Now this was interesting to
learn about!
Last summer I wrote the
first draft of a biography for middle grade readers. I was passionate about my
Intrepid Woman, filled with enthusiasm for the project, eager to share the bits
I knew, and then, BOOM!
My writing group, bless
their honest and insightful hearts, told me, essentially, “Umm. That’s not it.
Try again.”
Well, okay, then. I get it.
I challenged myself with two new-to-me writing tasks. Writing biography (when I
been noveling for many years) and writing for middle graders (when I have written
for adults for many years). To use the vernacular, I guess I sucked!
I am grateful to them for
helping me identify what my heart knew wasn’t working. So what’s a passionate,
enthusiastic, eager wannabe biographer to do? What I always do. I hunt for resources
to help me. I can learn anything. I know that about myself. I taught me to
write plays, and I can teach me to write biography.
So I made a couple of trips
to America’s Book Store (aka Amazon) using different descriptors to find book
on how to write biographies. I found two. There were beaucoup books on writing memoir, but only three for how to write bios and two about writing bios.
One of the how-to books, 24
pages, had one review and it was one-star. Another book is 166 pages from the
University of Nebraska press with no reviews and almost 15 years old. Also, at
$45, I’d be paying almost 30¢ a page to read it. The last book is a 400 page reprint
edition from the Harvard University Press, but it does have four and a half
stars.
Does it surprise you, too,
given the popularity of biographies, that there are so few resources on how to
write them?
Two! So what’s a wannabe
biographer to do? Of course, I ordered the 400-page How to Do Biography, a Primer by Nigel Hamilton, and then I went
searching for classes and other online resources.
My initial search was more
than disappointing. There were few resources out there. Some YouTube vids and a
few articles, but not what I expected. There is a dearth of resources on how to
write biographies. There are tons on other forms, like writing comedy or
horror, but surprisingly few for bios.
From combing the Internet,
I did identify some common principles, some of which are “duhs” like “do
research.” Umm. Okay. I guess that’s a good idea.
Biographies are about
people who stories reveal struggles, conflicts, and accomplishments. The biography
elements that I came up with and others I found in my search on biography
writing are these:
1)
Identify in a
page or two, why this person caught your attention and what is important about
the person’s life. From this identify the overarching theme you will use in
your biography.
2)
Write an
engaging opening with quotes or anecdote to hook the reader just as fiction
does. Like stories, bios have a beginning, middle, and end.
3)
Make a timeline
of everything you can from the person’s life and then circle the ones you will use.
But put them all out there for consideration. All bios give demographic info
(birth, death, locale).
4)
Create a
biography outline by taking the circled events from #3 and make headers and
detailed notes on each.
5)
Get creative
with your research by contacting authors of books or articles you read to see
if they will share some of their resources so you are not just reading their
summaries.
6)
Identify the
point of view and text structure you will use: chronological, cause-effect, description,
comparison, or problem-solution.
7)
Develop an
understanding of the era and location of the person through the biography.
8)
Create a tone
appropriate to the material. Find a voice that will engage readers.
9)
Keep incidents,
dialogue, and historical personages as accurate as possible by using primary
sources where available. When not, use secondary sources that help you
understand the times, events, and locales for accurate re-creation.
10) Avoid stereotyping. Don’t create a hagiography.
Rather let the real person show through the biography.
Next week, I’ll share
insights from Hamilton’s book as well as from my secret strategy—mentor texts.
I will learn how to write biographies. I love to read them, so I can learn to write them.
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