How to Write Biography Essay
Writing a biography is quite interesting assignment, which requires special tact and care. You are to tell the story of a person so that it is important to choose the right words, interesting facts and engaging manner of academic writing.
Choosing the Subject
First of all, you are to select a person to write about. There is a range of factors to consider in order to make the right choice of the subject:
- Choose a person, whose life experience is unique and interesting, a person, whose life is worth to be described. The choice of the subject also depends on the size of the biography: writing short biography is much easier than a long one;
- It is always a good choice to write about famous people, politicians, scientists or celebrities. They are interesting to the majority of people so that they will be willing to read their biography;
- Of course, there are a lot of ordinary people with extraordinary stories, and you can also choose to write about them. It will be a bit harder than to make a famous person the main character of your biography essay, as you are to choose only the most essential events in their lives and describe them.
Pre-writing
First of all, you need to interview the person, who is going to be the subject of your biography essay. If you cannot interview that particular person, try to find a friend or relative of him or her and ask them questions.
If you have a possibility to visit places, which are significant to the subject, do this. That is a good way of visual perception, which will help you to describe the event in a more realistic way. Explore the interests, motives, and influences of the person, whom you are writing about.
Structure of the Essay
Try to organize your biography in a logical and understandable way. Make it chronologically correct and use only verified facts. Usually, biography essay is divided into 3 parts:
- Birth and Childhood: provide readers with the information about the place and time your subject was born, give them historic context and write a few words about his or her family. You can also provide information about education, interests, hobbies etc.;
- Adult Life: this part should be devoted to the most significant events, which happened in the life of the subject. If it is a politician, you may write about his or her contribution to the social and political life of the country; if your subject is a writer, you can tell about his or her literary career, major works, style and genres;
- Death: If the subject of your biography is deceased, you should mention that fact in the text. You can write when, how and where he or she was buried.
Writing Process
After all abovementioned steps are done, sit down and star writing a biography essay. Make sure it corresponds to the requirement of your professor. If it should be of a particular size, do not make it shorter or longer.
Do not try to write an excellent biography at once. It is better to create multiple drafts. It means you are to write an essay and leave it for several hours or days, then read it again and make corrections if you need some, then again forget about it for some time and read again. Do it until you will be completely satisfied with the final version.
You can also ask somebody to read and tell you his or her opinion. Finally, proofread your paper carefully to avoid any grammar, spelling, style and other mistakes.