Breathe Life into Your Subject
You should approach writing a biography with the idea that you are writing the “story” of a life. In fact, it's very much like writing about a character in a novel except that everything must be true. Employing the techniques discussed in this chapter, you need to get under the skin of your subject and inside his head and make him come alive in your book. While this is not always the case, you will find it is the way most biographers work.
Should I write a biography as though it was fiction?
While you may employ some techniques of fiction writing in your biography, especially if it's creative nonfiction, you need not do so. The important thing is not to present your subject as a one-dimensional person but rather as a complex and sometimes conflicted human being.
Three Styles of Writing Biographies
The writing style you employ will depend upon the type of biography. If you are writing a scholarly biography that is largely directed to an academic audience, then you can write in the style discussed in Chapter 7 for scholarly nonfiction even though some laypeople might read your book. For the most part, however, biographies are written for a general audience and you need to apply all of the writing skills you learned in Chapters 4 and 6, paying special attention to maintaining a personal voice and presenting your subject in a compelling way that will retain the reader's attention.
There is a third style of writing biographies that is becoming more common with the growing popularity of creative nonfiction and that is writing a biography employing some of the skills utilized in writing fiction. In Chapter 19, you will be provided an overview of how creative nonfiction is written.
