How to Write a Biography: A Simple Guide

A biography tells someone's life story. It goes beyond a list of facts and dates to show what shaped the person, what they struggled with, and what their life meant.

Writing a good biography requires research, organization, and the ability to find the story within the facts. This guide covers the essential steps: choosing a subject, gathering material, structuring the narrative, and avoiding common mistakes.

Article Snapshot

• A biography explores a person's life, highlighting struggles, achievements, and lasting impact.
• Start by choosing a subject and gathering extensive details through research and interviews.
• Include background, major accomplishments, personal stories, impact, quotes, and historical context.
• Structure the biography to maintain narrative momentum, using chronological or thematic organization.
• Ensure accuracy, incorporate engaging anecdotes and quotes, and maintain an accessible writing style.
• Avoid irrelevant details, maintain balanced perspective, and respect privacy.

What Is a Biography and Why Write One?

A biography is a detailed account of someone's life written by another person. It differs from autobiography (written by the subject themselves) and memoir (focused on specific themes or periods rather than a complete life).

Good biographies do more than document. They interpret. They find meaning in a life and communicate it to readers who never knew the person.

Why Biographies Matter

• They preserve lives that might otherwise be forgotten.
• They provide models—both positive and cautionary—for how to live.
• They help us understand historical periods through individual experience.
• They honor people who deserve recognition.

For most families, the goal isn't a published book but a preserved record. A biography of your grandmother, even if only your family reads it, preserves her story for generations who won't have the chance to meet her.

How to Start Writing a Biography

Choosing Your Subject

If you're writing about someone living, get their consent. Explain what you want to capture and how you plan to use it. Their cooperation makes research much easier.

Choose someone whose life story interests you enough to sustain months or years of work. Fascination with your subject will come through in the writing.

Gathering Material

Research provides the raw material. Multiple types of sources strengthen your account:

• Primary sources: Letters, diaries, photographs, documents the subject created or received.
• Interviews: Conversations with the subject (if living) and people who knew them.
• Secondary sources: Books, articles, and records that provide historical context.
• Physical artifacts: Objects that tell stories or trigger memories.

For family biographies, the most valuable material often comes from guided conversations. The right questions surface stories that might never come up otherwise.

Our questions to ask family members guide provides 640+ prompts organized by relationship and life theme. These questions help you draw out complete stories rather than surface facts.

Recording Interviews

Written notes miss too much. Record your conversations so you can quote accurately and capture details you might not recognize as important until later.

Video recording captures even more: facial expressions, gestures, emotional reactions. Telloom provides professional video interview services specifically designed for family life stories, with trained interviewers who know how to draw out meaningful narratives.

What to Include in a Biography

Background and Context

Start with the circumstances your subject was born into. Family background, place, time period, social conditions. These factors shaped who they became, and readers need them to understand what follows.

Major Accomplishments and Turning Points

Identify the key events that defined the life. These might be achievements, but they might also be challenges, losses, or decisions that changed everything. The biography should explain not just what happened but why it mattered.

Personal Stories and Character

Specific anecdotes reveal character better than general descriptions. "She was generous" means less than a story about her giving away her coat to a stranger on a cold night.

Look for the small details that make someone real: their habits, their sayings, their quirks. These details make readers feel they've actually met the person.

Impact and Legacy

What difference did this life make? How did it affect family, community, profession, or the broader world? A biography should help readers understand why this story was worth telling.

Quotes and First-Person Voice

Whenever possible, let your subject speak in their own words. Direct quotes bring immediacy and authenticity that paraphrase can't match.

Historical Context

Individual lives happen within historical currents. Your subject's experience of the Depression, World War II, or the civil rights movement probably shaped them significantly. Providing this context helps readers understand choices and experiences.

How to Structure a Biography

Chronological Structure

The simplest approach follows life from birth to present (or death). This works well when the life had a clear arc of development or when readers need to understand how one period led to another.

Thematic Structure

Alternatively, organize around themes: career, family, faith, creativity. This works well when different aspects of a life were somewhat separate or when you want to explore how specific themes evolved.

Maintaining Narrative Drive

A biography should read like a story, not an encyclopedia entry. Keep readers engaged by:

• Starting chapters with hooks that create questions.
• Varying pace—moving quickly through uneventful periods, slowing down for crucial moments.
• Using scenes with dialogue and sensory detail rather than only summary.
• Ending chapters with transitions that pull readers forward.

Tips for Writing Well

Verify Your Facts

Memory is unreliable. Cross-check stories against documents and other sources when possible. When you can't verify something, acknowledge it: "According to family memory..." or "She recalled that..."

Use Specific Details

Specificity creates credibility and interest. "He worked in a factory" is vague. "He operated a punch press at Ford's River Rouge plant, coming home with metal shavings in his hair" puts readers there.

Include Challenges and Conflicts

Lives without difficulty don't make interesting reading and don't ring true. Most meaningful stories involve struggle. Don't sanitize your subject into a saint—it makes them less relatable and less real.

Keep It Accessible

Write for readers who don't know your subject. Explain relationships, define unfamiliar terms, provide context. Your family knows who Aunt Edna was; other readers need introduction.

Common Pitfalls

Too Much Detail

Not everything matters. You don't need every address they lived at, every job they held, every person they met. Include what reveals character or moves the story forward. Cut the rest.

Lack of Balance

Biographies shouldn't be hagiographies. Your subject had flaws. Acknowledging them makes the strengths more credible and the person more human.

Privacy Concerns

Some stories aren't yours to tell. Consider what your subject and others in the story would want shared. For living subjects, confirm what they're comfortable including.

Losing Your Subject's Voice

The goal is to convey who this person was, not to impose your interpretation. Let their words and actions speak. Your role is to organize and contextualize, not to replace their voice with yours.

Beyond the Written Word

Written biographies have limitations. They can't capture voice, expression, or the way someone moved through the world.

Telloom offers video biography services that preserve people in motion and sound. Professional interviewers guide conversations that surface deep stories, and the resulting videos capture not just what someone said but how they said it. For preserving family members, video adds dimensions that written biography can't match.

Whether you create a written biography, a video biography, or both, the important thing is to capture these stories while you can. The people who hold them won't be here forever.