Be a Better Writer--BIOGRAPHY
Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2014 12:46 am
First, I should say that this lesson is about short biographical sketches, not full-length biographies. For information on that, you’ll need to consult with someone far more expert than I. But short biographies—like the length of Writing Challenge articles—those I can approach from the standpoint of a past challenge judge and a reader of challenge entries.
It seems to me that there’s sort of a continuum of possible ways to approach a biography. You can keep it strictly factual, with details about the person’s life, their accomplishments, the time and place in which they lived, their family, the things that influenced them, and the ways that they influenced the world (or, on a smaller scale, the ways that they influenced you).
The problem there is that your biography may sound like a school report or an encyclopedia article. The facts will be there, but it might not be particularly compelling reading. You will need to be an exceptionally gifted writer to make this sort of nonfiction come alive for your reader. It can be done, of course, with lively vocabulary, snappy pacing, humor or some other emotion, vivid description, and colorful characterization. There’s no reason why nonfiction shouldn’t contain these.
On the far end of the same continuum would be a fictionalized account of the person’s life. In this type of writing, you would take your own research and your own knowledge of the person’s life, but write it as fiction in which you imagine and portray situations and conversations as if they might have happened. Some writers who do this put a disclaimer at the end, explaining the liberty that they took with the person’s life.
The problems with doing this: If the person is still alive, or if they are only recently dead (and still have living relatives), that person or those who knew him may take exception to the fictionalized version of his life. In addition, you may veer too far from the truth, and your readers may not fully grasp that they are reading, in essence, an alternate reality. Finally, some writers may feel squeamish about writing something that they know not to be absolute truth about a person who is (or was) absolutely real.
Also, if your subject is still alive or recently dead, you may need to obtain permission from the person or their estate to write about them.
So…in the middle of this continuum, then, are compromises. You can write a factual biography in which you take some small degree of license in painting a verbal picture of your subject’s world, in order to make it come alive for your reader. You can stick strictly to known facts, but conceptualize a pivotal moment or conversation in your subject’s life. You get the idea.
It should be obvious, I think, that in a bit of writing as small as a Writing Challenge entry, it’ll be nearly impossible to capture a person’s entire life. You’ll probably want to choose one or two important moments, and write those as vividly as you can.
Also, you should know that in a work of nonfiction, you should cite your sources. Certain bits of information are commonly known, and if your subject is very familiar, citation isn’t necessary for that kind of information. For example, you don’t have to cite that George Washington was the first president of the United States, or that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus. But if you’ve done research to flesh out your knowledge of your biographical subject, or if you’re telling your readers something that’s not widely known, you’ll want to include an end note with your sources.
And while I’m on the subject of sources, I should probably mention plagiarism. No one at FaithWriters would knowingly plagiarize, I’m sure, but it could happen as a result of incorrect understanding of what constitutes plagiarism. When I taught high school, almost all of my students thought that just changing a few words made the work their own. With an online thesaurus, they plugged in a few synonyms and rearranged a sentence or two, and honestly thought that the work was now their own. It wasn’t.
The best way to avoid inadvertent plagiarism, in my opinion, is to read and research from several sources—but to totally close those tabs or those books when you’re doing your writing, and don’t look at them again. If you need to check the accuracy of a fact, do it once you’re done writing.
All of the hallmarks of good fiction writing—many of these are Writing Challenge judging criteria—should be present in a biography. It should start with a great hook, hold the reader’s interest, end with a kicker, contain interesting characters and compelling action. It should have a point, and it should be fresh and original.
(When I post these lessons, I try to include a link to a past entry of mine that illustrates the week's topic. I could only find this highly fictionalized version of an incident in the life of King Wenceslas, for which I included no sources. Oops.)
***
What do you have to add on the topic of writing mini-biographies?
If you’ve written one for FaithWriters, please link to it, and tell us about your process. Why did you choose that person? Did you do any fictionalizing in order to make it more interesting reading?
Do you have questions that I didn’t cover?
As always—if you have a request for another class on any writing-related topic, let me know.
It seems to me that there’s sort of a continuum of possible ways to approach a biography. You can keep it strictly factual, with details about the person’s life, their accomplishments, the time and place in which they lived, their family, the things that influenced them, and the ways that they influenced the world (or, on a smaller scale, the ways that they influenced you).
The problem there is that your biography may sound like a school report or an encyclopedia article. The facts will be there, but it might not be particularly compelling reading. You will need to be an exceptionally gifted writer to make this sort of nonfiction come alive for your reader. It can be done, of course, with lively vocabulary, snappy pacing, humor or some other emotion, vivid description, and colorful characterization. There’s no reason why nonfiction shouldn’t contain these.
On the far end of the same continuum would be a fictionalized account of the person’s life. In this type of writing, you would take your own research and your own knowledge of the person’s life, but write it as fiction in which you imagine and portray situations and conversations as if they might have happened. Some writers who do this put a disclaimer at the end, explaining the liberty that they took with the person’s life.
The problems with doing this: If the person is still alive, or if they are only recently dead (and still have living relatives), that person or those who knew him may take exception to the fictionalized version of his life. In addition, you may veer too far from the truth, and your readers may not fully grasp that they are reading, in essence, an alternate reality. Finally, some writers may feel squeamish about writing something that they know not to be absolute truth about a person who is (or was) absolutely real.
Also, if your subject is still alive or recently dead, you may need to obtain permission from the person or their estate to write about them.
So…in the middle of this continuum, then, are compromises. You can write a factual biography in which you take some small degree of license in painting a verbal picture of your subject’s world, in order to make it come alive for your reader. You can stick strictly to known facts, but conceptualize a pivotal moment or conversation in your subject’s life. You get the idea.
It should be obvious, I think, that in a bit of writing as small as a Writing Challenge entry, it’ll be nearly impossible to capture a person’s entire life. You’ll probably want to choose one or two important moments, and write those as vividly as you can.
Also, you should know that in a work of nonfiction, you should cite your sources. Certain bits of information are commonly known, and if your subject is very familiar, citation isn’t necessary for that kind of information. For example, you don’t have to cite that George Washington was the first president of the United States, or that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus. But if you’ve done research to flesh out your knowledge of your biographical subject, or if you’re telling your readers something that’s not widely known, you’ll want to include an end note with your sources.
And while I’m on the subject of sources, I should probably mention plagiarism. No one at FaithWriters would knowingly plagiarize, I’m sure, but it could happen as a result of incorrect understanding of what constitutes plagiarism. When I taught high school, almost all of my students thought that just changing a few words made the work their own. With an online thesaurus, they plugged in a few synonyms and rearranged a sentence or two, and honestly thought that the work was now their own. It wasn’t.
The best way to avoid inadvertent plagiarism, in my opinion, is to read and research from several sources—but to totally close those tabs or those books when you’re doing your writing, and don’t look at them again. If you need to check the accuracy of a fact, do it once you’re done writing.
All of the hallmarks of good fiction writing—many of these are Writing Challenge judging criteria—should be present in a biography. It should start with a great hook, hold the reader’s interest, end with a kicker, contain interesting characters and compelling action. It should have a point, and it should be fresh and original.
(When I post these lessons, I try to include a link to a past entry of mine that illustrates the week's topic. I could only find this highly fictionalized version of an incident in the life of King Wenceslas, for which I included no sources. Oops.)
***
What do you have to add on the topic of writing mini-biographies?
If you’ve written one for FaithWriters, please link to it, and tell us about your process. Why did you choose that person? Did you do any fictionalizing in order to make it more interesting reading?
Do you have questions that I didn’t cover?
As always—if you have a request for another class on any writing-related topic, let me know.