions. But at the same time, it’s worth it as a biographer to make an effort to understand how 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 by a lack of verified detail surrounding William Shakespeare's personal life, Greenblatt, instead, employs literary interpretation and imaginative reenactments to transport readers back to the Elizabethan era. The result is a vivid (though speculative) depiction of the playwright's life, enriching our understanding of his world.
Many readers enjoy biographies that transport them to a time and place, so exploring a historical period through the lens of a character can be entertaining in its own right. The Diary of Samuel Pepys became a classic not because people were enthralled by his life as an administrator, but rather from his meticulous and vivid documentation of everyday existence during the Restoration period.
Once you’ve gotten your hands on as many secondary sources as you can find, you’ll want to go hunting for stories first-hand from people who are (or were) close to your subject.
With all the material you’ve been through, by now you should already have a pretty good picture of your protagonist. But you’ll surely have some curiosities and missing dots in their character development to figure out, which you can only get by interviewing primary sources.
This part is more relevant if your subject is contemporary, and you can actually meet up or call with relatives, friends, colleagues, business partners, neighbors, or any other person related to them.
In writing the popular biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson interviewed more than one hundred people, including Jobs’s family, colleagues, former college mates, business rivals, and the man himself.
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When you conduct your interviews, make sure to record them with high quality audio you can revisit later. Then use tools like Otter.ai or Descript to transcribe them 一 it’ll save you countless hours.
You can approach the interview with a specific set of questions, or follow your curiosity blindly, trying to uncover revealing stories and anecdotes about your subject. Whatever your method, author and biography editor Tom Bromley suggests that every 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 also places emphasis on the order in which you conduct interviews. “You may want to interview different members of the family or friends first, to get their perspective on something, and then go directly to the main interviewee. You'll be able to use that knowledge to ask sharper, more specific questions.”
Finally, consider how much time you have with each interviewee. If you only have a 30-minute phone call with an important person, make it count by asking directly the most pressing questions you have. And, if you find a reliable source who is also particularly willing to help, conduct several interviews and ask them, if appropriate, to write a foreword as part of the book’s front matter .
Sometimes an important part of the process is packing your bags, getting on a plane, and personally visiting significant places in your character’s journey.
A place, whether that’s a city, a rural house, or a bodhi tree, can carry a particular energy that you can only truly experience by being there. In putting the pieces together about someone’s life, it may be useful to go visit where they grew up, or where other significant events of their lives happened. It will be easier to imagine what they experienced, and better tell their story.
In researching The Lost City of Z , author David Grann embarked on a trek through the Amazon, retracing the steps of British explorer Percy Fawcett. This led Grann to develop new theories about the circumstances surrounding the explorer's disappearance.
Hopefully, you won’t have to deal with jaguars and anacondas to better understand your subject’s environment, but try to walk into their shoes as much as possible.
Once you’ve researched your character enough, it’s time to put together all the puzzle pieces you collected so far.
Take the bulk of notes, media, and other documents you’ve collected, and start to give them some order and structure. A simple way to do this is by creating a timeline.
It helps to organize your notes chronologically 一 from childhood to the senior years, line up the most significant events of your subject’s life, including dates, places, names and other relevant bits.
You should be able to divide their life into distinct periods, each with their unique events and significance. Based on that, you can start drafting an outline of the narrative you want to create.
Since a biography entails writing about a person’s entire life, it will have a beginning, a middle, and an end. You can pick where you want to end the story, depending on how consequential the last years of your subject were. But the nature of the work will give you a starting character arc to work with.
To outline the story then, you could turn to the popular Three-Act Structure , which divides the narrative in three main parts. In a nutshell, you’ll want to make sure to have the following:
Only one question remains before you begin writing: what will be the main focus of your biography?
Think about why you’re so drawn to your subject to dedicate years of your life to recounting their own. What aspect of their life do you want to highlight? Is it their evil nature, artistic genius, or visionary mindset? And what evidence have you got to back that up? Find a central thesis or focus to weave as the main thread throughout your narrative.
If you don’t have a particular theme to explore, finding a distinct angle on your subject’s story can also help you distinguish your work from other biographies or existing works on the same subject.
Plenty of biographies have been published about The Beatles 一 many of which have different focuses and approaches:
Finally, consider that biographies are often more than recounting the life of a person. Similar to how Dickens’ Great Expectations is not solely about a boy named Pip (but an examination and critique of Britain’s fickle, unforgiving class system), a biography should strive to illuminate a broader truth — be it social, political, or human — beyond the immediate subject of the book.
Once you’ve identified your main focus or angle, it’s time to write a great story.
While biographies are often highly informative, they do not have to be dry and purely expository in nature . You can play with storytelling elements to make it an engaging read.
You could do that by thoroughly detailing the setting of the story , depicting the people involved in the story as fully-fledged characters , or using rising action and building to a climax when describing a particularly significant milestone of the subject’s life.
One common way to make a biography interesting to read is starting on a strong foot…
Just because you're honoring your character's whole life doesn't mean you have to begin when they said their first word. Starting from the middle or end of their life can be more captivating as it introduces conflicts and stakes that shaped their journey.
When he wrote about Christopher McCandless in Into the Wild , author Jon Krakauer didn’t open his subject’s childhood and abusive family environment. Instead, the book begins with McCandless hitchhiking his way into the wilderness, and subsequently being discovered dead in an abandoned bus. By starting in the middle of the action in medias res, Krakauer hooks the reader’s interest, before tracing back the causes and motivations that led McCandless to die alone in that bus in the first place.
You can bend the timeline to improve the reader’s reading experience throughout the rest of the story too…
While biographies tend to follow a chronological narrative, you can use flashbacks to tell brief stories or anecdotes when appropriate. For example, if you were telling the story of footballer Lionel Messi, before the climax of winning the World Cup with Argentina, you could recall when he was just 13 years old, giving an interview to a local newspaper, expressing his lifelong dream of playing for the national team.
Used sparsely and intentionally, flashbacks can add more context to the story and keep the narrative interesting. Just like including dialogue does…
Recreating conversations that your subject had with people around them is another effective way to color the story. Dialogue helps the reader imagine the story like a movie, providing a deeper sensory experience.
One thing is trying to articulate the root of Steve Jobs’ obsession with product design, another would be to quote his father , teaching him how to build a fence when he was young: “You've got to make the back of the fence just as good looking as the front of the fence. Even though nobody will see it, you will know. And that will show that you're dedicated to making something perfect.”
Unlike memoirs and autobiographies, in which the author tells the story from their personal viewpoint and enjoys greater freedom to recall conversations, biographies require a commitment to facts. So, when recreating dialogue, try to quote directly from reliable sources like personal diaries, emails, and text messages. You could also use your interview scripts as an alternative to dialogue. As Tom Bromley suggests, “If you talk with a good amount of people, you can try to tell the story from their perspective, interweaving different segments and quoting the interviewees directly.”
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These are just some of the story elements you can use to make your biography more compelling. Once you’ve finished your manuscript, it’s a good idea to ask for feedback.
If you’re going to publish your own biography, you’ll have to polish it to professional standards. After leaving your work to rest for a while, look at it with fresh eyes and edit your own manuscript eliminating passive voice, filler words, and redundant adverbs.
Then, have a professional editor give you a general assessment. They’ll look at the structure and shape of your manuscript and tell you which parts need to be expanded on or cut. As someone who edited and commissioned several biographies, Tom Bromley points out that a professional “will look at the sources used and assess whether they back up the points made, or if more are needed. They would also look for context, and whether or not more background information is needed for the reader to understand the story fully. And they might check your facts, too.”
In addition to structural editing, you may want to have someone copy-edit and proofread your work.
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Importantly, make sure to include a bibliography with a list of all the interviews, documents, and sources used in the writing process. You’ll have to compile it according to a manual of style, but you can easily create one by using tools like EasyBib . Once the text is nicely polished and typeset in your writing applications , you can prepare for the publication process.
In conclusion, by mixing storytelling elements with diligent research, you’ll be able to breathe life into a powerful biography that immerses readers in another individual’s life experience. Whether that’ll spark inspiration or controversy, remember you could have an important role in shaping their legacy 一 and that’s something not to take lightly.
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A biography essay is an essay that focuses on the life of a person. The person is usually famous – a politician, an entrepreneur, an inventor, an author, an artist, or a historical figure.
When you are asked to write a biography essay on a person, your work is to research and detail the key facts about the person. Anyone can write a biographical essay if they plan adequately and know what falls where. If you take a history, cultural studies, leadership, English, hospitality, and science-based course, you are guaranteed to write at least one biography essay.
Since biography essays are usually written on famous personalities, you should always focus your essay on that person’s achievements. Besides, ensure that you reveal the contributions of that person to the world. Doing this in an organized manner will make your essay interesting and increase your chances of getting a good grade.
This post reveals everything important you need to know about writing biography essays.
By definition, a biography essay is an essay on the life of a famous personality written by another person other than the subject . Therefore, when you are asked to write a biography of a person, you are supposed to focus on their life, challenges, philosophies, principles, and achievements.
For example, suppose you are asked to write a biography essay on Barrack Obama. In that case, your essay should focus on the political journey of Obama to the presidency, the achievements of his administration, and his legacy.
It is important to do thorough research when you are asked to write a biography essay on someone. This should be the case even when you know a lot about that person. The research will help you to uncover important facts and dates. Proper research will also give you reliable information and credible sources to use.
A biography is usually not a long paper. It can be a 1000-words essay or 500 words essay . The professors and instructors prefer shorter biography essays because it eases their burden when marking. The least word count for a biography essay is 250 words.
The purpose of a biography essay is to enable the reader to fully understand the person who is the subject of the essay and the contributions they have made. So, when you are asked to write a biography essay, your task will be to make sure that the essay focuses on the person and their key achievements.
The subjects of biography essays are almost always famous personalities. This makes them somewhat easy to write because there is usually plenty of online information on famous people. However, while there is plenty of information, your goal during research is to uncover credible details on the subject of your essay.
If you do this well and increase the reader’s understanding of the subject of your essay, you will have achieved the purpose/objective of writing a biography essay.
Although a biographical essay tells a story, it differs from narrative essays, autobiography essays, profile essays, and narrative essays.
A biographic essay is usually formal, meaning it should use an objective tone and language. A biography writer tells a story about someone else other than themselves. It should be a true story based on scholarly references and sources.
Let us compare the four types of essays head-to-head.
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|
|
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| It tells the life story of another person. It can be written about anyone and by anyone. | It entails writing about the author’s life story. It is written by the person featured in the text. | Describes a person, a place, or an event | Provides info about a central point |
| 5-paragraph essay | 5-paragraph essay | 5-paragraph essay | 5-paragraph essay |
| Usually required | Not required | Usually required | Required |
| 3 person | 1 person | 3 person | 3 person |
If you are assigned to write a biographical essay or biography essay, follow the steps below.
The first step you need to take to write a good biography essay is to read the instructions twice or thrice. When reading the instructions, try to really understand them. The purpose of reading the instructions several times is to make sure you truly understand them.
If the instructions require you to choose a subject , you should choose a subject you will be excited to write about or one that inspires you. Doing this will make it more exciting for you to research and write your essay.
After reading the instructions and choosing a subject, you should conduct thorough research. Since biography essays are usually written on famous persons, you should be able to find plenty of information on them online. Try to spend about 30 minutes online to find out everything you need to know about the subject.
Every time you come across important facts, events, names, or dates related to your subject, you should note them down. You should also note the strong opinions others have on your subject when you come across them. Make sure you only take information or details from credible or reliable sources. And when you take information, make sure you also note down your sources.
Thorough research will give you a clearer picture of the subject of your essay.
Upon conducting thorough research, you should create a proper outline. Your outline should have five paragraphs – an introduction paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Of course, if your professor wants a shorter or longer essay, you should follow their instruction.
When creating an outline at this stage, simply create something straightforward. A well-organized outline will help you to write a logical and flowing essay. In addition, it will make your essay easy to read and increase your likelihood of getting a high grade.
As you write the outline, remember to formulate a catchy title for your biographical essay.
After creating a detailed but straightforward outline, the next thing you need to do is to start writing. First, start writing your essay by expanding the introduction part of your outline .
The introduction should start with a quote about or by your subject. You can also use an interesting fact about the subject, as long as you grab the attention of your audience . It could also start with an interesting fact about the subject.
Write the quote or fact, and then provide a general introduction about the subject of your essay. Do not forget to make sure your introduction has a nice sentence-to-sentence flow. Use transition words and phrases to enhance flow where necessary.
You can also signpost ideas in your introduction paragraph so that your readers are not caught unawares with your written content.
After writing your introduction, the last sentence in your introduction should be your thesis statement. If you have already created a good outline, it will certainly have a thesis.
Transfer the thesis you created to your essay. Refine the thesis statement if you need to, at this stage, to make it better or more accommodative of what you want to write.
You should share all the information you gathered in your research in the body paragraphs. Then, of course, you should write your body paragraphs by expanding the body paragraph points you outlined in your outline.
If you created a good outline, each body paragraph will focus on one argument or point. Of course, the point will be in support of the thesis statement. All your body paragraphs should have enough evidence, proof, examples, or details.
Remember to adhere to the paragraphing rules in academic writing so that you leave the professor or markers with no option other than awarding your biography essay top marks.
The conclusion paragraph is the last paragraph in a biography essay. Your conclusion paragraph should summarize the main points in your body paragraphs. It should not include any new details or information about your subject.
After summarizing your main points, you should end your essay with a closing statement. The statement should either focus on the biggest achievement or the legacy of the subject of your essay.
After writing your closing statement, you should go through it and try to make it better. Your purpose should be to make sure that you have offered a detailed account of the life and the achievements of your subject. Make sure you offer as many details as possible so that no reader can dismiss your essay as a superficial account of the subject’s life story.
This is the last step when writing a biography essay. At this stage, you are done writing. All you need to do is to proofread and edit your essay. So, go through your essay slowly to discover and edit all types of typing and grammar mistakes. Correct every error you see.
In case you notice any sentence that is complex or difficult to understand, you should also correct it. Correct it and make it simple or easy to understand. After proofreading and editing your essay, you should give it to a friend or relative to read it with a fresh pair of eyes. They could help identify the errors or mistakes you may have missed. Alternatively, you could use an online grammar checker to find the errors or mistakes you have missed.
After eliminating all mistakes and errors, you will be good to go. Simply submit your essay and wait for the results.
A good biography essay has three key elements – a singular subject, life events, and a linear narrative arc. Your biography essay should certainly have a singular subject, and the subject should be worth talking about or discussing. Choosing a boring subject or someone without any meaningful achievements will make your essay boring and unreadable.
Your biography essay should focus on the key life events in the subject’s life story. A good biography essay focuses on the key life events of a person. If you are a good researcher, you will find plenty of information about your subject. If you do so, you should narrow down the information or the details to the key life events. Your professor does not need to know about every little detail related to your subject.
Lastly, your biography essay needs a linear narrative arc. In other words, you should present the life story of the subject logically and linearly; start the story from birth to death.
Biography essays are usually five paragraphs long. They can have more paragraphs if you are writing an entire book or a detailed extended essay or research paper. In this section, we will present to you the biography essay outline/structure. The information you get in this section should help you quickly create a good essay outline on any biography essay subject.
I. introduction paragraph.
II. Body paragraph 1
III. Body paragraph 2
IV. Body paragraph 3
V. Conclusion
Using this essay outline template, you can create an outline for your biography essay. And when you do everything instructed in the template above, your outline will be detailed and straightforward. You will find it very easy to write your biography essay.
A Biography of Tristan Thompson – a Fitness Trainer
Tristan Thompson has been one of the leading fitness trainers in the city of Los Angeles over the last decade. He has been training clients from all walks of life, including entrepreneurs, millionaires, ordinary workers, housewives, students, and so on. Tristan has, over the years, risen to become one of the most sought-after fitness trainers in California because of the fact that his training programs have consistently yielded positive results.
Tristan was born in 1989 in San Diego, California. It always seemed as if Tristan was destined for greater things from his birth. Both his parents are renowned personal trainers. His parents have operated the Silver Gym chain of fitness centers for over twenty years. Tristan joined them in the gym business when he turned fifteen. By age 17, Tristan was already participating in fitness competitions. Again, he seemed destined for greater things.
Just a few weeks after he turned 27 years old, Tristan was thrust to the helm of the Silver Gym business after the unfortunate passing of his parents. The business initially struggled for a couple of months but soon after started recording increasingly positive results. Through his hitherto unknown business acumen, Tristan grew his inheritance into one of the leading gym businesses in Southern California. The business is now worth $100,000,000, and it is projected to grow even more.
In addition to growing the gym business, Tristan will perhaps best be remembered for his achievements as a personal trainer. The man’s exercises and fitness programs have continuously yielded positive results with clients from different backgrounds. Tristan has won many accolades for his effective and innovative training programs that have helped hundreds achieve their ideal physique.
Tristan Thompson’s training programs have consistently yielded positive results. His gym has grown in leaps and bounds, and his programs have continued attracting dozens of clients every year. He is undoubtedly a legend in the California fitness industry, and whatever he does is only bound to increase his legendary status.
As a student or professional, you have written many types of essays. Maybe you have not encountered a biography essay yet, or you find the process of writing a perfect one, not within your reach. You are not alone; writing a biography or a professional biography is never that easy. It is often confusing, laborious, and sometimes challenging.
We strongly believe and hope you have honed your biography writing skills thanks to our comprehensive biography essay writing guide.
This guide has covered all the vital information you need to write a good biography essay. If you are confident enough, you should go ahead and try writing one now. Otherwise, if you are not confident, you should seek assistance from one of our professional writers.
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03 July, 2020
7 minutes read
Author: Elizabeth Brown
Got a chance to write about your idol but need help with realization? Read our article to know the secrets of effective biography essay writing. Whoever you decide to write a biography essay about, don’t try to include random information at once. The person you describe would not like it. Instead, read our article about how to write a biography essay correctly and, more importantly, take pleasure in composing it. We’ll share some smart tips and tricks that you’ll find particularly useful for your writing.
Some tend to mistakenly attribute biographical essay to the process of writing about themselves. But actually, biography definition has nothing to do with you. It’s more about telling the engaging story about a person’s life. This individual can be anyone: a famous historical figure, a well-known actor, politician, dancer, musician, artist, writer, inventor – you get the point. Such task sounds intriguing and interesting, and indeed it is. A biographical essay is a great chance to dilute simple academic tasks with a pinch of new article full of interesting facts and opinions.
Before writing a biography essay, it’s important to pay attention to essay structure and build up a biography outline. An outline is generally a schematic plan that helps to organize biography essays in accordance with the writer’s preference. In this, the primary task is to create a list of the most significant facts you’ll want to develop in the essay. The easiest way of arranging an outline is to add a numbered list indicating the main points, and a list of sub-points marked with bullets. Also, don’t forget to include a biography thesis statement that’ll sum up the main idea of your essay in one sentence.
Before writing, you first need to understand what to include in a biography essay. An eloquent biography essay always starts with the introduction of a chosen person. The initial step of writing it involves the inclusion of such information as the person’s name, date of their birth, and the place they were born in. Of course, it’s not a uniform set of data necessary for this part. You can take the situation in your hands and write about some cultural or historical background surrounding one’s birthplace or the day they were born. Adding such information to the introductory part will help to create some context by connecting you and readers closer to the described character and broadening the common knowledge with more absorbing facts.
When people ask how to write a biography paper, the only thing they think of is a random flow of ideas about someone’s life. In fact, writing a biography paper is more complicated. The section following the introduction is devoted to life description. Here, you’ll need to feature early life and childhood of a chosen person. This part should cover general information about their parents, and divert readers’ attention to some facts related to their origin, education, and relationship status. Next, focus more on education and place where the person grew up. In this section, include more detailed information about the critical moments of their childhood life, like the name of the school they studied in or the point of moving to another city or town. Perhaps there are more facts worthy of note, such as family problems or health issues that revolved around one’s childhood. If there are such, include them as well.
The second section of your biographical essay will tell readers about someone’s adulthood. Depending on the person, this piece of story can be outlined differently. For example, you can write about their university or college life, or indicate their first job. The point here is to chronologically depict a period of moving from childhood to adult life. Then, talk about the formation of a person’s career path, starting with the first working experience and ending with the remarkable moment of revealing talents and skills that shaped their life. In the next paragraph, mention the person’s relationship during their adulthood. If applicable, describe how someone special helped them to become successful or motivated them throughout their career. Another significant aspect in this section has to do with the person’s success, in which readers could know about their notable accomplishments and achievements.
The final section of a biography essay will touch the person’s current or later life. If they are alive, include the overlook of their place of living and write about their activities. You can also add such information as to their current projects or career plans, along with other meaningful facts about their life.
If the person you’re writing about is no longer living, emphasize on the brightest moments at the sunset of their life. Mention the definitive moments and aspects, and write about the cause of their deaths.
If you want your biography essay to leave a great impact on readers, don’t conclude it with a simple explanation of why this or that person died and what their latest works were. This is only factual information which brings no specific value to your essay and, more importantly, doesn’t breathe life into it. To wrap up your essay content with a memorable grabber, include a couple of sentences in which write about the person’s legacy. That is, add the opinion of why this individual’s activity became an exceptional contribution to the world’s history, and why they have changed some aspects of their field.
Biography essay writing is a responsible task that aims at showing a well-acclaimed person from the best light. Therefore, you need to write about one’s life as you would about your mother – with maximum details and showing respect for that person. So follow our advice to compose an A+ biography essay that you and your audience will enjoy reading.
Note that our company provides academic writing help. You can buy a Biography essay written from scratch by our essay writer .
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April 10, 2023 by Prasanna
How to Write a Biography Essay: What Is A Biography Essay? A biography essay is a type of essay where you tell the story of a person’s life through your words. A biography essay gives us the chance to dwell in someone else’s life. The essence of a biography essay is to sketch the person’s life as accurately as possible such that the person can be easily visualized and their essence truly graspable.
The meaning of the word ‘biography’ is the story of a person’s life written by someone else. A biography essay is one of the oldest types of literature and non-fiction. A biography includes much more than the person’s basic facts like education, work, relationships, death, etc.; it portrays that person’s experiences through the events in their lives.
You can also find more Essay Writing articles on events, persons, sports, technology and many more
Through a biography essay, you have to reveal who the person truly was and what they were all about- their beliefs, their ideology, all of their small traits and any little detail that will help the readers to connect with the person.
Since all biography essays are generally about famous people, it is easy to gather information about them from books and articles. A good biography essay should have little nooks of private information about which everyone is not aware of. These pieces of information must be chosen so that it supports your thesis.
All biography essays have a thesis statement. A thesis statement is a one-liner which captures the essential aspect of that person’s life. A thesis statement is a statement about the person’s life, which covers the big picture, or the most crucial aspect or experience of that person’s life which justifies most of their doings.
A biography essay can be said to be an insight into a famous person’s life which not only covers the information about their expertise but also throws light on what type of person they were.
Writing a Biography essay is diametrically different from writing a regular essay about a person. A biography essay is all about capturing the true essence of a person. It can be used as a tool by which you can show a side of a very well known person about which very little is known to the common public.
A standard biography essay should mention much more than the works of the person. You have to create an ambiance through the recreation of the personality of the person in interest.
You have to recreate the person’s life and their experiences with your essay. It is an interesting and engaging way of learning about a famous person. There are a few steps that will help you to follow the format of a biography essay.
The chronological arrangement of the information will help the readers to understand and truly feel who the person was. It is crucial to pay attention and maintain the essay structure also. The outline of the Biography essay is a schematic plan which will help you to sort the information according to the most significant facts.
The easiest way of arranging an outline is by adding numbers to the points according to their significance. Outline with sub-points and with bullets. You can then easily arrange the essay with this outline.
As mentioned earlier, the format of the Biography essay should be according to the standard essay writing format with one introduction, which should have a thesis, a minimum of two body paragraphs and one conclusion. The format is further described below.
Introduction of a Biography Essay
Body Paragraphs of a Biography Essay
In the conclusion of a biography essay, briefly describe the experiences and events about the person of which are of utmost importance.
Question 1. What is the outline or format of a biography essay?
Answer: The skeleton of a biography essay is given below-
Question 2. What are the significant pieces of information that should be included in a biography essay?
Answer: A biography should be based on interesting and compelling facts that are not well known about a famous person. The information that is required in a biography essay is- origin, education, relationships, career path, their first job and their accomplishments. These will provide the basic information in a biography essay.
Last Updated: July 4, 2023 Fact Checked
This article was co-authored by Stephanie Wong Ken, MFA . Stephanie Wong Ken is a writer based in Canada. Stephanie's writing has appeared in Joyland, Catapult, Pithead Chapel, Cosmonaut's Avenue, and other publications. She holds an MFA in Fiction and Creative Writing from Portland State University. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 53,002 times.
Writing a biography can seem daunting, as you are trying to explore the entirety of someone's life on the page. The key to writing a good biography is outlining it before you dive in. A strong, detailed outline will work through key events chronologically. To outline a biography, start by discussing early life and childhood. Then, go into adulthood and current life, or later life and death if the person is no longer alive.
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As a high school or college student, you have probably written dozens, if not hundreds, of essays of all types. However, a biographical essay is nothing like you have written before. In fact, despite seeming relatively easy, the task of writing a biography essay can get very confusing to inexperienced students.
Instead of your ideas, a biography essay utilizes facts, but it takes a lot of research and writing skills to write a biography essay that will impress both your peers and your professor. Our essay writing service has prepared a detailed guide on how to write a good biography essay, and here is everything you need to know.
Before you can find out how to write a biography essay, you need to learn the answer to the essential question: what is a biography essay? A biographical essay is a type of academic paper where the author tells the story of someone’s life.
In some ways, biographical essays are similar to other types of essays, especially narrative papers. They both tell a story that should captivate and inform the readers. However, a biographical essay focuses solely on the story of one person and often includes an analysis of the person’s personality, not just a list of significant events from the subject’s life story.
Typically, the biography essay format deals with the life story of another person. In some cases, you may be tasked with writing a biography about yourself. In that case, your paper will be called an autobiography essay, and it’s a common assignment in high school and during the college application process.
At first glance, a biography essay may seem like just another type of written assignments that you simply have to do for a good grade. However, a bibliography essay is actually a very important piece of writing that allows you to tell a story of another person’s greatness, significance, or vulnerability through his life events.
Biography essay outline.
Even though a biographical essay is a unique form of writing, it still requires you to follow a specific format and structure. The biography essay outline helps you keep your thoughts in order and never miss a single significant fact or quote.
So, how to write a biography essay outline? Unless otherwise specified by your professor, you should follow the standard five-paragraph essay structure. It means that your biography essay outline will include the following chapters:
Now that you know what is biography essay and how to create a good biography essay outline, it is time to finally find out how to write a biography essay. In this part of our guide, we will focus on a personal biography essay, or autobiography.
Students are often wondering: how to start off a biography essay to make a good impression on the readers? The introduction is the first part of your paper the readers will encounter, and you should pay extra attention to what you write in this chapter.
How to write an introduction for a biography essay? Start with a hook — an attention-grabbing sentence that sets the tone for the paper. It can be a personal anecdote, a fact, or a quote from someone else describing you.
In the rest of the introduction, write a little about yourself without giving up any important facts — save those for the upcoming chapters of the essay. Finish the introduction with a thesis statement, where you should describe the essence of your biography essay.
If you went for the classic five-paragraph structure with your biography, you will have three body paragraphs. There is no standard way to distribute your biography between those three paragraphs, but since you are writing about yourself — a young person whose later years are still ahead of them — you can use the following structure:
Since it’s a personal essay, you probably won’t use too much research to support your claims, which will be based on your own life. However, you should carefully choose the wording, not to exaggerate your achievements. Be as close to your own life events as possible.
A conclusion is an essential part of any essay, and it’s equally true for a biography essay. Since you are retelling your own life story, and it’s difficult to assess your contribution to the society simply because you are only at the beginning of your own career, you should write about the way your life until this point impacted your development as a person.
Our essay service has already covered how to write a personal biography essay, but in most cases, you will be tasked with writing a biography essay about a different person — usually, someone famous and significant in their own field. This person can be dead or alive, but they will likely have a rich biography that is relatively easy to write about.
The key to writing a strong biography essay is to rely strictly on facts, not on fiction. It doesn’t mean that you should simply list the facts from the person’s life story without any opinions of your own, but those opinions and assumptions must always be based on the official statements from the person’s biography.
Wondering how to write a biography essay to make it absolutely flawless? Check out these extra writing tips from our expert team of authors that specialize in essay writing in the United States:
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Table of Contents
A biography is a written account of a person’s life that details their life in chronological order. Another person usually writes this detailed account, and it contains reports of their childhood, career, major life events, relationships, and social impact. It also details their relationships with their family, children, and life accomplishments.
The best way to find out more about a popular figure is through reading their biographies, so you need to make sure you get the correct information. Before writing a biography, you need to do a lot of research and interviews to represent a person’s life accurately.
A biography is the story of someone’s life as written by another writer. Most biographies of popular figures are written years, or even decades, after their deaths. Authors write biographies of popular figures due to either a lack of information on the subject or personal interest.
A biography aims to share a person’s story or highlight a part of their life.
There are different types of biographies, depending on the story. Some biographies are written true to the story, while some are written as fictional works. Biographies can give you true understanding of a person on an internal as well as external level along with a lot of life lessons.
An autobiography is different from a biography because it is written by the subject of the story, themselves. The author writes in the first-person narrative, and it flows step-by-step like a story of their life. Autobiographies contain personal accounts of the subject’s life, along with their perspectives and opinions on events in their life.
Pick a subject.
Picking a subject is the first step in writing a biography. You can pick an already famous person or a relatively unknown person with a great life story. If you already have a few in mind, you can start by asking yourself some questions such as;
When you pick a subject, the next thing to do is to get permission from them or their family or rights owners. Although, with some historical figures, there may not be any need for permission. Getting permission from your subject makes it easier for you to get stories to put into your book. You can get the chance to obtain additional personal stories and anecdotes that will make your book more interesting by doing so as well.
Research is the most important part of a biography’s process as the entire content of the book is dependent on it. Irrespective of what you know about the subject, you need to carry out as much research as possible to get the story’s facts precisely.
Biography research comes from various sources, depending on the book’s subject. Firsthand reports from family, friends, or personal accounts from the subjects are primary sources. They are usually the most accurate and reliable, and they are crucial for a biography. Secondary sources come from other sources like magazines or documentaries.
Biographies come in various formats, with each of them having their pros and cons. A typical biography will start at the beginning, usually with the birth and childhood of the subject. Yet, if the biography’s theme involves a different event in their life, the author may want to explore the flashback option or one with concurrent events from different times.
Usually, biographies have a theme or a general life lesson at the center. The author’s role is to tell the subject’s story leading up to the major event.
Which-ever format you choose should place the theme at the center, with the other events detailing the journey.
Since a biography takes place in chronological order, there needs to be a timeline of the events in the right order. The timeline should contain the key events in the subject’s life, in the order the author plans on revealing them. A great way to declutter the story and keep it interesting is to use flashbacks . This way, the author can introduce past events and explain later events excluding the element of monotony.
The good thing about biographies is that you don’t have to stick to the hard facts only. As the author, you can share your opinions and emotions in writing. The author has the freedom to do this by commenting on a significant action by the subject in a manner that describes why they feel the subject may have done what they did.
The author can also include commentary on events depicted in the biography – how it was influenced society or its impact on the lives around them. Recounting these events through a different perspective can make the biography more relatable and interesting to read.
Why is a biography template important.
A biography template has an outline that makes the writing easier for the author. Biography templates usually contain a sample timeline, format, and questions that provide more information about the subject. With a great biography template, you can cut your writing time in half and spend less time coming up with an outline.
Since a different person writes biographies, they tend to be more objective and somewhat accurate than autobiographies. An autobiography tells things from the author’s perspective, so their views and perspective cloud it. Thus, a biography will likely tell a more factual story.
These are the important steps you need to take to help you write a great biography. Now, to make things easier for you, we have a free customizable autobiography and biography template that you can use to start your first book. Get the template and start writing today
Any author looking to write a biography must consider the factors below. They aren’t the only important factors, but a biography isn’t complete without them. • Date and place of their birth • Academic background • Professional expertise • Death, if deceased • Facts and anecdotes about the person • Main accomplishments • Detailed accounts of their child and adult life
Biographies tell the untold stories of some incredibly relevant people in the world. But biographies are not always strictly accurate. So, every biographer needs to follow the necessary steps to provide a biography with all the requirements.
A biography is a story of a person's life, written by another author. The writer of a biography is called a biographer while the person written about is known as the subject or biographee.
Biographies usually take the form of a narrative , proceeding chronologically through the stages of a person's life. American author Cynthia Ozick notes in her essay "Justice (Again) to Edith Wharton" that a good biography is like a novel, wherein it believes in the idea of a life as "a triumphal or tragic story with a shape, a story that begins at birth, moves on to a middle part, and ends with the death of the protagonist."
A biographical essay is a comparatively short work of nonfiction about certain aspects of a person's life. By necessity, this sort of essay is much more selective than a full-length biography, usually focusing only on key experiences and events in the subject's life.
Perhaps because of this novel-like form, biographies fit squarely between written history and fiction, wherein the author often uses personal flairs and must invent details "filling in the gaps" of the story of a person's life that can't be gleaned from first-hand or available documentation like home movies, photographs, and written accounts.
Some critics of the form argue it does a disservice to both history and fiction, going so far as to call them "unwanted offspring, which has brought a great embarrassment to them both," as Michael Holroyd puts it in his book "Works on Paper: The Craft of Biography and Autobiography." Nabokov even called biographers "psycho-plagiarists," meaning that they steal the psychology of a person and transcribe it to the written form.
Biographies are distinct from creative non-fiction such as memoir in that biographies are specifically about one person's full life story -- from birth to death -- while creative non-fiction is allowed to focus on a variety of subjects, or in the case of memoirs certain aspects of an individual's life.
For writers who want to pen another person's life story, there are a few ways to spot potential weaknesses, starting with making sure proper and ample research has been conducted -- pulling resources such as newspaper clippings, other academic publications, and recovered documents and found footage.
First and foremost, it is the duty of biographers to avoid misrepresenting the subject as well as acknowledging the research sources they used. Writers should, therefore, avoid presenting a personal bias for or against the subject as being objective is key to conveying the person's life story in full detail.
Perhaps because of this, John F. Parker observes in his essay "Writing: Process to Product" that some people find writing a biographical essay "easier than writing an autobiographical essay. Often it takes less effort to write about others than to reveal ourselves." In other words, in order to tell the full story, even the bad decisions and scandals have to make the page in order to truly be authentic.
Biography narrative essay generator.
If you were given a chance to write a person’s biography, would you take that opportunity? A lot of people may see this as a good type of job to get into, while others may see this as a hobby. However you want to see it, it really is a good opportunity. Better yet, what if you are given the chance to write your own autobiography? A lot of people would take that as a chance to show their readers or the rest of the world who they are and what they can do. Of course, it is not always for everyone either. When we think of narratives we often think of the length of either an essay , a story or a speech.
But we do not often think that even a biography could be part of that idea. Often than not, we mistake biography and autobiography so much that we think they mean the same thing but with different spelling. Firstly, they are different and they do mean different things. But what does a biography narrative essay mean and what can it do for you? To find out what it can do for you, check out 10+ examples of a biography narrative essay.
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We know that a biography and an autobiography are two different things, what we do not often hear is that a biography can also be used in a narrative essay . So what is a biography narrative essay ? This is a kind of narrative essay that you write when you are talking or writing about a person’s life story. This kind of essay focuses on you as the writer telling a story about a famous person like an author of a story, a poet or even an athlete. Of course you can also be writing an autobiography narrative essay, and it works just the same. The only difference is that you are writing your own story to let the world know who you are as a person.
In addition to that, you can also be writing about cultural biographies and they would work the same as you may write with a narrative essay. As long as you know what you are writing about and the difference between a biography and an autobiography. The importance of a biography narrative essay is to tell a story. To be able to tell the life story of a person you may or may not have met. As well as to be able to share it in the form of an essay.
Having the opportunity to write a biography narrative essay is fun and exciting, but there are also things you should know about it. One of which is how and the other is why. Since we already know the reason, it is time we learned the ways to write it .
Take some time to do your personal research first. Before you make your biography narrative essay, find time on who you are planning on talking about. Whether this person is alive or deceased also matters. To be able to make a good narrative essay from their lives, you must at least know or understand even a bit of information about them.
Getting permission from the person you are planning on writing a biography essay is also best and professional. It not only puts you in a good light, but it also shows that you take their word at heart. Asking for permission shows that you understand their need for privacy as well as the fact that you show them respect. It never hurts anyone to ask permission to whom they plan on writing a biography about.
To make your biography narrative essay a success, draft a short timeline before you write. This timeline could be about the events of the life of the person you are going to be writing or your own if you plan to write an autobiography. Also, drafting your work before finalizing it would make it easier for you to see which should be placed and which should be disregarded.
When you have finished writing the draft and you are sure that it is enough and okay, you can start by rewriting your essay and finalizing everything. Of course this would take time, but it is really worth rewriting if you need to check everything first. As well as finalizing everything means you have to check if the information is correct, your grammar and spelling are fine too.
To be sure that you got it right, the best way to do so is to read your biography narrative essay. To make sure that the tone is right, the way you are presenting it as well. Ask someone for help to be sure that how you deliver is presentable and professional. As well as using the words in your essay that would be easy to say and explain.
A biography narrative essay is a kind of essay that is based on you writing someone’s story. An essay that focuses on a person’s life story being written down by someone else and to present it to class.
Asking for permission is not only polite, but it also gives you a chance to see if the person wants their story known. It is also a good way for you to avoid plagiarism by having the permission from the person, rather than just to write about them and pass it off as if it were nothing.
Writing a biography narrative, avoid any fabrications and plagiarism. To avoid this kind of mistake, do not fabricate their work and pass it as yours. Avoid fabricating anything they may say and change it to something more interesting.
Having the opportunity to write biographies for famous people is what others can say is a dream come true. A lot of people would even take the opportunity to write their own autobiographies and share it to the world. Whether you plan on writing a biography or an autobiography, there should always be things you should take into consideration. Always remember that when writing these kinds of essays, fabricating it will never get you anywhere.
Text prompt
Write a Biography Narrative Essay on the life and achievements of Marie Curie.
Create a Biography Narrative Essay about the contributions of Martin Luther King Jr. to civil rights.
T ributes flowed in from across the literary world after the death in May at age 92 of Nobel Prize-winning Canadian writer Alice Munro, who is credited with perfecting the contemporary short story . But Munro’s many admirers must now grapple with a darker aspect of her legacy that has just come to light.
In a heart-wrenching essay by Andrea Robin Skinner, Munro’s youngest daughter who is now 58 years old— published on Sunday in the Toronto Star alongside a reported companion piece by the paper —Skinner reveals that she was sexually abused by her stepfather, Munro’s second husband Gerald Fremlin, since she was 9, and that when she informed Munro of the abuse years later, the celebrated writer turned a blind eye and stood by her daughter’s abuser.
The revelation of what until now had been a long-held family secret has rocked readers and colleagues of Munro, whose works often explored themes of women’s lives, complex familial dynamics, sex, trauma, and secrecy.
According to Skinner, Fremlin, a cartographer who died in 2013, climbed into bed with her when she was 9 and touched her inappropriately. She also detailed how, throughout her childhood when the two were alone, Fremlin would crack lewd jokes, press her about her “sex life,” describe Munro’s “sexual needs” to her, and expose himself and occasionally masturbate in front of her.
“At the time, I didn’t know this was abuse. I thought I was doing a good job of preventing abuse by averting my eyes and ignoring his stories,” Skinner writes.
Skinner says she first revealed her abuse by Fremlin to Munro when she was 25, having been hesitant to open up about it earlier, fearing her mother’s reaction. “I have been afraid all my life that you would blame me for what happened,” Skinner wrote in a 1992 letter, parts of which she shared with the Star .
According to Skinner, what inspired her to finally disclose her torment to her mother was Munro’s reaction to a short story in which a girl died by suicide after being sexually abused by her stepfather. At the time, Munro questioned to Skinner why the girl in the story didn’t tell her mother.
But when Skinner revealed her own experience with Fremlin, Munro was shockingly unsympathetic: “As it turned out, in spite of her sympathy for a fictional character, my mother had no similar feelings for me.”
“She said that she had been ‘told too late,’ she loved him too much, and that our misogynistic culture was to blame if I expected her to deny her own needs, sacrifice for her children, and make up for the failings of men,” Skinner writes. “She was adamant that whatever had happened was between me and my stepfather. It had nothing to do with her.” Meanwhile, Fremlin denied wrongdoing and deflected blame onto Skinner.
Skinner says she and her family ultimately moved on, “acting as if nothing had happened,” until Skinner became pregnant in 2002. Skinner decided after the birth of her own twins to cut off contact with Fremlin—who she did not want near her children—as well as Munro, who Skinner says was more concerned about her own personal inconvenience by the move.
Skinner’s quiet estrangement continued until she read a 2004 New York Times story about Munro in which her mother heaped praise on Fremlin.
“I wanted to speak out. I wanted to tell the truth. That’s when I went to the police to report my abuse,” Skinner recalls. “For so long I’d been telling myself that holding my pain alone had at least helped my family, that I had done the moral thing, contributing to the greatest good for the greatest number. Now, I was claiming my right to a full life, taking the burden of abuse and handing it back to Fremlin.”
In 2005, Fremlin was charged with indecent assault and convicted without a trial after pleading guilty. He was sentenced to two years’ probation, a result Skinner says she was satisfied with because she wasn’t seeking for him to be punished nor did she believe he was still a threat to others given his old age.
“What I wanted was some record of the truth, some public proof that I hadn’t deserved what had happened to me,” Skinner writes in her essay. She had also hoped her story would “become part of the stories people tell about my mother. I never wanted to see another interview, biography or event that didn’t wrestle with the reality of what had happened to me, and with the fact that my mother, confronted with the truth of what had happened, chose to stay with, and protect, my abuser.”
But that’s not how things panned out. “My mother’s fame meant the silence continued,” Skinner writes. Munro retired in 2013 and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature a few months later.
“Many influential people came to know something of my story,” Skinner writes, “yet continued to support, and add to, a narrative they knew was false.”
“Everybody knew,” Skinner’s stepmother Carole Munro told the Star , recounting being asked by a journalist at a dinner party years ago about rumors related to Skinner—and affirming that they were true. (Robert Thacker, author of an acclaimed biography of Munro, told the Globe and Mail on Sunday that he was aware of the allegations of what happened to Skinner, who had reached out to him directly before his book was published in 2005, but he declined to mention it because he didn’t want to overstep in a sensitive family matter.)
Skinner’s story stayed out of the public eye. But now, with her essay sending shockwaves through the literary world, the narrative surrounding her mother is beginning to change.
“I know I’m not alone in feeling deeply unnerved by what feels like a seismic shift in our understanding of someone who was formative to me and others as a writer,” Pulitzer finalist Rebecca Makkai said in a series of posts on X reflecting on the recent news.
“Lots of people reflexively denying that Alice Munro could have knowingly spent her life with the pedophile who abused her daughter, or rushing to say they never liked her writing,” Canadian magazine writer and editor Michelle Cyca posted on X . “Harder to accept the truth that people who make transcendent art are capable of monstrous acts.”
“The Alice Munro news is so completely and tragically consistent with the world she evoked in her stories—all those young people betrayed and sabotaged by adults who were supposed to care for them,” American novelist and essayist Jess Row posted on X .
American novelist and essayist Brandon Taylor shared his gratitude toward Skinner. “I’m so in awe of her courage,” he said in a series of posts on X , adding that her account was “personally devastating in that I recognize so much of my own story and history in her experience.”
In a statement from Munro’s Books, which was founded by Jim and Alice Munro but has been independently owned since 2014, the company said it “unequivocally supports Andrea Robin Skinner as she publicly shares her story of her sexual abuse as a child.”
“Along with so many readers and writers, we will need time to absorb this news and the impact it may have on the legacy of Alice Munro, whose work and ties to the store we have previously celebrated,” the statement added.
In a co-published statement from the Munro family, Andrea and her three siblings—Andrew, Jenny, and Sheila—thanked the owners and staff of Munro’s Books for “acknowledging and honoring Andrea’s truth, and being very clear about their wish to end the legacy of silence.”
While Skinner says she never reconciled with her mother before Munro’s death, she has with her siblings—who reached out in 2014 to seek understanding and healing together and have supported her coming out publicly with what is sure to put their mother’s reputation in a much different light.
Skinner, for her part, has made clear that this is not about Alice Munro’s reputation. “I just really hope that this story isn’t about celebrities behaving badly,” she told the Star . While some will gravitate toward it simply “for the entertainment value,” she adds: “I want so much for my personal story to focus on patterns of silencing, the tendency to do that in families and societies.”
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The two-time Oscar winner, who headlined a lucrative Biden fundraiser in June, writes in an essay that a new Democratic ticket could "enliven" the party at a critical moment
Neil P. Mockford/Getty, Andrew Harnik/Getty
George Clooney publicly pulled his support for Joe Biden ’s 2024 presidential campaign on Wednesday, July 10, urging the White House to consider the impact of keeping him on the ballot.
The liberal actor, 63, penned a passionate essay for The New York Times , in which he argues that Biden should quickly exit the 2024 race for the good of his own party. Clooney cites troublesome poll numbers suggesting that Americans lack confidence in Biden following his frail performance in the June 27 presidential debate against Donald Trump .
In the article, Clooney calls himself a "lifelong Democrat" and reminds readers that he co-hosted the Biden campaign's star-studded Hollywood fundraiser only a few weeks ago, which he noted was the "single largest fund-raiser supporting any Democratic candidate ever."
"It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020," Clooney said, "He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate."
Related: First 2024 Presidential Debate Recap: Joe Biden Sparks Concerns, Donald Trump Lies
Clooney expressed his personal fondness for the current president, writing, "I love Joe Biden. As a senator. As a vice president and as president. I consider him a friend, and I believe in him. Believe in his character. Believe in his morals. In the last four years, he’s won many of the battles he’s faced.”
However, the two-time Oscar winner said that "the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time,” referencing the 81-year-old's age, which remains a top concern to voters.
Addressing Biden's weak debate performance specifically, the actor said, "Our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw. We’re all so terrified by the prospect of a second Trump term that we’ve opted to ignore every warning sign."
He added that Biden’s primetime interview with George Stephanopoulos on July 5 — which the White House hoped would revive his candidacy — "only reinforced what we saw the week before."
Related: Joe Biden Admits He 'Screwed Up' During Presidential Debate but Isn't Dropping Out: 'I Had a Bad Night'
Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty
Clooney called upon leading Democrats — specifically naming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer , House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — to put pressure on Biden to "voluntarily step aside." (Within hours of the essay's publication, Politico reported that Jeffries told House Democrats he would relay their concerns to Biden.)
According to Clooney, "every single" lawmaker he's spoken with has said that they worry Biden will not only lose in November, but that he will hurt Democratic candidates down the ballot and potentially give Republicans full control of Congress. Clooney suggested that some of the skeptical Democrats he's spoken with are still publicly backing Biden.
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Later in his essay, Clooney expressed optimism for the future of the political party if Biden steps aside, writing, "We can easily foresee a group of several strong Democrats stepping forward to stand and tell us why they’re best qualified to lead this country and take on some of the deeply concerning trends we’re seeing from the revenge tour that Donald Trump calls a presidential campaign."
The clock is ticking with the Democratic National Convention beginning on Aug. 19 — during which time the party will formally nominate its candidate — but Clooney insists that there’s still time to "hear from Wes Moore and Kamala Harris and Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom and Andy Beshear and J.B. Pritzker and others" who have been named as possible replacements.
Related: Can Joe Biden Be Replaced on the Democratic Ticket? What the DNC Rules Say About Switching Nominees
Clooney also requested that Democrats stay united if the ticket sees a switch-up, writing, "Let’s agree that the candidates not attack one another but, in the short time we have, focus on what will make this country soar. Then we could go into the Democratic convention next month and figure it out."
The actor suggested that Biden stepping aside could "enliven our party" and "wake up voters" who have "checked out."
Clooney concluded the essay by expressing gratitude for the president — and a plea: "Joe Biden is a hero; he saved democracy in 2020. We need him to do it again in 2024."
Clooney’s essay comes as a slow trickle of liberal lawmakers break from the president. As of Wednesday afternoon, eight Democratic members of Congress have publicly called for Biden to drop out of the race, and many more have expressed doubts — including Pelosi, who has cautiously suggested that there's reason to be skeptical of Biden's candidacy.
Several celebrities seem to share Clooney's fears, with author Stephen King writing on social media earlier this week, “Joe Biden has been a fine president, but it’s time for him—in the interests of the America he so clearly loves—to announce he will not run for re-election.”
Emmy winner Rob Reiner praised Clooney for his essay, writing on social media, “My friend George Clooney has clearly expressed what many of us have been saying. We love and respect Joe Biden. We acknowledge all he has done for our country. But Democracy is facing an existential threat. We need someone younger to fight back. Joe Biden must step aside.”
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On Oct. 2, 1950 , "Peanuts" made its comic strip debut. Featured in seven newspapers, the four panels introduced the nation – and eventually the world – to Good ol' Charlie Brown .
For the next 50 years, creator Charles Schulz would chronicle the Peanuts gang and their daily lives, introducing new characters and stories.
Each member had their quirks, from bossy Lucy to pensive Linus . But none were quite like Charlie Brown's canine companion, Snoopy.
The pup was first introduced on Oct. 4, 1950 , just two days after the initial comic strip appeared. Soon after, readers would discover that Snoopy was no average dog.
Snoopy is a beagle , according to his official profile on the Peanuts website. While real beagles are bred to be hunting dogs , Snoopy's role was never that simple.
Throughout his life, Schulz had several dogs. But it was his childhood dog Spike that served as the biggest inspiration for Snoopy. The black-and-white, mixed-breed dog was very smart, according to Schulz. Spike could understand at least 50 words, he said in 1983 .
This intelligence and cleverness made its way into Snoopy's character. The cartoon beagle " is a collector of fine art and a root beer connoisseur ." He also enjoys having suppertime, playing make-believe and writing, according to his profile.
Snoopy also has several alter-egos, including "Flying Ace" and "Joe Cool". Whether he's battling the Red Baron or exuding charm, Snoopy can be anyone he wants to be with the help of his immense, creative imagination. Despite being a dog, Snoopy and his abilities seemingly have no limits.
Snoopy was promoted to "Head Beagle" in the Feb. 16, 1970 Peanuts strip, an honor that was recognized at the time by then-Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty.
Meet Bayley: The mini sheepadoodle who looks like a real-life version of Charlie Brown's dog Snoopy
Initially, Snoopy was introduced as an only child. In the June 6, 1959 strip, Snoopy's thought bubbles read, "I've never had any sisters or brothers. I was an only dog!"
Snoopy's family tree eventually grew . In the comic strips, five siblings are introduced: four brothers, Spike, Marbles, Olaf and Andy, and one sister, Belle.
Spike was introduced in the Aug. 13, 1975 strip: "My brother has arisen! Eggs Benedict for my brother, Spike!" Snoopy says.
Belle, the second sibling to be introduced, debuted on June 28, 1976 . "I found my sister Belle ... and what a reunion we're having!" Charlie Brown reads from Snoopy's letter in a later strip.
Marbles was introduced in the Sept. 28, 1982 strip. "Peppermint Patty said your brother, "Marbles," is at her house," Charlie Brown tells Snoopy in the following day's comic.
On Jan. 24, 19 89 , the Peanuts audience met Olaf. "He won! Olaf won! Your brother won the "Ugly Dog" contest!" Lucy tells Snoopy.
In the June 18, 1989 strip, Snoopy sends a letter to his father for Father's Day. He discloses that there were " eight of us in the litter ."
In the 1991 television special " Snoopy's Reunion ", the remainder of the litter was revealed: Andy, Molly and Rover. Andy was later featured in the comics .
Rover and Molly, however, never appear or are named in the strips.
USA TODAY is exploring the questions you and others ask every day. From " What kind of dog is Scooby Doo? " to " What kind of fish is Dory? " to " What animal is Arthur? " – we're striving to find answers to the most common questions you ask every day. Head to our Just Curious section to see what else we can answer.
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When Andrea Robin Skinner told her mother of the abuse years later, Munro appeared to be more hurt by her husband’s “infidelity” than by the injury to her daughter, Skinner wrote in an essay for the Toronto Star .
Though she left her husband for a few months, Munro ultimately went back to him, remaining by his side until his death in 2013, the same year the short-story writer earned the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Skinner is the youngest child of Munro and first husband Jim Munro, whose divorce generated the joint custody arrangement that had the girl spending summers with her mother and stepfather.
“One night, while she was away, her husband, my stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, climbed into the bed where I was sleeping and sexually assaulted me,” Skinner wrote. “I was 9 years old.”
The effect on her physical health was immediate, Skinner said. The next day dawned with her first-ever migraine, a condition she still lives with. Over the years, Skinner struggled with health issues including bulimia so severe that she had to drop out of an international program during college.
Though Skinner told her father and stepmother about the abuse as soon as she returned home that summer, they did not convey the information to Munro. Her siblings also remained silent.
It was not until Skinner was 25 that she told her mother about the abuse in a letter.
“She reacted exactly as I had feared she would, as if she had learned of an infidelity,” Skinner wrote in the Star. “She said that she had been ‘told too late,’ she loved him too much, and that our misogynistic culture was to blame if I expected her to deny her own needs, sacrifice for her children, and make up for the failings of men.”
When Fremlin found out Munro knew of the abuse, he wrote letters exonerating himself, blaming it on 9-year-old Skinner and calling her a “homewrecker” who had “invaded my bedroom for sexual adventure.”
The only thing he faulted himself for was cheating on his wife.
When Skinner gave birth to twins in 2002 and told Munro she wouldn’t let them near Fremlin, it spelled the end of their mother-daughter relationship. Munro balked and said it would be hard for her to visit, and Skinner cut off contact. They never reconciled.
The estrangement extended to the rest of the family, as Skinner stepped back under the impression that “they’d be relieved not to be living in this double world anymore,” she told the Star.
In 2005 Skinner went to the police, and Fremlin was convicted of indecent assault, with those letters among the evidence. Even then, the silence continued, both inside and outside the family.
Eventually Skinner’s siblings reached out, and they have since reconciled.
lots of people reflexively denying that Alice Munro could have knowingly spent her life with the pedophile who abused her daughter, or rushing to say they never liked her writing — harder to accept the truth that people who make transcendent art are capable of monstrous acts — Michelle Cyca (@michellecyca) July 7, 2024
The literary world, and Munro’s legions of fans, are now squinting under the new light being shined on her work, which is laced with intricacies about dark family secrets, denial and estranged children .
The family wants Munro’s work to be revered, according to the Star, but they also feel her legacy is not complete without the darker side of her personal story being told.
Skinner’s siblings also want to aid in her healing, which is ongoing.
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Guest Essay
By Robert Langellier
Mr. Langellier is a writer and field botanist in Vermont.
In 2009, the botanist Naomi Fraga was hunting a flower without a name near Carson City, Nev. Ms. Fraga saw that the plant was going extinct in real time as its desert valley habitat was bulldozed to make way for Walmarts and housing developments. But in order to seek legal protections for it, she had to give it a name.
The diminutive yellow flower became the Carson Valley monkeyflower or, officially, Erythranthe carsonensis, allowing conservationists to petition the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to safeguard it under the Endangered Species Act. If their petition is approved, the flower will go from unknown to critically important in less than a generation, at least as far as Western science is concerned.
Taxonomy, the science of naming and classifying organisms, is the foundation for conserving disappearing plants and animals. Yet the field — often viewed as an archaic, dusty tradition that harks back to intrepid 19th-century botanists describing the plants of newly colonized lands — is dying. Several decades after the taxonomic frenzy of 1830 to 1920, when Western scientists went deep into far-flung regions of the world, molecular genetics revolutionized our ability to classify species, and began vacuuming up funding while the analog field of taxonomy was left to languish.
With genetic sequences, we can now identify the fundamental building blocks of life, but we need to be able to interpret genetic data in a way that humans can understand and use. That’s taxonomy’s job. And if we want to save what’s left of the vast diversity of life on Earth, we’ll have to reinvest in this science. How we delineate between species determines what we choose to save.
The dire state of taxonomy in the United States might be best illustrated by the Flora of North America, the definitive 30-volume attempt to name and describe every plant species here and in Canada. The project began in the 1980s, but it still hasn’t been completed because its contributors have struggled to secure consistent funding. By the time the last volume is completed in 2026, it will have to be revised immediately. For instance, its first volume, on ferns, released in 1993, is utterly out of date as new species have been discovered and nonnative species have moved in. Imagine trying to understand a 2024 Camry with a manual from 1993. That’s what botanists and conservationists trying to maintain biodiversity are working with.
The Flora of North America has been the victim of a broad shift in our scientific priorities as a nation. The National Science Foundation is the main funder of American botany. But since the 1980s and 1990s, its funding has increasingly gone to hypothesis-driven, laboratory-based research. When the Flora’s contributors ask university botanists to work on the project, it often must be done pro bono.
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As the next leader of Britain, Keir Starmer brings working-class roots, a forensic legal style and a ruthless approach to politics.
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LONDON — He was a lefty lawyer who defended vegan anarchists before prosecuting terrorists on behalf of the British crown. He was an editor of a Trotsky magazine in his youth, yet he delighted capitalists by putting “wealth creation” at the heart of the Labour Party platform this year. He was an anti-monarchist who was then knighted as “Sir Keir” and now will meet with the king once a week.
It all makes for a complex, messy, real-life story. It also makes it tricky to anticipate what sort of prime minister Keir Starmer will be.
One of his biographers confessed that Starmer is “hard to pin down” — and he had total access to his subject.
Starmer, 61, has used that ambiguity to his advantage. People have been able to project onto him what they want to believe. For a long time, he even benefited from the rumor that he was the inspiration for the Mark Darcy/Colin Firth urbane-human-rights-lawyer character in the “Bridget Jones” books and movies. (He was not.)
Being many things to many people may have helped Starmer deliver a big win on Thursday. His center-left, social democratic Labour Party is returning to power after 14 years in the wilderness, while voters have banished the Conservatives to the opposition.
But what is Starmer’s mandate, really, other than his self-evident campaign slogan of “Change”? In Ipsos polling last month, half of respondents said they didn’t know what he stood for .
Starmer didn’t give foreign press interviews during this election. That’s typical for party leaders. But close colleagues also call him a “very private man.” He has a wife, Victoria, and two teenage children, whose names he has never made public, and a cat, whose name he was willing to reveal as Jojo . He has expressed worry about the impact a move to Downing Street will have on his family.
He’s not a flash politician. As an orator, he’s no Winston Churchill. But his friends say he can be ruthless, which might be what a stumbling-along Britain needs.
“He is very, very driven, quite relentless,” said Tom Baldwin, a journalist and former Labour spin-doctor, who recently published a well-received biography of Starmer. “He has an oversized view of his capacity to bring change. He is not going to inspire people with big speeches. What he might do is fix things.”
Starmer will be the most working-class leader of Britain in a generation — coming in after a prime minister who by some counts was richer than the royals .
On the campaign trail, Starmer introduced himself by saying, “My mum was a nurse, my dad was a toolmaker.” He talked about growing up with unpaid bills and the phone being cut off. Pasta “was a foreign food” in his home, his biographer Baldwin wrote. The family did not travel abroad.
Starmer scored well on tests and gained entry into an elite high school. He was the first of his line to attend a university — Leeds, and then a year at Oxford.
He has said he wants to help young families get their first mortgage, knowing that his parents’ modest semidetached stucco home “was everything to my family — it gave us stability, and I believe every family deserves the same.”
He cites his mother’s work as a nurse, and the care she received for a debilitating inflammatory syndrome, for instilling his reverence for Britain’s National Health Service. His wife works for the NHS, too, in occupational health, which Starmer says has given him “insight” into the struggles of the underfunded, backlogged system.
Starmer says that his father felt “ very disrespected ” for working at a factory, that he was emotionally distant. As a dad himself, Starmer says he tries to “carve out really protected time for the kids.” He tries to stop work on Fridays at 6 p.m. Although an atheist himself, he has said they often do Shabbat dinner in keeping with his wife’s Jewish heritage.
Colleagues who knew Starmer before his entry into politics say clues to how he will govern can be found in his extended life chapter as an attorney.
They say he was never a “jury’s lawyer” — the cinematic advocate who makes an impassioned closing argument — but a “judge’s lawyer,” who built the case with precedent, law, facts. Indeed, when he represented the opposition during the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons, the Starmer style was often described as “ forensic .” His cross-examination managed to deflate even the bombast of Boris Johnson.
Early in his career, Starmer joined Doughty Street Chambers, known for taking on big, controversial human rights cases. He fought the death penalty in Commonwealth countries — defending, as the tabloids put it, “ baby killers and axe murderers .” He was part of a legal team that got Uganda’s Constitutional Court to invalidate the sentences of all 417 people on death row .
Starmer also worked pro bono for a pair of vegan anarchists who passed out leaflets accusing McDonald’s of low wages, cruelty to animals and support of deforestation. The burger maker sued for libel, and the case and its many appeals lasted a decade, one of the longest legal fights in British history. It ended in a kind of draw.
London media lawyer Mark Stephens, who worked on cases with Starmer, said he was “always looking 10 miles down the road,” at how a seemingly unwinnable case could be won on appeal to the Supreme Court or the European Court of Human Rights.
Starmer surprised — and upset — some of his legal colleagues when he became the country’s top prosecutor.
He oversaw the first British prosecution of al-Qaeda terrorists. He brought forward charges against Tory and Labour politicians caught up in an explosive expenses scandal, first revealed by the press. He and his prosecutors were accused of heavy-handed bias when they came down hard in arrests and charges for people who rioted in London after a black man named Mark Duggan was shot dead by police in 2011.
His knighthood came in 2014, in recognition of his work for the Crown Prosecution Service.
In Baldwin’s biography, a former partner of Starmer’s, Phillippa Kaufmann, says that “law was never going to be enough for him.”
Starmer didn’t get into electoral politics until he was 52. That was just nine years ago, in a country where many members of Parliament began plotting their rise to power in university days.
He was elected to represent the London district of Holborn and St. Pancras in 2015 and served as a “shadow minister” in the opposition, given the thankless job of negotiating Labour’s shaky position on Brexit. Starmer was against leaving the European Union, but many blue-collar Labour voters were for it. The party’s inscrutable compromise was that it was neither for Brexit nor against it , but wanted a second referendum. This mush — and Starmer, too — probably contributed to Labour’s colossal loss to the Conservatives in 2019.
But after that election, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was out, and Starmer was in. He set out to remake the Labour Party.
Critics who were bested by Starmer in intraparty brawls call him an opportunist. His allies credit him with purging members who had contributed to the public sense that Labour had “ an antisemitism problem .” Starmer also tracked to the center to make the party electable once again.
“What Keir has done is taken all the left out of the Labour Party,” billionaire businessman John Caudwell, previously a big Tory donor, told the BBC. “He’s come out with a brilliant set of values and principles and ways of growing Britain in complete alignment with my views as a commercial capitalist.”
The Labour Party highlighted his endorsement.
Starmer’s supporters dare hope that he will be a transformative leader — a kind of 2024 version of Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, without the baggage of the Iraq War — if he is not undone by the deep divisions in his own party.
“I think he’s proved he’s quite ruthless in terms of changing his party,” said Tony Travers, a politics expert at the London School of Economics. But will that ruthlessness carry forward into government? “We’ll have to wait and see,” Travers said.
What does Starmer believe in? “He believes in pragmatism, in developing policy by solving problems, not through grand theory. And he doesn’t come to the table with ideological presuppositions,” said Josh Simons, who ran the centrist think tank Labour Together.
Starmer has his critics in the party — for the very same reason.
“I think he actually stands for very little,” said James Schneider, former director of strategic communications for Labour and a Corbyn ally.
“He seems to reflect the ideas of the people that are around him,” Schneider said. “He has shifted or been shifted more and more into the establishment position,” and his government will be an attempt to restore the establishment’s authority, not challenge it.
“He seems like a middle manager scolding his workers, or an unpopular stepdad who’s lost control of the kids,” Schneider said.
Critics on the left suspect Starmer will not be bold, but will hew to a soft middle.
Much of his focus will be on domestic politics — trying to shore up the British economy and address people’s sense that everyday costs have become unmanageable. He wants to cut soaring electricity costs — with a new state-run green utility company. He wants to cut wait times for medical and dental appointments .
Britain’s foreign policy hardly ever changes under a new government, and Travers said foreign policy would remain “amazingly unaltered” by a shift from Conservative to Labour rule. Starmer has said Britain will remain a strong member of NATO; will back Ukraine in its war against Russia; and will support Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas , while calling for a cease-fire.
Although Brexit is seen as a flop, and there is no enthusiasm for another referendum, Britain under Starmer will probably seek a closer relationship with the European Union.
Critics have described Starmer as dull. He is not. What will be most interesting — to Britain and the world — is what he does now that he and his party have power.
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As the next leader of Britain, Keir Starmer brings working-class roots, a forensic legal style and a ruthless approach to politics.