A biography, or just biography, is basically a detailed, sometimes personal, overview of someone’s life. It usually involves much more than the major facts such as work, education, family, and relationships; it depicts a person’s cumulative experience of those life events. Often, biographies are written to celebrate the person, who is usually the subject of a biography, in addition to an interest in the person. The biographer typically seeks to share the details of the person’s achievements with readers, in hopes of motivating them to be successful in their own lives.
Biographies of historical figures, celebrities, and other icons form the bulk of biographies. Memoirs are also a subset of biographies. Although most people confuse the two, a memoir is not essentially a biography, but rather a written telling of events, while a biography is a personal writing about a specific person. Some famous memoirists include: Dr. Samaria Rice, Robert Kiyosaki, Emmitt Smith, Norman Ollestad, Arthur Miller, Nick Vuijcic, and Kim Covert. Some other famous memoirists are: Walker Percy, Nelson Glueck, Aldus Huxley, Herman Melville, Edward Said, and Stephen King. Some biographies of prominent people include: Richard Nixon, Chester Gordon, Jack Kennedy, Mao Tse Tung, and Nelson Rockefeller.
Biography, as a genre, has evolved over the years to more specific and focused forms. While a wide variety of genres have developed including biographies of individuals, the most common form of Biography is that which portrays someone’s career. This includes biographies on famous individuals, government leaders, corporate leaders, and athletes. These biographies typically tell the basic facts about the subject at hand, as well as some interesting and insightful facts about the subject’s personality, skills, achievements, associations, views, and personal flaws.
When it comes to writing an autobiography or memoir, it is important to determine which genre you want to specialize in. The two main sub-genres are biographical and fictional academic biography. While biographical works tend to be more focused on the facts about the subjects’ life and work, fictional, academic biographies tell a more fanciful version of the history, personality, achievements, views, and thoughts of the subject. In addition, some of the most famous fictional academic biographies include: The DaVinci Code, by Niccolo J. Cipollino, Alexie Young’s The DaVinci Code, by Ann Leckie, and Laura Pascone’s The Curious Case of Vanished Scholars. Other fictional biographies that have been made into movies or television shows include: National Lampoon’s Animal House, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and The Perfect Score.
While all biographies should provide the reader with insight into the life of the subject, some genres of biography are more focused on one particular aspect of the subject, such as a biography of a musician, painter, or actor. Many times the focus will be on their personal life and how they created their art, how they met their wife, or how they grew up in poverty. While these biographies can be entertaining, they are not as informative as a fictional biography that would be more informative and perhaps a bit more in-depth. A biography of a musician, for example, would be more educational than a biography of a singer because the former has made music over a significant period of time. However, some songs have been covered by many different artists, so the same song may have been covered by multiple musicians throughout the years.
When writing an autobiography or memoir, it is important to write from the perspective of the subject. This means that when you are interviewing people or creating biographies, you should not include yourself in the story. You should focus on the subject as if you were a part of it, not the other way around. If you are going to include information about yourself, make sure it is general information about the life story, not specific details about a specific experience you had. This is the best way to remember basic facts in a biography because you will be able to recall them later on in your research.
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