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Blog • Perfecting your Craft
Posted on Jun 05, 2024
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How to Write an Autobiography: The Story of Your Life
Anyone who’s lived a long, interesting life (as many of us have in one way or another!) may dream of someday turning their life into a book. However, the practicalities of how to write an autobiography can be daunting — especially to those who don’t have much writing experience.
If you feel ready to write your autobiography but aren’t sure where to start, this guide will take you from opening lines to (hopefully) publishing your autobiography for all the world to read.
1. Understand what an autobiography entails
When asked to picture an autobiography, you might think of a celebrity tell-all or political memoir. This isn’t inaccurate ; a memoir would definitely fall under the autobiography umbrella. But to be really precise, there are a few key differences between memoirs and autobiographies:
- Memoirs tend to be more thematic and focus on a central narrative (similar to a novel), whereas an autobiography is highly factual and reads more like “classic” nonfiction.
- Memoirs focus on a specific period or theme in a person’s life, while autobiographies aim to give a complete, chronological picture.
- Lastly, many memoirs are written while the writer is still young. An autobiography, though, should be written later in one’s life — at a point where one’s life story can be told comprehensively.
An autobiography is also different from a biography in that it is always narrated by the subject. Note that we’ve said “narrated” instead of “written” because, indeed, many autobiographies are created with the help of ghostwriters!
Ghostwritten autobiographies aren’t just for celebrities, either. People from all walks of life work with ghostwriters to record their stories or simply guide them through the process.
If that sounds like you, have a look through our vetted ghostwriters on the Reedsy marketplace . You might just find your dream collaborator!
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Should you write a memoir or an autobiography?
In other words, if you’re still young (be honest here!), and/or if the book you want to write is more a series of vignettes revolving around a central theme, you may have a memoir on your hands. If that’s the case, check out our guide to how to write a memoir for more tailored advice.
But if you’ve already lived a long, interesting life — one that you feel prepared to share chronologically and completely — then an autobiography is the medium for you.
2. Outline your life's main “beats”
You might think you don’t need to be too picky about what to include in your autobiography since it’s supposed to be a “complete” account — and you’d be mostly right! That said, even in a fairly exhaustive autobiography, it’s still useful to identify the key “beats” before you begin.
What should you include in an autobiography?
While each person’s autobiography will be unique to them, readers expect certain “beats” to be covered. To get the ball rolling, here’s a list of classic autobiographical beats to hit:
- 🐣 Your birth and family background – possibly including how your parents met, where they were living at the time of your birth, whether you have any siblings, etc.
- 📚 Your early days at school – including the friends you made (whether long-lasting or not), your academic achievements (and failures), and any critical moments related to your future goals/actions.
- 🧑🏽💻 Your first job – this is often enlightening for readers, particularly if it had some bearing on your later career; whether because you realized that you loved the work or, more likely, that you didn’t want to work your first job forever.
- 👩❤️💋👩 Your first relationship – similar to your first job, this is often a major stepping stone into adulthood and understanding your priorities.
- Moving house;
- Having children;
- Getting promoted;
- Receiving an award;
- Traveling somewhere new;
- Or discovering anything significant about yourself.
- 💼 Your retirement – if applicable, this will likely be one of the last beats you cover; it might include why you decided to retire, how you are spending your time nowadays, and any plans for the future.
Remember that each beat you include should contribute to a holistic portrait of your life — whether it’s something that shaped your character or lends context to another parallel moment later on.
But not everything will be relevant. There’s no need to include random things that have no bearing on any other event or important element of your life; that said, the lucky thing about memory is that you likely won’t recall most of those things anyway!
Need some help outlining your autobiography? Check out our Biography Outline Template below — while not entirely chronological, it’s a great starting point for any aspiring autobiographical author.
![my autobiography about my life FREE RESOURCE](https://blog-cdn.reedsy.com/directories/admin/content_upgrade/125/large_7168e385a9bc874ed1865ca686b3f534.webp)
FREE RESOURCE
Biography Outline Template
Craft a satisfying story arc for your biography with our free template.
3. Try to write in chronological order
Having come up with a solid outline, you should now feel (somewhat) prepared to start writing your autobiography… and, ideally, to start writing it in chronological order.
While many books can be drafted non-chronologically, an autobiography is not one of them. This is because each new chapter quite literally builds on the last; this is different even from a memoir, which often skips around in time and leaves out details. The best way to ensure you’re not missing anything is to write your autobiography as chronologically as possible!
How to start an autobiography
On the note of starting your autobiography, it’s pretty straightforward: begin either with your birth or slightly before, e.g., with your parents. Unlike a memoir, which can start in medias res ( in the middle of the action ), an autobiography should start ab ovo , or “from the egg.”
This is one of the biggest benefits of writing chronologically: you always know where to start, and indeed, what should come next. Here are two strong autobiography openings to give a sense of how yours might sound:
I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb
When I was born, people in our village commiserated with my mother and nobody congratulated my father. I arrived at dawn as the last star blinked out… I was a girl in a land where rifles are fired in celebration of a son, while daughters are hidden away behind a curtain, their role in life simply to prepare food and give birth to children.
Iacocca: An Autobiography by Lee Iacocca and William Novak:
Nicola Iacocca, my father, arrived in this country in 1902 at the age of twelve — poor, alone, and scared. He used to say the only thing he was sure of when he got here was that the world was round. And that was only because another Italian boy named Christopher Columbus had preceded him by 410 years, almost to the day.
Though each opening takes a different tack — Yousafzai’s autobiography begins with her actual birth, while Iacocca’s begins even earlier, with his father’s arrival in America — both serve as effective starts to their respective books and set the tone for what’s to come.
![my autobiography about my life](https://blog-cdn.reedsy.com/directories/admin/attachments/large_I-Am-Malala-a00b25.webp)
4. Include plenty of detail
In case we haven’t drilled down on this enough, let’s reiterate once more: an autobiography should be a complete overview of your life from beginning to end. That means that as you get into properly writing it, you should include as much detail as you can remember.
Taking one of our previous suggested beats — “your first job” — as an example, here are a few questions you might ask yourself to recount your memories in more detail:
- How did you get your first job?
- What made you want to work there?
- What was the environment/atmosphere like — physically and emotionally?
- What was your greatest accomplishment at this job? Your greatest failure?
- What did you learn from working there? How did it affect your later career?
As you can probably tell from these questions, the natural corollary to the advice of “be detailed!” is to also be honest . Don’t shy away from your failures or regrets — an autobiography without mistakes is not an autobiography, but rather a puff piece.
![my autobiography about my life Some of the cast of The Office](https://blog-cdn.reedsy.com/directories/admin/attachments/large_filmy-serial-ofis-the-office-a22e5b.webp)
Examples of strong biographical detail
For those wondering how to inject detail into their writing, here are two examples from great autobiographies that do exactly that. Each takes a different approach to engage readers — perhaps you can pick up some descriptive techniques to suit your own life story.
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
There was no natural light in my cell; a single bulb burned overhead twenty-four hours a day. I did not have a wristwatch and I often thought it was the middle of the night when it was only late afternoon. I had nothing to read, nothing to write on or with, no one to talk to [...] After a time in solitary, I relished the company even of the insects in my cell, and found myself on the verge of initiating conversations with a cockroach.
This passage’s evocative details — the single lightbulb, Mandela’s loss of his internal clock — convey the crushing loneliness of solitary confinement, yet also add levity with the bit about cockroaches.
This give-and-take style may be useful if you, too, are writing an autobiography which includes difficult or traumatic elements. Don’t shy away from the hard parts, but don’t let solemnity overpower your personality and voice!
Becoming by Michelle Obama
When you’re little, a piano can look like it has a thousand keys. You’re staring at an expanse of black and white that stretches farther than two small arms can reach. [...] The keys on Robbie’s piano had a subtle unevenness of color and shape, places where bits of ivory had broken off over time, leaving them looking like a set of bad teeth.
This passage uses sensory details and an intimate tone to draw readers in, describing not just how the piano looks, but how it feels to play. All this makes for a very compelling narrative style — almost like that of a novel. If you want your autobiography to flow this way, try reading more nonfiction in this style (indeed, many memoirs read quite similarly).
📚 Looking for more examples of brilliant biographical writing? Check out this list of The 30 Best Biographies of All Time to inspire you.
5. Do research to fill in the gaps
No matter how carefully you rack your brains, you won’t be able to recall every detail of your life. That’s where research comes in! Here are a couple of things you can do to learn more about yourself and your past.
Interview friends and family
While you’ve likely retained the core of each important life memory, some details will still elude you. For these, you might call on friends, family members, and anyone else who was in your life at the time — interviewing them should help flesh things out in your autobiography.
You might try a few different interview strategies, depending on what you’re hoping to achieve:
- Ask specific questions based on what you can’t remember/don’t know (e.g. “Whose wedding was that again?” or “Why did Dad quit that job in Pasadena?”);
- Ask your subject to recount everything they can about an event (e.g. “Tell me how you remember our high school graduation”); or
- Ask them if they have any key memories of you which they would like to talk about.
The first interview style will be the quickest, but the latter two might yield more interesting results. If you’re prioritizing thoroughness, we’d highly recommend calling up a few old friends or close family members, sitting down, and recording your interview for a few hours.
![my autobiography about my life](https://blog-cdn.reedsy.com/directories/admin/attachments/large_Interview-065d53.webp)
Do “traditional" research if needed
Having written as much as you can, and interviewed other people to add their stories, you might still find yourself missing information. If applicable, this is where you could turn to “traditional” research — that is, looking up relevant records and documentation, or even taking a field trip or two to previous neighborhoods.
It’s up to you how far to go with this; just don’t go mad, and try to avoid any rabbit holes that tempt you to write an entirely new book. (Then again, that could always be your next project! Check out our post on how to write a nonfiction book to learn more.)
6. Give your draft a discerning edit
You’ve finally finished a detailed draft — congratulations! Even if you don’t do anything else with your autobiography, your friends and family will be wildly impressed, and your descendants will have a fascinatingly thorough record of your life.
But if you want to publish your autobiography — or even if you suspect it hasn’t turned out quite as expected — you’ll now need to enter the editing stage. There are a few different types of editing to consider for your autobiography, including:
- Structural editing to heighten the impact of your key beats;
- Line editing to improve the syntax, flow, and clarity of your sentences; and
- Fact-checking and proofreading to ensure your book doesn’t contain any errors.
Again, it’s up to you how extensively you want to edit your autobiography. If you’re doing it yourself, we’d suggest going top-to-bottom — first structural editing, then line editing, then proofreading — to avoid unnecessary work. ( Check out this post on how to self-edit your book for key tips!)
And if this all feels overwhelming, you can always work with a professional editor to get your autobiography in tip-top shape . Autobiography and memoir specialists can help turn your work into an Iacocca-worthy masterpiece.
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7. Format and publish your autobiography
Now comes the really fun part, if you so choose it — formatting and publishing your autobiography for everyone to read!
Biography fans out there will know that auto/biographies often contain a selection of personal photos within the text. If you’re envisioning this, it will require specialty formatting; you’ll either need to intersperse photos throughout the text or format your book with a “photo section” in the middle (the more common option).
![my autobiography about my life my autobiography about my life](https://blog-cdn.reedsy.com/directories/admin/attachments/large_mceclip0-af69ff.webp)
You can do this with free book formatting tools like Reedsy Studio . Or if you’re not confident in your formatting abilities, consider hiring a professional typesetter to help !
As for publishing, many autobiographers choose to self-publish their books to get them out as quickly as possible, and to have more control over the process. However, if you’re interested in selling your autobiography to a publisher — a reasonable option if you are a businessperson, and especially if you already have a decent following — we’d suggest this post on how to write a non-fiction query letter to get you started.
Whatever path you take, whether you decide to publish it or not, writing the story of your life is an incredibly enlightening endeavor. If you're interested in novels instead, check out this advice from NYT bestselling author Caroline Leavitt ! We hope this guide has helped you on your journey; indeed, as autobiographical writing teaches us, the journey really is the greatest reward.
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How To Write an Autobiography 2024 (Tips, Templates, & Guide)
Your life story has value, merit, and significance. You want to share it with the world, but maybe you don’t know how .
Here’s how to write an autobiography:
Write an autobiography by creating a list of the most important moments, people, and places in your life. Gather photos, videos, letters, and notes about these experiences. Then, use an outline, templates, sentence starters, and questions to help you write your autobiography .
In this article, you are going to learn the fastest method for writing your autobiography.
We are going to cover everything you need to know with examples and a free, downloadable, done-for-you template.
What Is an Autobiography?
![my autobiography about my life Typewriter, lightbulb, and crumpled paper - How To Write an Autobiography](https://www.writingbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Typewriter-lightbulb-and-crumpled-paper-How-To-Write-an-Autobiography.png)
Table of Contents
Before you can write an autobiography, you must first know the definition.
An autobiography is the story of your life, written by you. It covers the full span of your life (at least, up until now), hitting on the most significant moments, people and events.
When you write your autobiography, you write an intimate account of your life.
What Should I Include In an Autobiography?
If you are scratching your head, baffled about what to include in your autobiography, you are not alone.
After all, a big part of how to write an autobiography is knowing what to put in and what to leave out of your life story. Do you focus on every detail?
Every person? Won’t your autobiography be too long?
A good way to think about how to write an autobiography is to use the Movie Trailer Method.
What do movie trailers include?
- High emotional moments
- The big events
- The most important characters
When you plan, organize, and write your autobiography, keep the Movie Trailer Method in mind. You can even watch a bunch of free movie trailers on YouTube for examples of how to write an autobiography using the Movie Trailer Method.
When wondering what to include in your autobiography, focus on what would make the cut for a movie trailer of your life:
- Most important people (like family, friends, mentors, coaches, etc.)
- Significant events (like your origin story, vacations, graduations, life turning points, life lessons)
- Emotional moments (When you were homeless, when you battled a life-threatening condition, or when you fell in love)
- Drama or suspense (Did you make it into Harvard? Did your first surgery go well? Did your baby survive?)
Autobiography Structure Secrets
Like any compelling story, a well-structured autobiography often follows a pattern that creates a logical flow and captures readers’ attention.
Traditionally, autobiographies begin with early memories, detailing the writer’s childhood, family background, and the events or people that shaped their formative years.
From here, the narrative typically progresses chronologically, covering major life events like schooling, friendships, challenges, achievements, career milestones, and personal relationships.
It’s essential to weave these events with introspective insights.
This allows readers to understand not just the what, but also the why behind the author’s choices and experiences.
Towards the end, an effective autobiography often includes reflections on lessons learned, changes in perspective over time, and the wisdom acquired along life’s journey.
Example of the Structure:
- Introduction: A gripping event or anecdote that gives readers a hint of what to expect. It could be a pivotal moment or challenge that defines the essence of the story.
- Childhood and Early Memories: Recounting family dynamics, birthplace, cultural background, and memorable incidents from early years.
- Adolescence and Discovering Identity: Experiences during teenage years, challenges faced, friendships formed, and personal evolutions.
- Pursuits and Passions: Describing education, early career choices, or any particular hobby or skill that played a significant role in the author’s life.
- Major Life Events and Challenges: Chronicles of marriage, parenthood, career shifts, or any significant setbacks and how they were overcome.
- Achievements and Milestones: Celebrating major accomplishments and recounting the journey to achieving them.
- Reflections and Wisdom: Sharing life lessons, changes in beliefs or values over time, and offering insights gained from lived experiences.
- Conclusion: Summarizing the journey, contemplating on the present state, and sharing hopes or aspirations for the future.
How To Write an Autobiography Quickly: Strategies & Templates
Want the quickest way to organize and write your autobiography in record time? You can literally write your autobiography in 7 days or less with this method.
The secret is to use done-for-you templates.
I have personally designed and collected a series of templates to take you from a blank page to a fully complete Autobiography. I call this the How to Write an Autobiography Blueprint.
And it’s completely free to download right from this article. 🙂
In the How to Write an Autobiography Blueprint, you get:
- The Autobiography Questions Template
- The Autobiography Brainstorm Templates
- The Autobiography Outline Template
Here is an image of it so that you know exactly what you get when you download it:
![my autobiography about my life Autobiography Blueprint](https://www.writingbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Autobiography-Blueprint-1-724x1024.png)
How To Write an Autobiography: Step-by-Step
When you sit down to write an autobiography, it’s helpful to have a step-by-step blueprint to follow.
You already have the done-for-you templates that you can use to organize and write an autobiography faster than ever before. Now here’s a complete step-by-step guide on how to maximize your template.
- Brainstorm Ideas
- Order your sections (from medium to high interest)
- Order the ideas in each section (from medium to high interest)
- Write three questions to answer in each section
- Choose a starter sentence
- Complete a title template
- Write each section of your by completing the starter sentence and answering all three questions
Brainstorm Your Autobiography
The first step in writing your autobiography is to brainstorm.
Give yourself time and space to write down the most significant people, events, lessons, and experiences in your life. The templates in the How to Write an Autobiography Blueprint provide sections for you to write down your brainstormed ideas.
![my autobiography about my life How to Brainstorm Your Autobiography](https://www.writingbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/1-724x1024.png)
This will help you organize your ideas into what will become the major sections of your book.
These will be:
- Y our most significant events and experiences.
- The people who impacted you the most.
- The challenges you have overcome.
- Your achievements and successes.
- The lessons you have learned.
The “other” sections on the second page of the Brainstorm template is for creating your own sections or to give you more space for the sections I provided in case you run out of space.
As I brainstorm, I find asking myself specific questions really activates my imagination.
So I have compiled a list of compelling questions to help you get ideas down on paper or on your screen.
![my autobiography about my life How to Write an Autobiography: Top 10 Questions](https://www.writingbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/How-to-Write-an-Autobiography_-Top-10-Questions-576x1024.png)
Order Your Sections (From Medium to High Interest)
The next step is to order your main sections.
The main sections are the five (or more) sections from your Brainstorm templates (Significant events, significant people, life lessons, challenges, successes, other, etc). This order will become the outline and chapters for your book.
How do you decide what comes first, second or third?
I recommend placing the sections in order of interest. Ask yourself, “What’s the most fascinating part of my life?”
If it’s a person, then write the name of that section (Significant People) on the last line in the How to Write an Autobiography Outline Template. If it’s an experience, place the name of that section (Significant Events) on the last line.
For example, if you met the Pope, you might want to end with that nugget from your life. If you spent three weeks lost at sea and survived on a desert island by spearfishing, that is your ending point.
Then complete the Outline by placing the remaining sections in order of interest. You can work your way backward from high interest to medium interest.
If you are wondering why I say “medium to high interest” instead of “low to high interest” it is because there should be no “low interest” parts of your autobiography.
But wait, what if you met the Pope AND spent three weeks lost at sea? How do you choose which one comes first or last?
First of all, I want to read this book! Second, when in doubt, default to chronological order. Whatever event happened first, start there.
Here is an example of how it might look:
![my autobiography about my life Autobiography Example](https://www.writingbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Autobiography-Example--724x1024.png)
Order The Ideas in Each Section (From Medium To High Interest)
Now, organize the ideas inside of each section. Again, order the ideas from medium to high interest).
Within your “Significant People” section, decide who you want to talk about first, second, third, etc. You can organize by chronological order (who you met first) but I recommend building to the most interesting or most significant person.
This creates a more compelling read.
Keep in mind that the most significant person might not be the most well-known, most famous, or most popular. The most significant person might be your family member, friend, partner, or child.
It comes down to who shaped your life the most.
So, if your “significant people list” includes your dad, a famous social media influencer, and Mike Tyson, your dad might come last because he had the biggest significance in your life.
Write Three Questions to Answer in Each Section
Ok, you’ve done the heavy lifting already. You have the major sections organized and outlined.
Next on your autobiography to-do list is to choose and write down three questions you are going to answer in each section. You can write your questions down in the provided “boxes” for each section on the template outline (or on another piece of paper.
This is easier than it might seem.
Simply choose one of the sample autobiography questions below or create your own:
- Why did I choose this person/event?
- What does this person/event mean to me?
- How did I meet this person?
- Where did it happen?
- When did it happen?
- Why did it happen?
- How did it happen?
- What is the most interesting part?
- How did I feel about this person or event?
- How do I feel now?
- Why does this person or event matters to me?
- How did this person or event change my life?
- What is the most challenging part?
- How did I fail?
- How did I succeed?
- What did I learn?
Questions are the perfect way to write quickly and clearly. I LOVE writing to questions. It’s how I write these blog posts and articles.
Choose a Starter Sentence
Sometimes the hardest part of any project is knowing how to start.
Even though we know we can always go back and edit our beginnings, so many of us become paralyzed with indecision at the starting gate.
That’s why I provided sample starter sentences in your How to Write an Autobiography Blueprint.
Here are the story starters:
- I began writing this book when…
- Of all the experiences in my life, this one was the most…
- I’ve been a…
- My name is…
- Growing up in…
- It wasn’t even a…
- It all started when…
- I first…
- I was born…
Keep in mind that you do not need to begin your book with one of these story starters. I provide them simply to get you going.
The key is to not get bogged down in this, or any, part of writing your autobiography. Get organized and then get writing.
Complete a Title Template
At the top of the How to Write an Autobiography Outline is a place for you to write your book title.
Some authors struggle forever with a title. And that’s ok. What’s not ok is getting stuck. What’s not ok is if coming up with your title prevents you from finishing your book.
So, I provided a few title templates to help juice your creativity.
Just like the story starters, you do not need to use these title templates, but you certainly can. All you need to do is fill in the title templates below and then write your favorite one (for now) at the top of your outline. Presto! You have your working title.
You can always go back and change it later.
How to Write an Autobiography Title templates:
- [Your Name]: [Phrase or Tag Line]
- The [Your Last Name] Files
- Born [Activity]: A [Career]’s Life
- The Perfect [Noun]: The Remarkable Life of [Your Name]
Examples using the Templates:
- Christopher Kokoski: Blog Until You Drop
- The Kokoski Files
- Born Writing: A Blogger’s Life
- The Perfect Freelancer: The Remarkable Life of Christopher Kokoski
Write Your Autobiography
You have your outline. You have your title, templates, and sentence starters. All that is left to do is write your autobiography.
However, you can use tools like Jasper AI and a few other cool tricks to craft the most riveting book possible.
This is the easy way to remarkable writing.
Check out this short video that goes over the basics of how to write an autobiography:
How To Write an Autobiography (All the Best Tips)
Now that you are poised and ready to dash out your first draft, keep the following pro tips in mind:
- Be vulnerable. The best autobiographies share flaws, faults, foibles, and faux pas. Let readers in on the real you.
- Skip the boring parts. There is no need to detail every meal, car ride, or a gripping trip to the grocery store. Unless you ran into the Russian Mafia near the vegetables or the grocery store is perched on the side of a mountain above the jungles of Brazil.
- Keep your autobiography character-driven . This is the story of YOU!
- Be kind to others (or don’t). When writing about others in your story, keep in mind that there may be fallout or backlash from your book.
- Consider a theme: Many autobiographies are organized by theme. A perfect example is Becoming . Each section of the book includes “becoming” in the title. Themes connect and elevate each part of the autobiography.
- Write your story in vignettes (or scenes). Each vignette is a mini-story with a beginning, middle, and end. Each vignette builds. Each vignette should be described in rich sensory language that shows the reader the experience instead of telling the reader about the experience. Each vignette is immersive, immediate, and intimate.
- Include snippets of dialogue. Use quotation marks just like in fiction. Show the dialogue in brief back-and-forth tennis matches of conversation. Remember to leave the boring parts out!
- Choose a consistent tone. Some autobiographies are funny like Bossy Pants by Tina Fey. Others are serious such as Open by Andre Agassi. Your story (like most stories) will likely include a mix of emotions but choose an overall tone and stick with it.
- Don’t chronicle, captivate . Always think about how to make each section, each chapter, each page, each paragraph, and each sentence more compelling. You want to tell the truth, but HOW you tell the truth is up to you. Create suspense, conflict, and mystery. Let drama linger until it becomes uncomfortable. Don’t solve problems quickly or take away tension right away.
How Do I Format an Autobiography?
Most autobiographies are written in the first person (using the pronouns I, me, we, and us).
Your autobiography is written about you so write as yourself instead of pretending to be writing about someone else.
Most autobiographies are also written in chronological order, from birth right up to your current age, with all the boring parts left out. That doesn’t mean you can’t play around with the timeline.
Sometimes it’s more interesting to start at a high moment, backtrack to the beginning and show how you got to that high moment.
Whatever format you choose, be intentional, and make the choice based on making the most compelling experience possible for your readers.
How Long Should an Autobiography Be?
There are no rules to how long an autobiography should be but a rough guideline is to aim for between 200 and 400 pages.
This will keep your book in line with what most readers expect for books in general, and will help get your book traditionally published or help with marketing your self-published book.
How To Write a Short Autobiography
You write a short autobiography the same way that you write a long autobiography.
You simply leave more out of the story.
You cut everything down to the bones. Or you choose a slice of your life as you do in a memoir. This often means limiting the people in your book, reducing the events and experiences, and shrinking your story to a few pivotal moments in your life.
How To Start an Autobiography
The truth is that you can start your autobiography in any number of ways.
Here are four common ways to begin an autobiography.
- Start at the beginning (of your life, career or relationship, etc.)
- Start at a high moment of drama or interest.
- Start at the end of the story and work backward
- Start with why you wrote the book.
Good Autobiography Titles
If you are still stuck on titling your autobiography, consider going to Amazon to browse published works. You can even just Google “autobiographies.”
When you read the titles of 10, 20, or 50 other autobiographies, you will start to see patterns or get ideas for your own titles. (HINT: the title templates in the Autobiography Blueprint were reverse-engineered from popular published books.
Also, check out the titles of the full autobiography examples below that I have included right here in this article.
Types of Autobiographies
There are several different kinds of autobiographies.
Each one requires a similar but slightly nuanced approach to write effectively. The lessons in this article will serve as a great starting point.
Autobiography Types:
- Autobiography for School
- Autobiography Novel
- Autobiography for a Job
- Short Autobiography
- Autobiography for Kids
Therefore, there is actually not just one way to write an autobiography.
Memoir vs. Autobiography: Are They The Same?
It’s common to feel confused about a memoir and an autobiography. I used to think they were the same thing.
But, nope, they’re not.
They are pretty similar, which is the reason for all the confusion. A memoir is the story of one part of your life. An autobiography is the story of your full life (up until now).
What Is the Difference Between an Autobiography and a Biography?
An autobiography is when you write about your own life. A biography, on the other hand, is when you write the story of someone else’s life.
So, if I write a book about the life of the President, that’s a biography.
If the President writes a story about his or her own life, that’s an autobiography.
What Not To Include In an Autobiography
Autobiographies are meant to be a snapshot of our lives that we can share with others, but there are some things that are best left out.
Here are three things you should avoid including in your autobiography:
1) Anything That Readers Will Skip
Your life may not be filled with non-stop excitement, but that doesn’t mean you need to include every mundane detail in your autobiography.
Stick to the highlights and leave out the low points.
2) Character Attacks on Others
It’s okay to discuss conflicts you’ve had with others, but don’t use your autobiography as a platform to attack someone’s character.
Keep it civil and focus on your own experiences and how they’ve affected you.
3) Skipping Highlights
Just because something embarrassing or painful happened to you doesn’t mean you should gloss over it in your autobiography.
These are the moments that shape us and make us who we are today, so don’t skip past them just because they’re uncomfortable.
By following these simple tips, you can ensure that your autobiography is interesting, honest, and engaging.
How To Write an Autobiography: Autobiography Examples
I have always found examples to be extremely instructive. Especially complete examples of finished products. In this case, books.
Below you will find examples of published autobiographies for adults and for kids. These examples will guide you, motivate you and inspire you to complete your own life story.
They are listed here as examples, not as endorsements, although I think they are all very good.
The point is that you don’t have to agree with anything written in the books to learn from them.
Autobiography Examples for Adults
- A Promised Land (Autobiography of Barack Obama)
- If You Ask Me: (And of Course You Won’t) (Betty White)
- It’s a Long Story: My Life (Willie Nelson)
- Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography (Rob Lowe)
- Becoming (Michelle Obama)
Autobiography Examples for Kids
- This Kid Can Fly: It’s About Ability (NOT Disability) (Aaron Philips)
- Bee Fearless: Dream Like a Kid (Mikaila Ulmer)
Tools to Write Your Autobiography
Here are some recommended tools to help you write your autobiography:
Recommended Tools | Learn More |
---|---|
Jasper AI | |
Show Not Tell GPT | |
Dragon Professional Speech Dictation and Voice Recognition | |
Surface Laptop | |
Bluehost | |
Sqribble (eBook maker) |
Final Thoughts: How To Write An Autobiography
Thank you for reading my article on How to Write an Autobiography.
Now that you know all of the secrets to write your book, you may want to get it published, market it, and continue to upskill yourself as an author.
In that case, read these posts next:
- Can Anyone Write A Book And Get It Published?
- The Best Writing Books For Beginners 2022 (My 10 Favorites)
- Why Do Writers Hate Adverbs? (The Final Answer)
- How To Write a Manifesto: 20 Ultimate Game-Changing Tips
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Shaping Your Legacy: How to Write a Compelling Autobiography
- The Speaker Lab
- March 12, 2024
Table of Contents
Ever thought about how your life story would read if it were a book? Writing an autobiography is like creating a map of your personal journey, each chapter representing milestones that shaped you. But where do you start and how can you ensure the tale holds interest?
This guide will help unravel those questions by delving into what makes an autobiography stand out, planning techniques to keep your narrative on track, writing tips for engaging storytelling, and even ethical considerations when revealing private aspects of your life.
We’ll also touch on refining drafts and navigating publishing options. By the end of this read, you’ll be equipped with all the insights you need to create a compelling autobiography!
Understanding the Essence of an Autobiography
An autobiography provides a comprehensive view of one’s life journey from birth to the present day. Imagine climbing into a time machine where every chapter represents different eras in your life. The goal of an autobiography is to allow readers to explore a factual, chronological telling of the author’s life.
Autobiographies aren’t merely catalogues of events, however; they need soulful introspection too. Think about why certain episodes mattered more than others and how those experiences influenced your perspectives or decisions later on.
You’ll also want to infuse emotional honesty, allowing yourself vulnerability when recalling both triumphant milestones and painful obstacles. Authenticity creates connections between authors and their audience, so let them see real human emotions behind every word written.
Distinguishing Features Of An Autobiography
The unique thing about autobiographies is they are first-person narratives . This allows readers to experience everything through your eyes, as if they’re living vicariously through you. From triumphs to trials, each page unravels another layer of who you are.
While memoirs are also first-person narratives of a person’s life, there are different from autobiographies. In a memoir, the author focuses on a particular time period or theme in their life. If you’d rather skip the details and dates needed for an autobiography and focus more on emotional truths, you might consider writing a memoir.
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Pre-Writing Stage: Planning Your Autobiography
The planning stage is a crucial part of writing your autobiography. It’s where you map out the significant events in your life, establish a timeline, and identify who will be reading your story.
Selecting Key Life Events
To start, you need to pinpoint key moments that have shaped you. While you will include plenty of factual details in your autobiography, you won’t include every single one. Rather, you’ll be spending the majority of your autobiography focusing on the transformative experiences that defined your life journey. After all, an autobiography is not just a catalogue of events; it’s also an exploration into what these experiences meant to you.
Establishing A Timeline
Next up is establishing a timeline for your narrative flow. Since you’re writing an autobiography, it’s important to first map out your story chronologically so that you can keep your events straight in your mind. MasterClass has several suggestions for key elements you might want to include in your timeline.
Identifying Your Audience
Finding out who’ll read your book helps shape its tone and style. Self-Publishing School says understanding whether it’s for close family members or broader public can guide how personal or universal themes should be presented.
While this process might feel overwhelming initially, take time with this stage. Good planning sets solid foundations for creating an engaging autobiography.
Writing Techniques for an Engaging Autobiography
If you’re on the journey to pen down your life story, let’s dive into some techniques that can help transform it from a simple narrative into a riveting read. An engaging autobiography is more than just facts and dates—it’s about weaving your experiences in such a way that they captivate readers.
Incorporating Dialogue
The first technique involves incorporating dialogue. Rather than telling your audience what happened, show them through conversations. It lets the reader experience events as if they were there with you. As renowned author Stephen King suggests , dialogue is crucial in defining a the character of a person (including yourself).
Using Vivid Descriptions
Vivid descriptions are another effective tool in creating an immersive reading experience. But remember: overdoing it might overwhelm or bore the reader, so find balance between being descriptive and concise.
Narrative Techniques
Different narrative techniques can also enhance storytelling in autobiographies. For instance, foreshadowing creates suspense; flashbacks provide deeper context; and stream of consciousness presents thoughts as they occur naturally—a powerful way to share personal reflections.
All these writing tools combined will give you a gripping account of your life journey—one where every turn of page reveals more layers of depth and dimensionality about who you are as both character and narrator.
Structuring Your Autobiography for Maximum Impact
Deciding on the right structure for your autobiography is essential to ensure your book captivates readers and keeps them engaged.
The first step towards structuring your autobiography effectively is deciding whether to organize it chronologically or thematically. A chronological approach takes readers on a journey through time, letting each event unfold as you experienced it. On the other hand, a thematic approach revolves around central themes that have defined your life—think resilience, ambition or transformation—and might jump back and forth in time.
Creating Chapters
An effective way to manage the vast amount of information in an autobiography is by dividing it into chapters. Each chapter should be structured around a specific time frame (if you’re opting for chronological order) or theme (if taking the thematic approach). The key here isn’t necessarily sticking rigidly to these categories but using them as guides to help shape and direct your narrative flow.
Crafting Compelling Beginnings and Endings
A strong beginning pulls people into your world while an impactful ending stays with them long after they’ve closed the book—a little like how memorable speeches often start with something surprising yet relatable and end leaving audiences pondering over what they’ve heard. So consider starting off with something unexpected that gives insight into who you are rather than birthplace/date details right away. For endings, look at wrapping up major themes from throughout the book instead of simply closing out on latest happenings in your life.
Remember, structuring an autobiography is as much about the art of storytelling as it is about chronicling facts. Use structure to draw readers in and take them on a journey through your life’s highs and lows—all the moments that made you who you are today.
Ethical Considerations When Writing an Autobiography
When penning your life story, it’s important to respect privacy and handle sensitive issues well. Because let’s face it, writing about others in our lives can be a slippery slope. We need to tread carefully.
Respecting Privacy: Telling Your Story Without Invading Others’
The first thing we have to consider is the right of privacy for those who cross paths with our narrative journey. While they might play crucial roles in our stories, remember that their experiences are their own too.
A good rule of thumb is to get explicit consent before mentioning anyone extensively or revealing sensitive information about them. In some cases where this isn’t possible, anonymizing details or using pseudonyms could help maintain privacy while keeping the essence of your story intact. Author Tracy Seeley sheds more light on how one should handle such situations responsibly.
Navigating Sensitive Topics With Care
Sensitive topics often make for compelling narratives but dealing with them requires tact and empathy. You’re walking a tightrope, balancing honesty and sensitivity, a fall from which can lead to hurt feelings or even legal troubles.
An excellent way around this dilemma would be by focusing on how these experiences affected you personally rather than detailing the event itself. Remember, your autobiography is an opportunity to share your life experiences, not just a platform for airing grievances or settling scores.
Maintaining Honesty: Your Authentic Self Is the Best Narrator
Above all else, stay truthful when writing your autobiography, both when you’re writing about sensitive topics and even when you’re not. While it can be tempting to bend the facts so that your audience sees you in a more positive light, maintaining honesty is the best thing you can do for yourself.
Editing and Revising Your Autobiography
Your initial draft is finished, but the job isn’t done yet. Editing and revising your autobiography can feel like a daunting task, but it’s essential for creating a polished final product.
The Importance of Self-Editing
You may feel that you have written your autobiography perfectly the first time, but there are always ways to make it better. The beauty of self-editing lies in refining your story to make sure it resonates with readers. You’re not just fixing typos or grammar mistakes; you’re looking at structure, flow, and consistency. Essentially you’re asking yourself: does this piece tell my life story in an engaging way?
Inviting Feedback from Others
No matter how meticulous we are as writers, our own work can sometimes evade us. Inviting feedback from others is invaluable during the revision process. They provide fresh eyes that can spot inconsistencies or confusing parts that may have slipped past us.
Hiring a Professional Editor
If you’re serious about publishing your autobiography and making an impact with your words, hiring a professional editor can be worth its weight in gold. An editor won’t just fix errors—they’ll help streamline sentences and enhance readability while respecting your unique voice.
Remember to approach editing and revising with patience—it’s part of the writing journey. Don’t rush through it; give each word careful consideration before moving onto publication options for your autobiography.
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Publishing Options for Your Autobiography
Once you’ve spent time and energy creating your autobiography, the following challenge is to make it available for others. But don’t fret! There are numerous options available for releasing your work.
Traditional Publishing Houses
A conventional path many authors take is partnering with a traditional publishing house . These industry giants have extensive resources and networks that can help boost the visibility of your book. The process may be competitive, but if accepted, they handle everything from design to distribution—letting you focus on what matters most: telling your story.
Self-Publishing Platforms
If you want more control over every aspect of publication or seek a faster route to market, self-publishing platforms like Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), offer an accessible alternative. With this option, you manage all aspects including cover design and pricing ; however, it also means greater responsibility in promoting your book.
Bear in mind that both options have their own pros and cons, so consider them carefully before making any decisions.
Marketing Your Autobiography
Now that you’ve crafted your autobiography, it’s time to get the word out. You need a plan and strategy.
Leveraging Social Media
To start with, use your social platforms as launching pads for your book. Sites like Facebook , Twitter, and especially LinkedIn can help generate buzz about your work. And don’t underestimate the power of other platforms like Instagram and TikTok when trying to reach younger audiences. Whatever social platform you use, remember to engage with followers by responding to comments and questions about the book.
Organizing Book Signings
A physical event like a book signing not only provides readers with a personal connection but also generates local publicity. Consider partnering up with local independent stores or libraries, which are often open to hosting such events.
Securing Media Coverage
Contacting local newspapers, radio stations or even bloggers and podcasters in your field can provide much-needed visibility for your work. It might seem intimidating at first, but who better than you knows how important this story is?
FAQs on How to Write an Autobiography
How do i start an autobiography about myself.
To kick off your autobiography, jot down significant life events and pick a unique angle that frames your story differently.
What are the 7 steps in writing an autobiography?
The seven steps are: understanding what an autobiography is, planning it out, using engaging writing techniques, structuring it effectively, considering ethics, revising thoroughly, and exploring publishing options.
What are the 3 parts of an autobiography?
An autobiography generally has three parts: introduction (your background), body (major life events), and conclusion (reflections on your journey).
What is the format for writing an autobiography?
The usual format for autobiographies involves chronological or thematic structure with clear chapters marking distinct phases of life.
Writing an autobiography is a journey, a trek exploring the unique narrative of your life. Together, we’ve covered how to plan effectively, select key events, and set timelines.
Once you’re all set to write, you now have the techniques you need for engaging storytelling, including vivid descriptions and dialogues. You also learned about structuring your story for maximum impact and navigating sensitive topics while maintaining honesty.
Last but not least, you learned editing strategies, publishing options, and effective ways of promoting your book.
Now you know more than just how to write an autobiography. You know how to craft a legacy worth reading!
- Last Updated: March 22, 2024
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How to Write an Autobiography (Fully Explained)
By: Author Paul Jenkins
Posted on Published: November 20, 2021 - Last updated: July 31, 2023
Categories Writing , Storytelling
Sooner or later, many of us think we’d like to write an autobiography. Maybe we should even write our memoirs, but we’ll talk more about that in a minute.
The point is this: We’ve all these memories and associations, relationships, sometimes sharp, sometimes soft, but we have them in our mind, and we feel like we want to put them on paper.
We want to tell someone the story we experienced, and sometimes we don’t even understand why we want to tell that particular story, but we have a strong feeling that we want to do so. In this article, we’ll look at exactly how you can approach your autobiography writing.
Autobiography or Memoir
An autobiography is a whole thing – a life, usually told chronologically as a series of significant events. Sometimes with the help of a ghostwriter. You should only ever have to write one autobiography!
But to qualify for it, you must have either :
a) lived a life worth living
b) been infamous or famous
Maybe both!
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write a story about your life. Quite the contrary.
But the memoir form may be better suited for you.
Memoirs as a Slice of Life
A memoir is a much more artistic endeavor than an autobiography or biography. They’re less limited to dry facts and more concerned with the meaning of life – whether by examining a specific period or looking at a period of life through a thematic lens.
It’s about a story within one’s life, not the whole life story. A slice-of-life experience. An excellent memoir is much closer to creative nonfiction than an autobiography.
The great thing about memoirs is that you can use them for almost any purpose and make them whatever you want.
A memoir usually isn’t as long as an autobiography and is written from a different perspective.
Writing an autobiography is about your life from your perspective. That’s not always the case with memoirs. Here, the author focuses on
a) a particular period of life,
b) a particular kind of life, or
c) a particular event.
You can tell about a day in your life that was particularly memorable, which is another type of memoir.
You don’t have to tell the story chronologically, but if it helps put things in order, you can do that too.
Memoirs can also be more subjective than an autobiography. A memoir is usually the story of your life as you see it.
Themes in a Memoir or Autobiography
You can focus on crucial moments and look at a period or a topic you want to write about.
Topics can be anything from your relationship with your parents to overcoming fear. Family, religion, work, relationships, health, hobbies – whatever you prefer – are fair game for the memoirist’s pen.
Themes give meaning to life. That’s why they’re so important in an autobiography or memoir.
There are other forms you should keep in mind:
- In a biography , someone else writes about someone.
- An autobiographical essay is required of prospective college or college applicants, in which they focus on experiences and accomplishments that add weight to their application. It’s an opportunity for a student to demonstrate relevant qualifications and qualities for entry and the ability to construct a well-argued piece of writing that is looser in style than straight academic writing. You can think of it as a personal essay.
The Moving Parts
If you’re thinking about writing your autobiography, you should first be aware of the key elements that will ensure your autobiography stands out and engages readers.
Many factors play a role in this, and we’ll discuss them one by one.
Universal Message
At its core, autobiographical writing is a search for meaning and identity.
A good autobiography isn’t just about you and your experiences. Somewhere in your autobiography, there’s always a universal message that manifests itself in the story you tell.
In this sense, an autobiography isn’t simply a list of experiences you string together, although you can use a chronological structure. But that’s far from the whole story.
A great autobiography has all the elements of a fantastic novel or movie. In other words, it’s to engage the reader emotionally and keep them enthralled.
Otherwise, there’s no motivation to keep reading.
In filmmaking, a central theme is sometimes called a “controlling idea” – akin to a thesis statement, it’s the fulcrum around which the narrative revolves.
No one is interested in a string of events. The events must have meaning, and the music and rhythm of life should permeate your autobiography for it to jump off the page and truly engage the reader.
There’s nothing like a universal message told in the form of a story.
A Strong Story
An excellent autobiography is a story told with strength and nuance. That’s why it matters to be clear about the story you want to tell and the key events that the story embraces.
Granted, this story may not be apparent when writing your autobiography begins. The story may not be clear to you until late in the writing and editing.
You may not even understand the story you’re telling until you revise. That’s why it’s so important to be flexible in outlining, structuring, writing, and revising. In other words, in the overall organization of your autobiography, which we’ll discuss in more detail in this article.
We’ll look at specific methods to help you structure your autobiography and assemble the necessary pieces.
And we’ll show you how to combine those pieces to create an excellent autobiography.
But before we go any further, let’s look at key elements that make a good autobiography.
When discussing a particular moment in your life story, you should be concerned with the spirit of the times – the so-called Zeitgeist.
For example, if you’re talking about the 1960s, you want the flavor and feel of that time to be reflected on the page.
It can be allusions to the music of the time. It can be allusions to the cars or the way of shopping that existed back then. The things that were happening on the street.
They can have to do with the attitudes of the people around you that were important at the time and how they acted and thought.
This creates a picture in the reader’s eye of what was happening around you then. That essential things were happening to you, or you were doing important things.
There’s something mysterious about a good autobiography.
Not everything in life is unambiguous! Life is often very ambiguous, and readers appreciate honesty and humility. By its nature, personal experience is subjective.
Readers don’t want to read someone arrogant and know everything. The fact is that not everything in your own life is clear to yourself, let alone to others around you!
Therefore, it can be excellent to acknowledge this and either mention it directly in your writing or have moments in the story where you allow the mystery to exist because it does.
This sense of mystery lets the reader’s imagination run wild. It allows the reader to understand that life comprises a series of veils. In most cases, the reader will find himself relating parts of your story to his life story. He’ll feel addressed, and that’s what draws him in.
Life isn’t just about clear challenges and overcoming them. As compelling as such “hero stories” may be. There are profound mysteries in life that we all ponder occasionally and keep popping up.
That’s why I think this sense of mystery is very important.
Revelations and Story Beats
In addition to secrets, you should also have moments of revelation in your autobiography.
Moments when something suddenly becomes clear, or someone realizes something. Life lessons that change the trajectory of your life. Or the nature and meaning of a relationship become apparent, which drives you to a decision or action.
In that sense, the events in your autobiography are less about the external events and more about the internal events where you decide what to do at certain stages. Or you come to a judgment or conclusion about something that you’ll probably change later in your life.
The point is that these moments of change, the so-called swing points in your life – the “beats” in movie language – are very important because they mark turning points in the story of your life.
The Plot of Your Life
It’s constructive to think of your life as a movie plot. We’ll discuss this technique later in this article.
So your autobiography isn’t just a collection of the best and worst moments of your life, even if you desperately want the polarity of good and bad to make your story stand out.
Juxtaposition is a very important element. You want things to contrast because that helps build emotion. It helps build tension and drama in the story.
Tension is essential for reader engagement. You can think of it like a rubber band that you slowly twist. It gets tighter and tighter. The trick is to keep stretching it open, building it up more and more, and then relaxing it again. Tighten it up and then relax it again. Over and over again.
In other words, play with the tension in your life story, your autobiography.
Context Shifts
Another critical element in your autobiography is context shifts.
Sometimes these are changes of place. So you move, go to a different place, or arrive at a different place.
Sometimes they’re contextual shifts in terms of relationships with other people.
Sometimes it’s contextual shifts regarding your life purpose and how you define what’s important to you and what you want to accomplish.
But it’s helpful to be aware of these contextual shifts in your life and think about these seams as you write your autobiography.
Now let’s look at the key steps to writing your autobiography.
A Very Personal Journey
Run away if anyone tells you that there’s some standard template for writing an autobiography or memoir! Quick.
Writing and stories aren’t about squeezing experiences and memories into some template.
The author’s connection to the material is the most crucial thing in writing a good, meaningful work.
Writing is about how you see the world, understand your experiences, and want to share them with readers.
Writing is a personal journey that can be very different for everyone.
It doesn’t matter if you’re writing a memoir about how you worked your way up in your profession and discovered leadership and management skills or if you’re writing a memoir about your relationship with your mother.
Either is perfectly fine.
Tell the stories that burn inside you. Write about what it means to be alive, awake, aware, and a wonderful person. Make up a story that’s as personal as you see fit.
Memoirs help you do that. How you choose what to include and what not to include, what to focus on, and what to ignore is up to you.
A Thought for the Reader
Picture the scene. You have a few minutes in the bookstore, browsing the titles scattered on the table of featured books – or the digital equivalent online.
A cover catches your eye. Something intrigues you so much that you pick up the book.
What do you do?
You probably read the blurb on the back cover and then the first page or two. Often that’s enough to make you buy the book or quickly put it back on the pile.
Something in the blurb and the first few pages must appeal to you. Otherwise, you won’t get involved, and the book has left your universe forever!
So when thinking about, constructing, and writing your memoir or autobiography, be clear about your story’s appeal to other people, your future readers!
This doesn’t mean you should be cocky about your writing. On the contrary, an honest path through your story is almost always better. But it means you develop a sense of your reader’s attention!
Otherwise, you’re just writing for yourself. That’s fine, by the way – it can be an excellent way to soothe the soul.
But if you want other people to read your stuff, you need to think carefully about what in your story will grab attention and what is worth paying attention to in each scene!
The Two Treasure Chests
We all have two treasure chests regarding memories, stories, and, thus, memoir writing.
The first is the treasure chest of memories and reflections. These are in the treasure chest of your mind, and your job is to capture them on paper or the screen and eventually work them into a story.
The second treasure chest is physical and digital mementos. Photos, CDs, letters, diaries, old notebooks, clothes, souvenirs, and more. They serve as a tremendous stimulus for remembering and writing. Although you could collect them in one place before writing, that’s probably impractical. Therefore, a good solution is to have a photo mood board with everything you’ve accumulated over the years.
An easy way to do this is to use the built-in photo app on your computer. I use a Mac, so this is Photos for me. It’s easy to collect pictures in an album and resize them to see more or less of them as needed.
Then and Now Time
One of the questions people ask when writing a memoir is how to handle tenses.
I think it’s worth considering two different time frames: the “then time” and the “now time.” This means you put yourself in the moment of the remembered events but see them as you experienced them then. This way, you can vividly represent them and discover them in your text.
It’s not so much a matter of tense as it’s of perspective and setting.
The “now time” is the time of reflection: you look back on past events with the wisdom of hindsight.
As a rule, it’s a good idea to write the main narrative in the “then time” because otherwise, you risk your memoir becoming a boring flashback instead of a compelling journey for the reader.
Connect with Your Inner Child
One particular technique worth mentioning when writing about childhood experiences is the “connect with your inner child” meditation. I first learned about it at the beautiful Plum Village retreat in France.
A guided meditation takes you back to your childhood and creates a connection you can access. Incredibly powerful in life and writing.
Imagine seeing your younger self in a scene and later adding how your older, wiser self understood what you were experiencing, even if you didn’t know it then.
This technique of shifting perspective is highly effective in both memoirs and novels.
It’s worth trying the Plum Village app for IOS. It’s completely free and offers many great meditations.
Break Out of the Prison of Linear Narrative
Where should you start with your memoir?
And how do you start writing them?
Unless you’re dealing with a tight time frame and a compelling ongoing narrative, telling your story in a non-linear way will probably help a lot.
Remember, you’re selecting events, not trying to tell everything that happened.
Therefore, not only can you select periods – which don’t have to be worked through in strict order, especially if you’re writing out your memoir thematically – but you can powerfully use nonlinear writing for your entire process.
We don’t think linearly, so why write that way?
When I sit down to write, I focus on the task: the sentences, paragraphs, and pages in front of me. I don’t worry excessively about everything having to be perfect and fit at the time of writing. Everything is in its own time! During the editing and the second draft, I start moving the blocks around so they tell a story.
Using Scrivener to Structure Nonlinear Writing
The app that best helps this nonlinear writing process is Scrivener.
I’ve used it for many years, and how it handles index cards on its “corkboard” has saved me more time than I care to remember in finding structure in writing and filmmaking.
Another excellent app I can recommend is Aeon Timeline. The latest version, 3, has a narrative mode and several other perspectives that let you get a handle on chronology, eras, intersections of characters, and more.
The Truth in Autobiography
When you write your memoir, you write a piece of truth. Your truth. There’s no such thing as objective truth, certainly not in writing. Nor, for that matter, in filmmaking.
There’s only a subjective truth – the truth as you see it. The exciting thing is that your truth becomes someone else’s truth through a magical transformation process.
Your mother’s truth becomes your truth, your neighbor’s truth becomes your truth, and your lover’s truth becomes your truth.
That’s magic.
One of the reasons I recommend writing your memoir instead of an autobiography is that you can focus on a particular story, a particular moment in your life. If you do it right, you can present it in a way that speaks to others.
You write your memoir to express your truth in a way that communicates it clearly to your reader without misleading them.
This is because they’re based on facts and what happened (as best you can remember it). This is part of a primary, unwritten contract you make with future readers when writing your memoir or autobiography.
Find a Coherent Narrative
To tell your story clearly and understandably, you must find a coherent narrative that ties together the concepts you want to convey.
The narrative won’t be perfect; it’ll need to be revised because your story isn’t an objective fact; it’s your truth.
It’s the narrative that makes your story interesting to your readers. Readers like narratives!
Hopefully, you’ll write your story so that even if the reader doesn’t know what happened to you, they’ll know what you felt and thought.
As I mentioned earlier, it’s very liberating to understand that the shape and order of your narrative will emerge during the writing process – not something you’ve to decide before you even start putting words on the page.
A Structural Approach to Autobiography and Memoir
You don’t have to pressure yourself to figure out the structure of your narrative from the start. You don’t have to summarize ideas, memories, or themes in predefined chapters.
Chapters are the surest way into the writer’s prison.
As the wonderful writer Terry Pratchett put it:
Life doesn’t happen in chapters at least, not regular ones. Nor do movies. Homer didn’t write in chapters. I can see what their purpose is in children’s books (“I’ll read to the end of the chapter, and then you must go to sleep”) but I’m blessed if I know what function they serve in books for adults. Sir Terry Pratchett
Writing programs like Scrivener allow you to collect and spit the fragments out, knowing you can later group them into a form. That’s tremendously liberating. It’s how I’ve made films, how I write long texts, and how I write articles – including this article.
I’ve no idea how this article will turn out. But it’ll appear; you can bet on that. And I know it’ll be good because it comes from the heart. And it’s immediate. Not overthought.
When you write your memoir, you can do the same thing.
I start with many different ideas and notes, photos, and videos I’ve taken. I make sure I can find them easily. If I’ve everything in one place, it’s easier for me to get it out.
You’ve to let your mind become a sieve, a filter, a funnel into which you pour your experiences so they come out transformed.
You’ll have to go through everything several times. You’ll have to go through your story several times.
First, you write down everything you remember, everything you think is essential, and everything that feels like it belongs to your story.
Second, you shape this mass of material into something coherent.
Third, you edit the material.
Dreams and Meditations
Dreams and meditations are essential in all forms of writing, even in memoirs. The trick is to capture the fragment on paper or screen as quickly as possible before it flies away.
Let me give you an example:
I remember first hearing Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band .
I was walking down the hallway at school when I was about nine years old. Suddenly I heard this incredible sound from a record player (yes, I’m that old) turned up full blast in an adjoining room. There was no one in the room, just the music. Coming from a conservative family where pop music just wasn’t played at home, I think this was the first time I got a taste of a larger culture. Out there.
I was amazed.
Use Dictation to Write Your Memoir
Sometimes when I write, I think of a scene, close my eyes, and start dictating. It’s all the more convenient when I know that one of the many transcription apps will do the hard work for me afterward.
Recently, I recalled that my brother and I were up against the local giant nettle patch when I was about twelve years old. To us, they weren’t nettles – they were an army. Hours later, we were called up for tea – and I suffered from hay fever for years afterward !
This memory also reminded me of another day when, together with local boys, we found a barn with huge black garbage cans in it. The game was to hide in the garbage cans while others threw stones and tried to hit us. Inevitably, a rock hit me right between the eyes. I’d have lost an eye if it had been just an inch further away.
Rather than lose these memories to the chaff of the day, I immediately documented them with a voice recording on my iPhone. Safe in the knowledge that I could quickly transcribe and include them in my memoir later.
Allow yourself to dream, to remember, to record, to document. Don’t be guided by the thought that these recordings must have a particular form before they must.
One way to think about your memoir is to think of it as a series of vignettes – short, impressionistic scenes that focus on a moment or give a particular insight into a character, idea, or environment.
The word’s origin is worth knowing: it comes from Old French and means “little vine.” If you think about it, it’s a very nice analogy for what excellent memoir writing can do: a series of independent yet interconnected vines that together form a whole.
I don’t see a linear path when I think about my life this way. Things have happened randomly; I’ve been in one place and then another. Or in the same place in different periods.
I don’t see my life as a coherent, meaningful narrative. It’s more like a series of vignettes between which I can see connections, but not a continuous line.
Your vignette can be part fantasy, part dream; you can change the period, time of day, weather, season, lighting, or anything else you want.
If you include dialog, make sure it’s believable; if you include your (or other) participants’ thoughts, make sure they ring true.
If you’re worried about authenticity, pick a moment you can remember clearly.
For example,
As a child, I’m sitting on the floor in the kitchen of my house. I’m nine years old. The kitchen is very bright. I’m eating a sugared roll – one of my favorite foods. I’m thinking about my friend’s birthday party tomorrow, which I’m really looking forward to. I’m also thinking about getting my housework done today. It’s light in the kitchen.
The truth, of course, is that I’m thinking about all of this at the same time.
Later, I listen to the sound of rain falling on the roof of the conservatory. It’s a sound I’ve long loved. I watch the different shades of light coming in through the window. The light casts shadows. The light is bright. I think about the things I need to do today. I’ve some homework to do. I need to do the dishes. I need to clean up.
What might hold together seemingly random moments like the above is the growing quality of reflection and the pressure that life puts on the mind.
Use Prompts
When writing memoirs and autobiographies, many prompts can be handy.
We’ve already discussed the two treasure chests above.
But many beneficial questions can get your mind going and make deep memory connections.
Here are just a few examples:
- What was my most treasured toy? Why was it important to me?
- What do I remember about the kitchen growing up? What smells can I still remember today? What could I glimpse out the window?
- What did I do that I regretted? What can’t I tell another soul about?
- Driving with the family in the car. What’s happening right now? Where are we going?
- When was the first time I was furious? What had happened?
- When did I feel most betrayed in my life?
- When did I fall in love for the first time? Out of love?
As you can imagine, there are many, many more.
The point isn’t to go on an endless memory hunt but to lift the veil of the unconscious to find the topic necessary for your memoir. And more often than not, a more resounding theme emerges. A deeper meaning to your life story that you want to put on paper.
That, after all, is the real art of memoir: distilling a lifetime’s experiences into a coherent, readable, and meaningful whole.
The prompts don’t have to be about the past – they can be about the present.
They can be about your life today – your current life and your relationship to it and the people around you. Then you can discover how profound forces and influences have shaped your reality.
Your Motivations
Ultimately, you’re the only person who knows your motivations for writing your memoir. There’s no need for you to explain to the public!
What do you hope to gain by writing your memoir?
A sense of closure? A sense of accomplishment? Redemption?
A chance to share the themes of your life story with others so they can learn from your journey?
An opportunity to see your story told so you can look back and reflect on the meaning of your life and the direction your life might take in the future.
Whatever the reason, the result should be more significant than a simple retelling of your life.
Perhaps it’s about creating a legacy, leaving something that will stay with you beyond your time, years, and life into the future.
When you write your memoir, you’re also writing your legacy. Or at least part of it.
That’s why it’s worth pausing for a moment.
Beware of the natural human instinct to right the wrongs done to us in the past. Seeking revenge will lead you down a dark path. Once it’s published, it’s published. And it’s hard to crawl back.
My advice would be to make your memoir a positive impulse.
We all make mistakes; why not reflect on them with awareness, acceptance, and understanding?
Awareness will lead us to change our pattern of behavior, acceptance will lead us to forgiveness, and understanding will show us how to forgive others.
Remember, forgive the person, but not the crime.
Writing your memoir can be a part of the healing process if you let it.
Scenes That Resonate
Actors know there are “scene objectives” in scenes – things the character wants and is trying to achieve.
This isn’t always true, but it’s often the case that the character either achieves their goal or doesn’t. There will be a clear resolution to the scene.
You can also look at your memoir in this way.
The goal of a particular scene is to get the character from one point in the story to the next in a way that makes sense to the reader.
How do you do that? Through the concept of scenes that “get there.” In a way, it’s similar to a joke that “lands” with its punchline.
These “landings” are ways to get from one scene to the next.
They’re places of transition where action and reflection mix, and you can move from one scene to the next. This is where you place the dissonance leading to your character’s next destination.
Remember that these transitions will become more apparent and more evident as you write and move into revision. You don’t have to have a set structure for your memoir. However, you need a series of vivid scenes, fast or slow sections, that deepen your narrative.
The Movie of Your Life
There’s a classic and well-understood dramatic arc that underlies almost all movies. I’m not suggesting that you apply it to how you write your autobiography or memoir, but it can benefit you as you reflect on the ebb and flow of your life.
We go through a series of “walls” in our lives. Ones that we break through after we find our way or ones that we somehow get around.
Overcoming the significant obstacles of life usually requires inner change and realization. When we overcome life’s walls, we learn an important lesson that we take into the next phase.
I found it very helpful to plot these walls on a timeline of my life. On the X-axis was my age, and on the Y-axis was the amount of hardship endured. That corresponds to the level of drama. This was a precious exercise because it helped me step back from the story of my life and look at it from the outside.
The way a reader might.
It helped me recognize the moments that involved real struggle, emotion, and conflict. In this way, it served as a map for my memoir.
So I took the significant events in my life – death, illness, divorce, early trouble spots, etc. – and drew them on the line where they took place, what age I was, and what was happening in my life at the time.
An interesting thing happened.
I thought I’d written about significant events before but never went into enough detail to immerse the reader in the pain, emotion, and drama.
Also, I hadn’t allowed myself to take ownership and responsibility for these events.
Subconsciously, I’d distanced myself from my own life. This isn’t to say that it was all my fault. But I was guilty of being too easy on myself.
As you can probably guess, this was an essential moment in my writing process.
What’re your walls? When did you overcome them? How did you overcome them?
Maybe you’ve decided you’re going to overcome them. Or maybe you’re still waiting to overcome them.
In any case, these moments of significant change are essential to the success of your autobiography.
Commit to Yourself
Writing memoirs or autobiographies is difficult. Even if no one but you may ever get to see them!
It requires deep inner work – a journey into the soul.
And it requires a serious commitment to writing continuously over a long period.
The former means accessing your unconscious, as I described earlier in this article.
The latter is a challenge that all writers face. The simple yet not-so-simple task of sitting down in your chair and writing every day. Your writing journey.
So before you start, make some commitments to yourself.
- Commit to writing every day.
- Commit to writing as many words as you estimate you’ll need to finish your book.
- Commit not to cheat on your word count.
- Do your best because you know your best is good enough.
- Show up to your desk and your soul.
This is the hallmark of a professional writer. Which you may not be. But why not adopt the mindset and practices of one?
One thing: don’t rush.
A memoir or autobiography shouldn’t be written under time pressure. Give your writing time to breathe and your reflections time to go deep. You’re laying the groundwork for something great.
One of the hardest things to write about is your relationship with your parents.
I lost both of my parents, one of them recently. Even as time passes, it’s hard to look deep (as a writer must) in a way that inevitably evokes pain and grief in me.
But that pain must be endured if you’re to have access to what’s probably one of the most important influences on your psyche, whether you want to admit it or not.
As a writer, artist, and human being, you must deal with them honestly. And do so with as much compassion as possible.
In other words, you must go through the same process of soul-searching and profound inner discovery as you’d with any other complicated subject.
You must apply your understanding of life and its meaning to the subject. And you must write from a position of humility and compassion.
Brainstorming for Your Autobiography
I always think of “brainstorming” more as “thought development” – a quieter and more meditative approach to writing.
You call up ideas and play with them. Try them out. To see what develops. These ideas transform as you write, re-read, and sleep on them.
Then when you come back to your writing, you’ve new things to work with. Ideas that have been developing in the background.
This is a good way to gather ideas for your memoir. It’s a way to write without writing.
- In one sentence, invent a sentence that says something about your life.
- In a paragraph, invent a paragraph that says something about your life.
- In a scene, invent a scene that says something about your life.
- Write a memory that says something about your life.
Then ask yourself: What do you’ve to say?
- What’s the most important thing you’ve to say?
- What’s the most dramatic thing you’ve to say?
- What’s the most impactful moment you can convey?
I use mind mapping extensively to “develop thoughts” – the best apps I’ve found for this are iThoughts and TheBrain. The beauty of TheBrain is that it allows for contextual thinking around a subtopic – something difficult to achieve with traditional radial mind maps.
You can also use free online tools like XMind, Coggle, or paper and a pen.
You’ll find that this way of thinking brings ideas to life in ways you mightn’t be able to if you only thought linearly.
Why not just write an essay about your life, drawing from the stream of consciousness? And then see what sticks.
Related: How to Focus on Writing an Essay
Write a Letter to Yourself
Another way to write your autobiography or memoir is to imagine you’re writing a letter to yourself.
A great letter is to tell yourself the story you want to write about yourself.
Or you can take on the role of mentor to yourself:
The “you,” in this case, is your current self.
- Write a letter to your former self.
- What advice would you give to your former self?
- What guidance would you give?
- What would you do differently?
- How would your former self respond?
- How would your current self respond?
- How would your future self react?
- How would your friends and family react?
- How would your children react?
How to Outline Your Autobiography or Memoir
The most important thing you need to know about outlining as a writer is that it’s not a process that happens before you settle down to write, and it’s written down in a kind of gospel.
Quite the opposite.
The “how” (the outline) and the “what” (the writing) are intricately intertwined and bounce off each other.
Outlining Is a Dynamic Process
If you have a good idea of what you want to write about, you can put that idea into an outline.
There are many different ways to do this. Most involve writing a few key words, phrases, sentences, or even just a few key phrases that describe the main content of your book.
A book is usually a collection of chapters (but be sure to read my comments about the chapters above).
You can outline a chapter by writing a few key words, phrases, sentences, or even just a few key sentences to describe the main content of your chapter.
You can also outline a scene. Again, you write a few key words, phrases, sentences, or even just a few key phrases to describe the main content of your scene.
An outline aims to give you a “basic structure” to work with.
The more details you’ve, the better.
How to Approach Research in Your Autobiography or Memoir
Aside from the treasure troves described above, which are more for stimulation or inspiration than research, you’ll need to track down specific facts and connections at some point in your writing.
You can do most of this research on the Internet.
There are now so many excellent online resources for writers. These include accessible radio archives, video archives, music archives, image archives, document archives, government archives, etc.
The list is endless.
Of course, you can also use your local library.
If you’re using a Mac, DevonAgent, and DevonThink can help you organize your searches and cross-referencing. DevonAgent prevents you from having to open hundreds of browser tabs, and DevonThink uses a very clever “fuzzy logic” search to find relevant things in your document collection. Although academics love both apps, they’re invaluable to me as a writer.
Another great option for research and clippings is Roam Research (or its free competitor Obsidian). Think of them as digital scrapbooks where you can drop everything useful and find valuable and relevant parts later.
Or go with a paper notebook.
Most importantly, document your research, and don’t throw anything away.
Remember that you’ll be researching at all stages of the writing process, including during editing and fact-checking. Therefore, it can be constructive to work with multiple monitors so that you can do the research queries on one while you continue writing on the other.
It’s often helpful to write a chapter or scene first and do your research later. This helps you focus your research on what you need and not disappear down a rabbit hole from which little productive writing comes out!
It’s also important to realize that researching and writing your book are closely related. They’re all part of the same journey.
When you write, you generate new ideas and write down the book that will become the finished memoir or autobiography.
This is an interactive process.
The structure of your finished book will also influence how you write it and, therefore, how you research it.
Remember that oral research also plays an important role: If people, family members, eyewitnesses, etc., are still alive and willing, their memories and perspectives can be beneficial.
Writing First Drafts
The most important thing to say about first drafts is that you do them!
That means you sit down and start writing. Even if you don’t feel like it. When you start writing, your resistance is quickly overcome, and you get into a good state of mind.
The second thing I say about first drafts is that you shouldn’t edit them as you write. That’s why I recommend not thinking too much about chapters in the first draft stage – there will be plenty of opportunities later to organize your text and divide it into chapters.
Everything that hinders your writing your first draft must be gently pushed aside. That’s why sometimes it’s better to research after you’ve written a scene.
The third thing to say about first drafts is that they should be about anything and everything.
As a writer, you need to get out of your way and not be too critical with your word choice, sentence structure, or anything else.
This is because you can only find your voice if you write your way to it. That means you’re writing many things that aren’t the finished book.
The more you write, the more you learn about yourself and your writing voice.
You may not understand the subject of your memoir or autobiography until your first draft is finished. That’s perfectly fine. It’s desirable.
Remember that your first draft should probably be just for you. Beware of letting critics in too early, even if they’re constructive.
If someone else reads your writing or sees your first drafts, that person or those people will likely impact the creative writing process, which you don’t want at this stage.
So, if you have a writing group or writing partner, wait until you’ve completed at least two first drafts before sharing the text.
Related: Why Creative Process Matters
The Path From First to Second Draft
First, put some distance between you and your first draft. If you don’t give yourself a break, you’ll have difficulty identifying the “plot holes” where you need to get your narrative going.
It’s about giving shape to the story – a story that you may not understand until after your first draft.
Your second draft isn’t about tinkering with or polishing your first draft. It’s about completely rewriting the story and moving the pieces around in the overall structure to make it work.
This is where I find Scrivener very useful. Especially the index card mode in Corkboard. It allows me to move writing blocks around, sometimes almost intuitively (since cold logic rarely works well in creative endeavors), to find the flow of a piece.
When you move the blocks, having a clear timeline is helpful – either on paper or (my choice) in a program like Aeon Timeline. This timeline helps you anchor the chronological flow of events, so you’re freer to make thematic connections knowing that you can always insert a reference to where we’re in space and time.
There’s going to be some missing. That’s fine. Write it.
Do you notice anything unclear in your narrative? Clarify it. Explain it so that someone reading the story for the first time will understand.
Sometimes it’s a matter of contextualization: a “framing scene” before the action scene. It’s incredible how sometimes putting a later scene at the beginning of the work can help make everything clear and functional.
Wield a Scalpel
The last advice I want to give you is to approach your second draft with a scalpel in hand. Cut it down, and remove any fat you discover.
Creative work often (not always) benefits from being shorter. A more compact narrative moves essential points in the story closer together and effectively tightens the connective tissue between scenes.
Cut out scenes you don’t need, scenes that are too long, and scenes that are in the background and don’t move the story forward. The goal is to create a lean, mean storytelling machine that continuously moves the story forward.
This also means cutting limp sentences, unnecessary adjectives, and anything else that makes your text wordier than it needs to be.
Examples of Great Autobiographical Writing
Maya Angelou – a series of seven autobiographies, including the work that brought her international acclaim I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Vladimir Nabokov – covering his life until he arrived in America in 1940, Speak Memory is known for how it blends fiction with fact.
Helen Keller – written with the aid of a braille typewriter The Story of My Life was dedicated to Alexander Graham Bell, a lifelong friend and avid supporter of deaf and blind research.
Mark Twain – keen to tell stories to other human beings, rather than pen a dry account of his life, Twain arranged that most of his Autobiography remain unpublished for 100 years after he died in 1910. No doubt the amount of vitriol and sharp observation, even of friends in the work, was a significant factor in this decision! Interestingly, most of his autobiography was dictated to a secretary rather than written directly.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an autobiography.
An autobiography is a self-written account of an individual’s life, often detailing personal experiences, emotions, and reflections.
What should be included in an autobiography?
An autobiography should include significant events, relationships, challenges, achievements, and personal growth experiences. It should also offer insights into the author’s personality, values, and motivations.
How should I begin my autobiography?
Begin your autobiography with an engaging introduction that captures the reader’s attention. You can start with a memorable moment, an important event, or a unique aspect of your life.
What is the appropriate writing style for an autobiography?
A: The writing style for an autobiography should be honest, engaging, and descriptive. It should capture your voice and personality, connecting readers with your experiences and emotions.
How do I organize my autobiography?
Organize your autobiography in chronological order or around specific themes. You can divide it into chapters, focusing on different stages of your life or significant aspects of your personality.
How do I maintain reader interest throughout my autobiography?
To maintain reader interest, use vivid descriptions, create engaging anecdotes, and vary the pace and tone of your writing. Share unique perspectives and include moments of self-reflection to keep the reader engaged.
How do I approach sensitive or controversial topics in my autobiography?
Approach sensitive or controversial topics with honesty and sensitivity. Be aware of the potential impact on others, and consider using discretion or pseudonyms to protect privacy.
What should I focus on when writing about my childhood?
Focus on significant moments, relationships, and experiences that shaped your personality, values, and beliefs. Describe the environment, culture, and people that influenced your early years.
How do I conclude my autobiography?
Conclude your autobiography by summarizing your experiences, reflecting on the lessons learned, and sharing your hopes for the future. Consider leaving the reader with a final thought or message that encapsulates the essence of your life story.
What should I consider before publishing my autobiography?
Before publishing your autobiography, edit and revise the manuscript, fact-check for accuracy, and seek feedback from trusted readers. Consider legal and ethical implications, and explore various publishing options, including traditional publishers, self-publishing, or digital platforms.
What Is an Autobiography?
What to Consider Before You Start to Write
- Writing Research Papers
- Writing Essays
- English Grammar
- M.Ed., Education Administration, University of Georgia
- B.A., History, Armstrong State University
Your life story, or autobiography , should contain the basic framework that any essay should have, with four basic elements. Begin with an introduction that includes a thesis statement , followed by a body containing at least several paragraphs , if not several chapters. To complete the autobiography, you'll need a strong conclusion , all the while crafting an interesting narrative with a theme.
Did You Know?
The word autobiography literally means SELF (auto), LIFE (bio), WRITING (graph). Or, in other words, an autobiography is the story of someone's life written or otherwise told by that person.
When writing your autobiography, find out what makes your family or your experience unique and build a narrative around that. Doing some research and taking detailed notes can help you discover the essence of what your narrative should be and craft a story that others will want to read.
Research Your Background
Just like the biography of a famous person, your autobiography should include things like the time and place of your birth, an overview of your personality, your likes and dislikes, and the special events that shaped your life. Your first step is to gather background detail. Some things to consider:
- What is interesting about the region where you were born?
- How does your family history relate to the history of that region?
- Did your family come to that region for a reason?
It might be tempting to start your story with "I was born in Dayton, Ohio...," but that is not really where your story begins. It's better to start with an experience. You may wish to start with something like why you were born where you were and how your family's experience led to your birth. If your narrative centers more around a pivotal moment in your life, give the reader a glimpse into that moment. Think about how your favorite movie or novel begins, and look for inspiration from other stories when thinking about how to start your own.
Think About Your Childhood
You may not have had the most interesting childhood in the world, but everyone has had a few memorable experiences. Highlight the best parts when you can. If you live in a big city, for instance, you should realize that many people who grew up in the country have never ridden a subway, walked to school, ridden in a taxi, or walked to a store a few blocks away.
On the other hand, if you grew up in the country you should consider that many people who grew up in the suburbs or inner city have never eaten food straight from a garden, camped in their backyards, fed chickens on a working farm, watched their parents canning food, or been to a county fair or a small-town festival.
Something about your childhood will always seem unique to others. You just have to step outside your life for a moment and address the readers as if they knew nothing about your region and culture. Pick moments that will best illustrate the goal of your narrative, and symbolism within your life.
Consider Your Culture
Your culture is your overall way of life , including the customs that come from your family's values and beliefs. Culture includes the holidays you observe, the customs you practice, the foods you eat, the clothes you wear, the games you play, the special phrases you use, the language you speak, and the rituals you practice.
As you write your autobiography, think about the ways that your family celebrated or observed certain days, events, and months, and tell your audience about special moments. Consider these questions:
- What was the most special gift you ever received? What was the event or occasion surrounding that gift?
- Is there a certain food that you identify with a certain day of the year?
- Is there an outfit that you wear only during a special event?
Think honestly about your experiences, too. Don't just focus on the best parts of your memories; think about the details within those times. While Christmas morning may be a magical memory, you might also consider the scene around you. Include details like your mother making breakfast, your father spilling his coffee, someone upset over relatives coming into town, and other small details like that. Understanding the full experience of positives and negatives helps you paint a better picture for the reader and lead to a stronger and more interesting narrative. Learn to tie together all the interesting elements of your life story and craft them into an engaging essay.
Establish the Theme
Once you have taken a look at your own life from an outsider’s point of view, you will be able to select the most interesting elements from your notes to establish a theme. What was the most interesting thing you came up with in your research? Was it the history of your family and your region? Here is an example of how you can turn that into a theme:
"Today, the plains and low hills of southeastern Ohio make the perfect setting for large cracker box-shaped farmhouses surrounded by miles of corn rows. Many of the farming families in this region descended from the Irish settlers who came rolling in on covered wagons in the 1830s to find work building canals and railways. My ancestors were among those settlers."
A little bit of research can make your own personal story come to life as a part of history, and historical details can help a reader better understand your unique situation. In the body of your narrative, you can explain how your family’s favorite meals, holiday celebrations, and work habits relate to Ohio history.
One Day as a Theme
You also can take an ordinary day in your life and turn it into a theme. Think about the routines you followed as a child and as an adult. Even a mundane activity like household chores can be a source of inspiration.
For example, if you grew up on a farm, you know the difference between the smell of hay and wheat, and certainly that of pig manure and cow manure—because you had to shovel one or all of these at some point. City people probably don’t even know there is a difference. Describing the subtle differences of each and comparing the scents to other scents can help the reader imagine the situation more clearly.
If you grew up in the city, you how the personality of the city changes from day to night because you probably had to walk to most places. You know the electricity-charged atmosphere of the daylight hours when the streets bustle with people and the mystery of the night when the shops are closed and the streets are quiet.
Think about the smells and sounds you experienced as you went through an ordinary day and explain how that day relates to your life experience in your county or your city:
"Most people don’t think of spiders when they bite into a tomato, but I do. Growing up in southern Ohio, I spent many summer afternoons picking baskets of tomatoes that would be canned or frozen and preserved for cold winter’s dinners. I loved the results of my labors, but I’ll never forget the sight of the enormous, black and white, scary-looking spiders that lived in the plants and created zigzag designs on their webs. In fact, those spiders, with their artistic web creations, inspired my interest in bugs and shaped my career in science."
One Event as a Theme
Perhaps one event or one day of your life made such a big impact that it could be used as a theme. The end or beginning of the life of another can affect our thoughts and actions for a long time:
"I was 12 years old when my mother passed away. By the time I was 15, I had become an expert in dodging bill collectors, recycling hand-me-down jeans, and stretching a single meal’s worth of ground beef into two family dinners. Although I was a child when I lost my mother, I was never able to mourn or to let myself become too absorbed in thoughts of personal loss. The fortitude I developed at a young age was the driving force that would see me through many other challenges."
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Writing the Essay
Whether you determine that your life story is best summed up by a single event, a single characteristic, or a single day, you can use that one element as a theme . You will define this theme in your introductory paragraph .
Create an outline with several events or activities that relate back to your central theme and turn those into subtopics (body paragraphs) of your story. Finally, tie up all your experiences in a summary that restates and explains the overriding theme of your life.
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How to write an autobiography: 7 key steps
Many people who’ve lived interesting lives want to learn how to write an autobiography. Whether you want to write a memoir or a fictional autobiography, these 7 steps will help you start:
- Post author By Jordan
- 4 Comments on How to write an autobiography: 7 key steps
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What is autobiography?
Autobiography means to write about yourself, typically the account of significant events in your life. The word stems from the Greek, αὐτός (autos) meaning self , plus βίος (bios) meaning life and γράφειν ( graphein ) – to write.
Autobiography vs memoir: What’s the difference?
What’s the difference between autobiography and memoir? Are there specific kinds of autobiography? These may be questions you ask as you set out to write your life story.
As Ian Jack writes in The Guardian , there are differences between autobiography vs memoir although the terms are often used interchangeably:
An autobiography is usually a record of accomplishment. All kinds of people, more or less famous, can write them or be helped to write them: footballers, politicians, newsreaders. Deeds, fame and an interesting life are not necessary ingredients of the memoir. The memoir’s ambition is to be interesting in itself, as a novel might be, about intimate, personal experience. It often aspires to be thought of as “literary”, and for that reason borrows many of literature’s tricks – the tricks of the novel, of fiction – because it wants to do more than record the past; it wants to re-create it. If a memoir is to succeed on those terms, on the grounds that all lives are interesting if well-enough realised, the writing has to be good. Ian Jack, in The Guardian , February 2003.
7 steps to write your own life story:
- Brainstorm your autobiography’s focus and scope
- Skim autobiographies for inspiration
- Choose between autobiography and memoir
- Outline key and illustrative life events
- Draft key scenes from your life
- Find strong transitions
- Check details and get beta readers
1. Brainstorm your autobiography’s focus and scope
Deciding what period and events you’ll cover in your life story is a helpful first step in choosing how to write an autobiography.
Squishing the intrigues, heartbreaks, surprises and secrets of your life into narrative form may seem an impossible task. Life of course does not unfold in neat paragraphs, scenes and chapters.
Make it easier and brainstorm your autobiography’s focus and scope. Ask:
- What period of my life do I want to tell readers about?
- Where should the timeline start? (Infancy? Childhood? Adolescence?)
- What are key events of my life readers may find intriguing?
This will help you refine your autobiography’s focus [you can also pinpoint your story’s focus in the Central Idea brainstorming tool in the Now Novel dashboard].
For deciding your story’s scope, ask:
- What essential scenes and events should I include?
- What themes or subjects need mention (for example, if you have experienced a trauma or illness that has greatly impacted your life, exploring personal events and insights that resulted from them would make sense)
Autobiography Exercise: Scenes to show
Write a brief bullet list of events to include in your autobiography or memoir.
Focus on events that show strong emotion, key turning points or changes, or vivid life lessons , because these connect with readers.
For example:
- A first encounter with someone who turned out to be an amazing mentor
- A positive or challenging move to another school, city or country in childhood
- The first time you met a major love interest in your life
- The moment you walked away from a job or other commitment to pursue a new dream
![my autobiography about my life How to write an autobiography - infographic | Now Novel](https://www.nownovel.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/How-to-Write-an-Autobiography-steps-infographic-768x1024.png)
2. Skim autobiographies for inspiration
One of the best ways to learn how to write an autobiography is, of course, to read published examples.
Get hold of copies of autobiographies that interest you . Skim parts such as the beginning and end, chapter beginnings and endings. Read for details that leap out at you, grab your attention.
Take notes on how the author approaches telling their life story. Do they:
- Proceed chronologically from childhood to adulthood or play with time and memories?
- Start with a dramatic, life-changing incident or lead in slowly?
- Tell the reader what they’re going to cover or leave the reader to gradually discover the narrative structure or shape of the story?
Reading autobiography and note-taking in this way helps you see the options for how to structure your narrative.
3. Choose between autobiography and memoir
Reading autobiography examples will help you see how authors use common narrative elements.
For example, the acclaimed author Vladimir Nabokov begins Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited :
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. […] I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. Vladimir Nabokov, Speak Memory : An Autobiography Revisted (1967), 17.
Nabokov, in typically ornate fashion, breaks the ‘rules’ of autobiography. He uses third person to describe a ‘ young chronophobiac’ – one who is afraid of time. We can guess this ‘young chronophobiac’ is Nabokov himself, and that he is using a tone of ironic detachment to imply that the act of dredging through memories – or even the idea of time itself – fills him with ‘something like panic’.
The above seems more like a literary play with form (an attribute Ian Jack ascribes memoir) than a straightforward, chronological autobiography.
Readers might indeed wonder why Nabokov calls Speak, Memory an autobiography.
Nabokov does, however, proceed more or less chronologically, from before his birth, to Chapter 2 which begins:
It was the primordial cave (and not what Freudian mystics might suppose) that lay behind the games I played when I was four. Nabokov, Speak, Memory , p. 20.
Thus Nabokov blends elements of memoir. He blends illustrative snapshots of life (the part illuminating the whole) with key events (birth, childhood) typical of autobiographical narration.
Thinking about how you’ll structure your life story , however, will make it more purposeful and consistent.
Jump to Top
4. Outline key and illustrative life events
In deciding how to write an autobiography, there are two types of events to include:
- Key events – Crucial, formative experiences, for example an early childhood triumph or loss that shaped your view of the world.
- Illustrative events – Individual encounters, lessons, romances, teachers and mentors that provide texture, background, humour, drama or the other vital elements of storytelling .
Examples of key events and illustrative events in autobiography
As an example, Nabokov uses the games he would play as a child at the start of chapter two to illustrate how he came to value imagination and beauty . He describes making a couch tent:
I then had the fantastic pleasure of creeping through that pitch-dark tunnel, where I lingered a little to listen to the singing in my ears – that lonesome vibration so familiar to small boys in dusty hiding places – and then, in a burst of delicious panic, on rapidly thudding hands and knees I would reach the tunnel’s far end…’ Nabokov, Speak, Memory , p. 20.
This is an example of illustrative event: a scene in autobiography that reveals something about the author.
In this case, we see Nabokov’s love of games of imagination and sensory stimulation (something one finds abundant in his fiction).
An example of a key event would be a major relocation, a historical conflict (such as war), or another key turning point. For example, Nabokov describes the effects of the Russo-Japanese War (a key event) in 1905 on the family unit:
The close of Russia’s disastrous campaign in the Far East was accompanied by furious internal disorders. Undaunted by them, my mother, with her three children, returned to St. Petersburg after almost a year of foreign resorts. Nabokov, Speak, Memory , p. 24.
Autobiography exercise: Finding key and illustrative events
Write a bullet list each of key and illustrative events – a sentence describing each. Examples:
- The year my family moved from Country A to Country B
- The first time I held a violin in my hands
- The first close friendship I ever made at school
Illustrative Events
- The experience and emotion of boarding a plane for the first time
- A specific funny or insightful violin lesson or teacher
- A day with a close school friend that left an indelible impression
![my autobiography about my life Autobiography and art - Fellini quote | Now Novel](https://www.nownovel.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Autobiography-quote-fellini-1024x576.png)
5. Draft key scenes from your life
Now that you have ideas for key and illustrative events in your life, expand on an example.
Use the techniques of fiction to enrich the scene.
For example, Nabokov describes his sensory impressions behind the family couch.
- Impressions of sound, smell, touch, taste or specific visual details
- Emotions (Nabokov conveys a palpable sense of the child’s simultaneous delight in secrecy and panic in the dark when he describes crawling through the tunnel he made using the family couch)
As you draft, keep this in mind: What do I want to tell, show, teach? How will this help, entertain, surprise, amuse my reader?
6. Find strong transitions
Learning how to write an autobiography is not that different from learning how to write fiction.
For one, autobiographical writing and fiction writing both need engaging introductions, transitions, exposition and development.
An advantage of memoir and autobiography is that transition is a shared, relatable part of life.
For example, most children in countries where school attendance is required by law will leave the family unit and go out into the world at a similar age.
These key life changes are useful places in a memoir or autobiography for chapter breaks or scene transitions . Nabokov, for example, uses the family move to St Petersburg at the start of Chapter 4 to transition into describing his first teacher, a natural early childhood memory to include:
With a sharp and merry blast from the whistle that was part of my first sailor suit, my childhood calls me back into that distant past to have me shake hands again with my delightful teacher. Vasiliy Martinovich Zhernosekov had a fuzzy brown beard, a balding head, and china-blue eyes, one of which bore a fascinating excrescence on the upper lid. Nabokob, Speak, Memory , p. 24.
Note how Nabokov signals the narrative transition – by describing a sound he associates with that period of his life. It’s a vivid, descriptive way to end one section of story and begin another.
7. Check details and get beta readers
As you write an autobiography or memoir, it’s often helpful to speak to family or old friends. Because you never know who may remember a funny, interesting or surprising detail about a time you are remembering and trying to capture.
The people who know you best may be your best beta readers when you write about yourself. It’s also good etiquette, if writing about a family member or friend who is still living, to run sections concerning them past them.
Need someone to read over your autobiography so far? Get help from a skilled editor. Jump to Top
Related Posts:
- What will help me write a book? 7 steps
- How to write a flashback scene: 7 key steps
- How to write a book and get it published in 10 steps
- Tags autobiographical writing
Jordan is a writer, editor, community manager and product developer. He received his BA Honours in English Literature and his undergraduate in English Literature and Music from the University of Cape Town.
4 replies on “How to write an autobiography: 7 key steps”
Just starting to write a family history beginning with what I know about my immigrant grandparents, then with a follow-up through moves and my childhood.
Hi Peter, that sounds a wonderful use of family history. I hope it is going well.
Very helpful.
Glad you found it helpful, Sally. Thanks for writing in.
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How to Write an Autobiography and Publish it in 7 Easy Steps
Contrary to popular belief, you don't have to be a famous figure to write an autobiography. In fact, if you want to write a novel or some other nonfiction book but just don't know where to start, an autobiography could be an ideal project to tackle.
There are many different kinds of autobiographies from which to choose, so you don't have to keep a narrow focus or use a cookie-cutter mold for your book or autobiography essay. Read on as we tackle how to write an autobiography.
- Different kinds of autobiographies.
- Steps to help you write your autobiography.
- Tips to strengthen your storytelling skills while writing.
Table of contents
- Autobiography vs Memoir
- The Benefits of Writing an Autobiography
- Before You Write, Read
- Step 1: Decide on a Type and Scope
- Step 2: Research and Outline
- Step 3: Craft Your Story to Entertain
- Step 4: Write Your First Draft
- Step 5: Pause—Then Edit and Rewrite
- Step 6: Get a Professional Editor
- Step 7: Publish!
- How to Write an Autobiography: Conclusion
The Many Types of Autobiographies
An autobiography in its broadest terms is a book about a person's entire life (or at least the interesting parts), written by that person . If you wanted to write a book about someone else's life, you'd be writing a biography .
But within the autobiography genre, there are many other subgenres to choose from. These include:
- Intellectual
- Religious/Spiritual
An intellectual autobiography focuses on the author's life in terms of intellectual evolution and fulfillment. Often (but not always) written by people who have had a lot of schooling, the intellectual autobiography aims to analyze how certain experiences affected the author's life in terms of education, intelligence, and thought patterns.
A religious or spiritual autobiography is one concerning the author's spiritual enlightenment. If you've found God (in any form) or have gravitated to a more spiritual life as you've aged, then this could be a good genre for you.
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Thematic autobiographies are those that look upon a person's life story through the lens of a certain theme. This could be love, loss, perseverance, family, or even something like mental health, addiction, or mental illness. If you've noticed a theme in your life that has influenced your choices repeatedly, a thematic autobiography could be a good choice for you.
A fictional autobiography is one that uses events from the author's real life while changing certain other elements freely. There are no hard-and-fast rules about what can and can't be real—or what percentage of each you must include. It could be that you use mostly real events but embellish them, change characters around, or make up certain exchanges. The most important part is that you don't claim it's a true autobiography when it's really a fictional one.
It can be easy to confuse an autobiography and a memoir—which is in fact a type of autobiographical writing . The big difference is that autobiographies cover the author's whole life. Memoirs, on the other hand, focus on certain aspects of the author's life, usually in service of a theme.
If you want to focus on your career or your childhood instead of covering your whole life, then a memoir could be a better fit for you. If so, you can check out our memoir writing prompts article .
There are a ton of benefits to writing an autobiography. There's an old adage that goes “write what you know.” And there's no better genre to do just that! By diving into your personal story and examining life lessons and experiences, you don't have to worry about getting writer's block. You know the plot and the characters, which can help you get into a rhythm.
This can not only give you confidence as a writer, but it can also make you a better writer as you go. A good autobiography is a lot like a novel in a lot of ways, so you use the same skills you would in a novel by painting a picture for your reader.
But the benefits don't end with developing as a writer. It can also help you deal with traumatic events and process significant moments in your life. The goal, after all, isn't to dwell on any perceived wrongs or get back at anyone. The goal is to make sense of your personal experience by turning it into a story that readers will enjoy.
Now that we've covered that introductory ground, let's get into how to write an autobiography, step by step.
I would be remiss if I didn't say that you must first familiarize yourself with autobiography examples before you can write one. As such, here are some famous autobiographies to read so you can see how it's done.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain by Mark Twain
- The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
- I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
- Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
- Agatha Christie: An Autobiography by Agatha Christie
- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
- Becoming by Michelle Obama
- The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
The Complete Guide to Autobiography Writing
Writing an autobiography can be a rewarding endeavor, but it’s not easy. Even though it’s about your own life, it still requires research, time, effort, and some writing skill to get done. The steps below take you through the writing process, from choosing your focus to choosing your publishing avenue.
While an autobiography covers the author's whole life, that doesn't mean that every single detail needs to go in. Even if you could remember what you had for breakfast on April 7th when you were ten years old, there would be no reason to include it unless some significant event happened at that time.
So the first step in the writing process is deciding what type of autobiography it will be . This, in turn, will help you decide on the scope. If it will be an intellectual autobiography, you may want to spend time focusing on your early schooling and how that impacted your ability to learn or your love of knowledge.
On the other hand, if you're writing an autobiography themed on marriage or romantic love, you probably won't have a lot of ground to cover during your childhood years.
Pro Tip: Write a short personal statement about why you want to write an autobiography. There's no wrong answer, but putting your “why” into words can help you keep focused through the process.
Once you have your scope in mind, you can start doing research and outlining in broad strokes the exact events you want to cover. This is when your idea starts to take shape in your mind and on the page.
Researching will mean delving into your family history, busting out the yearbooks, and opening up the (physical or digital) photo albums. It will mean talking to parents, friends, siblings, and other family members. To get things right, it's important not to rely just on your fallible memory. Get multiple perspectives and sources on any important event you plan to cover.
This is also a great time to get permission to use people's names in your book. Everyone you include in the story by name should give their permission. While this isn’t legally required, it’s a courtesy. However, it’s unlikely you will be sued for anything you say in a book unless it is blatantly slanderous.
Research is a time-consuming step in the process. But it's essential for forming your autobiography in your mind. You may even learn things about your family that you never knew before!
Just write everything down (or record it) so you can reference what people have said later. Using all your research, start crafting an autobiography outline in a Word document or on paper.
Pro Tip: If you're not sure you have enough to say to fill a book, you can write an autobiographical essay first. If you still feel like you have a lot to say after writing an essay of a few thousand words, then you may have a book's worth inside your head!
Since you don't have to include every single detail in your memoir, you get to prioritize certain things over others. And while most autobiographies move in chronological order, it doesn't preclude you from using a hook to engage your readers.
Perhaps you want to open your autobiography with a single event that changed your life . If this means jumping forward in time in your autobiography introduction to hook the reader before jumping back to your childhood, then that's perfectly fine.
The point is, your autobiography needs to entertain the reader. And to do this, you can craft it like a novel. The one thing your book shouldn't be is full of dry, academic writing.
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You're the protagonist of the autobiography. And being a human, you're flawed. Make this clear to the reader while also giving them a reason to like you and root for you early in the book. Unless you're writing a fictional autobiography, this needs to be a true anecdote. But it shouldn't be hard to find.
Think about all the other people in your story as characters . Each family member is there as a supporting role to you, the protagonist. Like you, they need to be interesting, if not always likable. It also helps to include conflict early on. Most people experience plenty of conflict in their lives, so this isn't usually hard.
When you think about your autobiography in this way, you can then refine your outline – or write a whole new one—with this in mind.
And once you're confident that you have the structure you want, it's time to start writing!
Since you're writing about your own experiences, you'll probably want to stick to the first person point of view . This is the most common autobiography format—even for those written with the help of a ghostwriter. For many authors, this comes naturally because it's how we tell stories to each other.
That said, writing “I” over and over again can get a little old. This is normal. Just take it as an opportunity to vary your sentences instead of starting every one of them with “I.”
The writing process is different for every author, but it's important that you commit to a certain word goal per day or week . Make this goal attainable and stick to it. If you go weeks or months without getting words down, you'll just have to work harder to get back into the rhythm of autobiography writing.
That said, give yourself room to make mistakes during the first draft. When you accept that your first draft won’t be perfect and only focus on getting the words down, things get a lot easier. You can always go back and edit later. But you won’t have anything to edit if you don't write!
When you're done with your first draft, let it sit for a couple of weeks or a month. This will allow you to get some distance from the words, which can help you look at them with a critical eye when it comes time to work on your subsequent drafts.
Some authors even do this after each consecutive draft. But many find that it's most beneficial after the first one.
Whether you wait a week or a month or more is up to you. But you can certainly find a sweet spot that works best for your writing schedule.
Recording your life story is no easy task. And you will, by definition, be close to it. So this distance is imperative to achieve a dispassionate look at it. From there, you can make changes and re-work it until you think it's ready for another pair of eyes.
Once you've made your autobiography as good as you can make it, it's time to seek help. While you can certainly give a copy of the book to some friends and family to see what they think, keep in mind they're likely biased. Chances are they're also not professional editors, either.
This is why it's always a good idea to hire an editor —preferably one who's familiar with autobiographies. Of course, there are many different kinds of editors. And taking a critical look at your book in step 5 is important for choosing the right kind.
If you think there are some structural issues with the book, you may want to hire a developmental editor. If you want someone to find typos and grammar issues, then a line editor may be best.
For more information, check out our article on different kinds of editing .
No matter what kind you go with, getting the feedback of an unbiased professional can do wonders for your autobiography .
Even if you're not looking to make millions with your autobiography, publishing can still be a lot of fun. While it's hard to get a book deal for an autobiography unless you're already a celebrity, self-publishing is always an option.
With a formatted manuscript and a professional cover, you can have your book up on Amazon and other online retailers in short order. You can even order author copies of your paperback to give to friends and family.
To learn more about this process, check out our self-publishing hub .
Whether you want to sell your autobiography to a wide audience or simply have it around for future generations of your family to read, writing about your life experience is a worthwhile endeavor. It can help you become a better writer while reflecting on your life and the lessons learned.
To cover your life story in a compelling manner means leaving some things out and focusing more on others. Pivotal moments in your life should be the “plot points” of your autobiography. Striving to meet some goal should create a through-line for the reader. And the setbacks on your way to that goal can create the conflict needed to keep things interesting.
Of course, all this should be true—unless you're writing a fictional autobiography!
Dave Chesson
When I’m not sipping tea with princesses or lightsaber dueling with little Jedi, I’m a book marketing nut. Having consulted multiple publishing companies and NYT best-selling authors, I created Kindlepreneur to help authors sell more books. I’ve even been called “The Kindlepreneur” by Amazon publicly, and I’m here to help you with your author journey.
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How to write an autobiography (and actually finish it)
If you’ve ever tried writing your autobiography, chances are you haven’t finished. This article gives you one simple strategy on how to write an autobiography, and actually finish it!
There are lots of reasons why this is the case, but it comes down to a few main things:
- You’ve set the bar high: You want your autobiography to be something you’re proud of — something to share with your family. But something that makes you proud isn’t easy to create. It takes time. It’s hard work.
- You’ve lost steam: Writing is typically a solo activity. Without colleagues or friends to keep you on track, it’s easy to lose motivation.
- You’ve followed the wrong advice: Here’s a 10-second challenge. Google “How to write my autobiography” and see what pops up. Chances are, one of the top results is a WikiHow article with 1.84 million views. Its popularity would make you think the article is helpful — but try and apply this advice: “The trick to writing an autobiography is to treat it like any good story: it should have a protagonist (you), a central conflict, and a cast of fascinating characters to keep people engaged.” True? Maybe. Helpful or practical? Absolutely not.
The one question you need to ask yourself
The most important question that you need to ask yourself is this: WHY do you want to write your autobiography?
Do you want to:
A) Start a passion project that you don’t mind sinking years into with no end in sight? B) Write your life story for someone to actually read it, like your children or grandchildren?
Here’s what we predict. A handful of you are in group A. And If so, just keep writing, have fun and don’t worry about ever finishing it (because you probably won’t — and that’s OK). But if you’re in group B and actually want to finish and publish your life story for someone to read, then you need a strategy.
How to write an autobiography
In a nutshell: Answer questions about your life and write down your answers.
A bit of background, when my daughter was born my wife and I realised how little we knew about our parents and their family histories. We wanted their stories to be recorded so our daughter could one day read them and discover who they were beyond being her grandparents. So we went searching for a way to record their life stories that was fun and would lead to a beautiful book in the end. We wanted something affordable, easy to follow and perfect for a novice writer. We didn’t really find anything that worked.
Our solution? We designed an interview with 101 questions for our parents to answer. Every question was designed to be thought provoking and take no more than five minutes each to answer. We broke the questions up into different “life chapters” like childhood, work, love, family tree, children and more philosophical questions as well. The idea was that although the questions were simple enough to answer easily, they’d also be detailed enough to cover our parents’ lives. Plus, the question and answer format gave them an easy way to track progress as they got closer to finishing their book. It was easy, motivating and most importantly — they finished their books!
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The Q&A format is authentic and enjoyable to read for family and friends
We then printed the books and they were better than we ever imagined. We learned so much about our parents and the interview format made it so compelling to read. Answer this: would you prefer to hear someone narrate your great-grandfather’s entire life story from beginning to end or read an interview with him written in his own words? Which will make you feel like you’re having a conversation with him? Which will bring his story to life? The magic of an interview is it’s fascinating to read — as soon as you hear a question you need to know the answer.
Here are just some of the questions we liked best:
- If you could share a meal with anyone in the world, who would it be and why?
- What advice would you give to your 18 year old self?
- What’s the most valuable thing your parents taught you?
My wife and I got so excited about how well our parents’ stories turned out that we launched A Life Untold to share this concept with the rest of the world. We tried really hard to get the price as low as possible so there’s virtually no barrier for anyone to ACTUALLY write and print their autobiography into a captivating and professionally designed hardcover book. In fact, we believe in it so much we’d like to challenge you NOT to finish once you’ve gotten started. I hope you give it a try!
Happy writing!
Turn your life story into a hardcover autobiography that your family will treasure forever. Find out more about our process.
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Record a loved one’s life story in a beautifully printed book. A truly meaningful gift for anyone special in your life.
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How To Write An Autobiography: A Detailed & Comprehensive Guide
- March 28, 2022
When contemplating how to write an autobiography, many people are led to assume that it’s simple. It’s just your own life story, put through the writing process. However, when writing your own autobiography, you may find that the writing process is a little more complicated than just starting with your birth and telling the story of your own life up to the present moment.
A person’s life is more than just the big events, and it’s seldom ever a solitary story. There are life lessons that need to be included. Family members and their impact on you are a part of autobiography writing as well. If you want to write an autobiography, you have to be conscious of your life story, as a tale that built the person you are, not just a string of events.
This article will help you figure out how to write an autobiography so that it’s not just the story of your own life but a personal story that others can relate to, find inspiration in, and learn from.
What is an Autobiography?
An autobiography is more than just the life story of someone. The person’s life being described is your own; therefore, it is far more personal than a novel or work of fiction. It is essential to stay truthful when recalling your own memories. The slightest deviation in honesty is a slippery slope and can quickly take you from autobiography writing to fiction writing.
How An Autobiography is Different from a Biography
A biography is the telling of someone else’s life. You choose someone, such as a family member, a friend, or a famous person, and you tell the story of his or her own life while leaving your own story out of it. A biography takes a large amount of research and expertise regarding the subject’s life story and events that they lived through. An autobiography works in the same fashion, but it’s the story of you. You are the ultimate expert in your own life. Therefore, there’s not much research to be done.
Another significant difference between autobiographical writing and biographical writing is the voice that is used. When you write an autobiography, you want to use first-person writing. You are telling the story of you. Therefore you should tell it from your own point of view.
On the other hand, biographies should always be written from a third-person point of view. Third-person is using “he, she, they, them.” You were not there, you did not witness the events you are writing about, and therefore, you should be telling the story from an outsider’s viewpoint.
How an Autobiography is Different from a Memoir
A memoir tells your own story, but not your entire life story. Often written to convey a specific message, a memoir includes snippets and anecdotes that occur throughout your entire life. Still, it’s not the detailed story of a life in its entirety. Both of these types of writing are done in the first-person point of view. First-person uses pronouns such as “I, we, and us.”
For example, if you were to write a memoir about how 9/11 affected you personally, you might write about your life the year that the attack occurred. You may even give some bits of information about your childhood, your career, or your family life from before the event. Then you would provide details and focus on 9/11 itself and what you did and were doing that day. Later, you might skip ahead and give stories from your life about how it changed you, but you wouldn’t tell the story of your entire life.
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Future Tense in an Autobiography
The future tense is tricky when it comes to writing. Most autobiographies recall events that have already occurred in a step-by-step process. This process takes the reader from the beginning to another point in the not-so-distant past or right up to the present.
The end is often written in the present tense, but most of the time, the story stops there. Basic principles of tense apply if you decide to speculate or include your hopes, dreams, or fears for the future.
Tips on How to Write an Autobiography
Your own autobiography should include details that encompass your life from birth to the present. When the writing process begins, you should write in the past tense to let the readers know that the events you are writing about have already occurred.
When you get to the present day, remember to switch your tense to the present tense so that the readers understand that you are discussing where you are in your life now. Mistakes in tense usage can be fixed in the first draft revision, but it’s best to try to get yourself in the habit of switching tenses as you go from the past events to the present day when you write an autobiography.
The following are other important tips about what content to include that will help you learn how to write an engaging and well-executed autobiography.
Autobiography Questions
Below are some autobiography questions that can guide you when writing about your life story:
- What has motivated you to write an autobiography?
- Who made a significant impact or influence in your life?
- Who are the people who surround you?
- What are the remarkable memories you have?
- Did anyone not support you on your journey and you proved them wrong?
- What inspires you?
- What demotivates you?
- What do you consider the best time in your life?
- What quote best depicts and summarizes your life?
- How would you describe yourself?
- What kind of family relationships do you have?
- What moments in life do you feel like you could be truly proud of yourself?
- What do you think are some of your flaws?
- What do you desire to have in the future/where would you like to be?
- What do you do to upskill, and in which field would you like to focus your energy?
- What are your set of principles and personal values?
- How have your values defined who you are today?
- What is your dream career path?
- Have you advocated for something?
- If there was one thing you wanted everyone to know about you, what would it be?
Your Background
It’s essential to start by telling your readers where you’re from, when you were born, and who your family members are when you write an autobiography.
This does not mean that you need to include how long your mother was in labor (unless the story of your birth is a particularly interesting one), what the hospital room number was, how much you weighed, how long you were, and what you scored on the Apgar test. Those are details that are nice to include in your baby book, but almost no one is interested in those details but you and your mom.
What you should include is where you were born (city, state, country), a story or two about a family member who meant a lot to you when you were a child or teenager, what your educational background was like, what kind of kid you were, and what your family life was like.
Keeping it general and sticking to just a few personal stories and anecdotes is enough. If you want to know how to write an autobiography that doesn’t bore the reader to tears or sleep within the first few pages, keep the details specific to significant events in your childhood, and keep the more drab and general stories to yourself.
Write About Hardship or Failure
While it may not be the most glamorous of life events you have experienced, writing about hard times, failure, and times of struggle help the reader relate to you, feel empathy and care about the story of your life.
Making your life seem perfect simply because writing about something that didn’t work out, hurt you, or made you unpopular because you see it as embarrassing will only hurt you in the long run because the reader will not be engaged.
When you go back and read your first draft, ask yourself if what you have written will touch anyone who has struggled similarly to you. If not, go back and rewrite it to include at least a few stories of hard times.
Come Up with a Catchy and Compelling Title
Autobiographical writing doesn’t have to be boring, and neither should your title. Steer clear of titles such as; Jane Doe: An Autobiography. Unless you’re famous, you’re not compelling anyone to pick it up and read it. Equally boring is; Jane Doe: The Story of my Life.
![my autobiography about my life How To How to write An Autobiography](https://selfpublishingresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/How-To-Write-An-Autobiography-3-400x267.jpg)
Try to come up with something catchy and engaging when you come up with the title. Readers are more likely to read an autobiography written by someone with a witty or smart title than someone who didn’t have the writing skills or creativity to create something more original.
Instead, try for something like; A Beautiful Disaster: The Story of Jane Doe. This title denotes that you don’t take yourself too seriously, but you respect and love yourself while admitting that your life can sometimes be a mess.
You don’t even need to have your name in your title if you have a catchy title. Take this example into consideration; Hot Mess Express: The Story of One Tired Mom. This sort of title is fun, funny, and will catch the attention of mothers, especially those with young children.
Significant Events
When considering how to write an autobiography, keep in mind that significant events in your life should always be included. When you write an autobiography, you are looking for points in your personal story that impacted you and helped to shape you into the person that you are now.
Maybe that was a move across the country, the death of someone close to you, finding love, or your first kiss. Perhaps it was being the first person in your family to go to college, starting your own business, or the birth of your first child.
Be sure to include the less wonderful but still significant events in your life, as well. Things like your first heartbreak, divorce, the loss of a job, poverty you experienced, or trauma that compelled you to rise above your station and seek help to gain self-improvement or lessons learned from these experiences.
Have a Central Idea
What is the most important thing you want to say to the reader with this story? Is it that you started out with nothing and rose up to success? Is it that you had success and lost it all? Maybe it’s that love and dedication to family are more important than success in a career or climbing a social ladder.
Whatever your central idea, identify it and then figure out how you can put it in autobiography format.
The Steps Involved to Write an Autobiography
When thinking of how to write an autobiography, consider that the writing process begins in much the same way that it does with any sort of writing. You should consider following the following steps if you want to learn how to write an autobiography effectively.
Create an Autobiographical Outline
Just like any literary work, you should have an outline. After you have taken some time to reflect on what you want to include, get it written down in autobiography outline form. Include all of the parts of your life that you think you might want to incorporate, and then separate them into categories, focusing on what you think will be of medium to high interest to a reader.
What is meant by “medium to high interest” is that the events are significant enough to garner enough interest for the reader. That they will feel compelled to continue reading to see what happened to you next or how you got through an event or part of your life that you describe.
Do Your Homework
Just because you know what happened to you, and you have the general information and experiences from things like your childhood, it doesn’t mean that you have the knowledge to write it well.
If you don’t know how to describe the setting, society in the era you’re writing about, and the culture, it will seem that you don’t know how to write an autobiography, and readers will start to lose interest.
Look into things like the area you grew up in and what life was like in that area when you were a child. Get a family history from members of your family, such as where your family originated from, what your parents and grandparents did for a living, and any other significant information you may need that you don’t know about the people from whence you came.
Complete the First Draft
Your first draft may not be very clean, and it will most likely have things in it that need to be cut out. You may get too wordy talking about specific periods of your life and may not supply enough story to others. You won’t know until you get that first draft under your belt.
Once you complete this draft, take some time off and let the work sit. Taking a break before revisiting puts distance between yourself and your story, and you’re far more likely to be able to come at the revision process in an open-minded matter once you have that distance.
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Revise and Rewrite
As with any writing that you do, whether it’s an autobiography, novel, personal essay, research paper, or news article, you have to revise your work. Proofread, fix simple and obvious mistakes, and add to the things that need more description while cutting out the unnecessary parts.
Once you have fixed grammar mistakes and taken the story from what looks like a personal diary to a narrative account of your life experiences, you can start writing the next draft. Make sure to determine your desired writing style before you rewrite, and make sure that the content matches that style.
How to Properly Structure an Autobiography
Whether you’re writing a full-length book or an autobiographical essay, you still have to have structure to your writing. While an autobiographical essay is shorter, the structure is much the same. The following are some tips that will help you figure out how to write an autobiography format that works well.
Write in Chronological Order
While it’s perfectly fine for a novel to have a timeline that skips and jumps around, the best way to tell a good story of your own experiences and personal memories is to do so in chronological order or the order in which things happened.
The very beginning of your autobiography should cover your birth, then childhood, then education, then young adulthood, on up to the present moment. This creates a timeline of each significant personal experience that is easy to follow and doesn’t confuse the reader.
Don’t Fictionalize Names or Places
Professional writers of fiction often create characters based on people they know or even themselves. They give these characters fake names and personas and rename towns and businesses so as not to make the writing too personal. All the details of the real people may be present, but when you write fiction, you have the freedom to change things.
An autobiography covers actual events, so the writing needs to be honest. If you grew up in Toledo, Ohio, say that. Don’t make up the name of a town. If you grew up with a mother named Tess, say that. Don’t give her a fake name. Being truthful about your family and your life is essential. You’re not the only character in this story, and it’s unfair and not suitable to misrepresent a setting or person in your life.
Add Family Photos or Other Personal Touches
The most compelling television episodes are the ones in which there is a strong story and a strong visual to accompany it. You can create an effect very close to this by including photos, artwork, letters shared by people close to you, and more. Just be sure that you ask for and are granted permission before you do this, especially if the photos are used to identify weak moments in your life for any reason.
Be Thorough in Describing Pivotal Moments
Significant moments in life that occur, such as academic achievements, turning points, and the things that build up to a story arc for you, need to be built up in a way that creates both interest and intrigue for your reader. Include details like how negative experiences shaped your understanding or outlook on things or how you learned to be completely free of stress because of how stressful and frantic your life used to be.
These things make up the critical elements in what amounts to a full life. And being completely transparent and thorough in the telling of it gives the reader the freshest possible perspective, especially if you acknowledge as the writer that you are reflecting upon the story you’re telling, as you tell it.
The Final Draft When Writing an Autobiography
So you’ve completed all of the steps mentioned above, and you’ve worked out your outline, title, and other details that seem small but are incredibly important. Now it’s time to write the final draft so that your favorite story, the story of you, can become someone else’s favorite story.
The Last Revision
Once you have completed that final draft , you still need to go back and ensure that everything you wanted and needed to include is present and accounted for. Clarity is sometimes an issue when a person is trying to figure out how to write an autobiography. Try reading your story aloud, and if it makes sense to someone else or even to you as you read it with your own voice, then it’s probably thorough enough.
Make Sure the Title Agrees with the Content
The last thing you want is a misleading title. Make sure that the title goes along with your autobiography’s overall tone and message.
For example, if you wrote a sad story about heartache and loss of hope, don’t title your story: Little Miss Sunshine: The Story of One Woman from the Midwest. Be sure that the mood, message, and tone align with the title you have decided on. If they don’t fit, it’s much easier to change the title than the mood and tone of the story.
Autobiography Format
Below we have outlined the format that you can utilize when writing an autobiography:
- Title – It should reflect what your life story conveys or what it is like to be you.
- Dedication – This section states whom you would like to dedicate your autobiography.
- Table of Contents – It helps your readers to locate specific parts of your autobiography.
- Acknowledgments – This is where you express your gratitude to the people who have helped you on your journey.
- Foreword – It highlights the purpose of the autobiography.
- Introduction – This provides a glimpse of who you are as the author, and if this is effective, the reader will continue reading your book.
- Body Section – This is where the events in your life are chronologically narrated, along with all the necessary details. It can contain many headings and subheadings.
- Conclusion – This is where you share all your revelations and successes, while also referencing your own personal experiences.
- Memorabilia – You may include significant pictures or any other objects that have impacted your life.
- Index – It helps the reader browse through your autobiography by using main keywords or concept words.
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How to Start an Autobiography about Yourself: Full Guide + Autobiography Examples
You’re probably thinking: I’m no Mahatma Gandhi or Steve Jobs—what could I possibly write in my memoir? I don’t even know how to start an autobiography, let alone write the whole thing.
But don’t worry: essay writing can be easy, and this autobiography example for students is here to show you that memoir writing can be easy and even exciting. Every person, whether famous or not, is unique and has a story worth sharing. All you need to do now is scroll down the page and enjoy this amazing sample autobiography, as well as some related practical hints.
👨🎓️ A Student Autobiography Example
📚 more autobiography examples for students.
- 💡 Autobiography Ideas
😕 How to Start an Autobiography
🔗 references.
An autobiography is the story of your own life . Even if you think you don’t have much to include in your memoir, you can still make it quite interesting.
Bill Gates claims that he always tries to find a lazy person to do a difficult job. Why? Because a lazy person will look for an easy way to do it! That’s why we found a lazy but smart student to write a short autobiography example, and now we’ll share the easiest ways to do it with you. Feel free to use it as an autobiography example outline .
Below is a student autobiography sample with subheadings. Remember: it doesn’t have to be exactly as shown in the examples. They’re rather to show you the right path to be moving towards. Also, if something in your writing needs fixing, don’t hesitate to use a phrase reworder .
My Childhood
Not sure how to make an autobiography introduction? Why not start from the very beginning? Writing about your early years is the easiest and most logical start for an autobiography.
I was born on a cold winter night, when even time seemed to stand still, in my native Bennington, Oklahoma. I do not remember much of my early childhood, but my mom said I was a very active, curious, and communicative child. I would ask dozens of questions each minute, even without waiting for the answers. I suppose this is why my parents offered me books and educational movies as early as my third birthday.
In the next part of your autobiography essay, describe yourself in a few words. It does not necessarily need to be too creative. You can take a short learning style quiz and put the information you’ll find out into your autobiography. It will be quite a unique addition. And don’t forget to make a smooth transition from the previous part!
Fortunately, my thirst for knowledge did not come to an end when I was at school. I was passionate about history and science. This passion helped me gain a profound knowledge of these areas, and I was admitted to the college of my dreams. Today, I am a student at a law school, and I feel very happy about it.
An old saying goes, “A life with a goal is a life that is whole.” Be positive and show everyone that your life is whole.
I am certain that my degree will become my ticket to a better tomorrow. I want to become a renowned lawyer in the field of employment legislation. I study hard and devote my free time to reading scholarly reviews and watching interviews with recognized specialists in the field.
My Ups and Downs
This part aims to show that you are capable of analyzing your experiences and learning valuable lessons.
Of course, I understand that life is not just a bed of roses, and challenges and hardships are an integral element of life. Since my parents could not help me cover my college expenses in full, paying off my student loan has become an important challenge for me. I combine a part-time job and full-time study to earn my living and my education. I feel triumphant at the beginning of every month when I receive my salary and plan how I will spend my money.
Autobiography Conclusion
In this part of your autobiographical essay, you want to establish the main lesson to take away from your story. In other words, what’s remarkable about your story?
I have come to believe that two main factors determine success. The first is a person’s determination and will to succeed. Are you ready to make sacrifices to achieve your goal, like working and studying at the same time? Are you prepared to recover after failure and proceed to your goal again? Without strong internal motivation, it is nearly impossible to become successful. Equally important is the support of people around you. Being determined to succeed does not mean alienating everyone and stepping on other people to achieve your goal. On the contrary, success is about recognizing your weaknesses and accepting support from people who genuinely want to help you. For instance, if it were not for my parents’ support of my educational endeavors, I might not be attending law school today.
Would you call this student an inspirational leader like Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King, Jr. ? In all honesty, no. He may be an interesting and nice person, but he hasn’t left such a mark on history as some other people have—at least not yet.
But can you learn something from his story? Most definitely.
The autobiography example above is suitable for both college and high school students.
In case you still lack the inspiration to write your memoir, you can always come to our experts, who will help you structure and write your narrative. Alternatively, you can find some more interesting examples of an autobiography at Phoenix.edu and at Southwestern College website .
And in case you’re still wondering how to write an autobiography, just keep reading!
Short Autobiography Example
As a student, you might need to write a short biography for various reasons, such as when applying for a scholarship, internship, or job. If you’re looking for a short autobiography example, check out the sample below.
I am Aisha Patel, hailing from the city of Mumbai, India. Growing up in a culturally rich environment taught me to appreciate traditions, diversity, inclusion, and community.
I have always been motivated by my parents, both accomplished physicians. I found myself drawn to the field of medicine at an early age. Since then, I devoted countless hours to volunteering, participating in healthcare camps, and working with NGOs to expand medical access in marginalized communities. I became determined to expand my horizons and receive a world-class medical education. Eventually, I set my sights on studying in the United States.
I aspire to use the knowledge and skills I acquire to contribute to healthcare practices in India and globally. I plan to address pressing societal health challenges with empathy and expertise.
Autobiography of Myself as a Student
Writing an autobiography focusing on academic interests creates a platform for self-reflection. This activity can help you understand how your academic pursuits have shaped your identity and aspirations.
The following example will provide valuable insights into the content of a well-crafted autobiography:
My name is Sam Davis, and I am a dedicated student from Boston. My academic journey has been shaped by my passion for history. Since childhood, I have been deeply interested in people’s experiences throughout the centuries. This fascination is what inspired my academic pursuits.
I have always been on top of my class in history courses. I enjoyed diving deep into the different eras and learning about various cultures and events. In addition to excellent grades, my commitment has been recognized through multiple honors and awards. In particular, I have been included on the Dean’s List and received accolades for my research papers.
My primary academic interest is studying American history and evolution since the nation’s founding. I enjoy exploring the social and political forces that have shaped the United States. I am also keenly interested in ancient civilizations and the parallels between them and the contemporary world.
Outside the classroom, I actively participate in historical reenactments and volunteer at local museums. Helping preserve and share our collective heritage is one of my primary goals. Such experiences allow me to bring history to life and engage with others who share my passion.
I am eager to continue my scholarly pursuits and contribute to our understanding of the past. I believe we can learn many important and exciting lessons by making meaningful connections between history and the present.
💡 Autobiography Ideas for Students
Are you looking for inspiration to write your autobiography? Here are some thought-provoking autobiography essay topics that will help you reflect on your personal growth, academic journey, and unique experiences.
- Personal experience adopting a cat from Humane Society .
- My first travel to Dresden.
- Describe your personal leadership experience.
- Discuss your experience of resolving a problem in your neighborhood .
- How Italian culture influenced my life .
- How refraining from coffee for two weeks changed my everyday life.
- Tell how you implement the concept of life-wide learning in your life.
- Why I decided to take up wrestling and how it changed my life.
- Narrate your personal experience of a healthy lifestyle .
- My first memories of riding a bicycle .
- How the quarantine time helped me to focus and myself and grow.
- My health vision and strategy to improve health behavior.
- Discuss how a psychology course changed your vision of the world.
- How parenting style affected my childhood.
- Personal experience of working with self-initiated expatriates.
- My first day at college .
- Why I love poetry.
- Describe your experience in Shotokan Karate and your favorite technique.
- The role non-verbal communication plays in my everyday life.
- Lessons I learned from my first semester.
- My reminiscence of the tragedy on September 11th.
- Give details about a childhood experience that changed your life .
- My understanding of the concept home .
- Personal experience of mysophobia and the lessons I’ve learned.
- Represent your favorite meeting place .
- A defining event from my childhood.
- Describe your experience of relocation to another country.
- Why I started practicing art and dance movement therapy.
- The impact mindfulness practicing had on my life.
- My experience of winning the fight by losing it.
- Why people like having lunch at a restaurant : my experience.
- Describe the last conflict , its reasons, and how you resolved it.
- Tell about your dream car .
- Starting college as a major life event.
- Describe your dream home .
- My experience as a manager in an organization .
- Narrate how peculiarities of your culture influence your behavior.
- Tell about the significant event that influenced your life.
- Personal experience of challenging gender norms.
- Discuss your personal relationship with alcohol abuse .
- Represent your plans and career goals .
- Describe a high school experience that influenced your personality.
- How I managed to apply international marketing courses in daily life.
- Write about the teachers who made a difference in your life.
- Experience of working as a head nurse.
- My history of important habit development.
- Discuss the challenges in friendship you’ve experienced and how you managed to cope with them.
- Significance of music in my life.
- Describe what you are responsible for in your life.
- Give details about the most memorable holiday you had in your childhood.
What does every autobiography include? A theme. Essentially, the theme is the main “lesson” from the autobiography—the critical point that all of your life events come together to demonstrate.
How do you go about creating a theme?
You can do it by:
- Discussing a string of events or one event in particular (or even just one day in your life)
- Introducing a role model or an authority figure
- Talking about your childhood dreams and memories
To make the task easier for you, we’ve put together a list of prompts you can use to signal your theme to the reader.
Simply complete these phrases, develop the ideas, and add specific details to your student autobiography examples and ta-da! Your A-level autobiography is ready!
A Student’s Autobiography: Starting Phrases
Use one of these phrases as the first sentence of your autobiography:
- I was born in…
- I was an active (or quiet, knowledge-loving, shy, curious, etc.) child.
- My childhood dream was…
- My earliest memory is…
- I am grateful to my parents (or teachers, friends, etc.) because…
- My role model was…
- My lifetime dream is…
- The most memorable day of my life was…
- One phrase that I will never forget is…
- If only one of my dreams could come true, I would wish for…
- My main belief in life is…
- I am driven by my desire/passion/wish to…
- The main lesson that my parents taught me was…
- The childhood hobby that most shaped my personality is…
- One event that influenced who I am today is…
- My motto in life is…
- My favorite book/movie/author is…
- When I was growing up, I always dreamed of becoming a…
- One thing I wish I knew five (or ten, twenty, etc.) years ago is that…
- My favorite childhood picture is…
Feel free to use this example of an autobiography for students and follow the simple steps described above to complete an A-level memoir with ease.
✏️ Student Autobiography FAQ
Writing an essay for a scholarship, be sure to include relevant information about yourself. Prove that you are a perfect candidate. Customize your life story in a way that showcases your strengths and positive qualities. Any other application will require a similar approach.
It’s a source of background information about the author that he or she chooses to reveal. An autobiographical essay is to include key facts about the author in chronological order. These facts usually are name, birth date, education, occupation, etc.
For a good college application, make sure to put an emphasis on the positive sides of your personal history. They should be relevant for the admission commission. Focus on academic achievements, relevant certifications, courses, etc.
Some people believe that an autobiography is one of the easiest essays to write. The author definitely knows the subject thoroughly. When writing about yourself, start with an introduction : your name, birth date, education, current position.
- What Is an Autobiography? ThoughtCo
- Beginning the Academic Essay: Harvard College Writing Center
- What Are the Differences Between an Autobiographical Narrative & a Biography? Seattle PI
- 500 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing: The New York Times
- Autobiography: Merced College
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Writing My Autobiography
![Article my autobiography about my life](https://d2ipgh48lxx565.cloudfront.net/uploads/article_65ef6870213df.jpg?Expires=1724488661&Signature=hhAZejYzlyWZKO-qJpKOGaYQPv~norvw0k-1gGHuobJnDgFxVQO-F7obxLZJDIR2hXD~TaSMPn~OjTd7FvOG5y4qBorl2tMHfk7G-hGf~GUYX6uEuYIXgLlH04FuYc5feLuDZwpTPjLbcROHTksj-vuQT-dWol4pm~6XMHi29i1QgBg4I5D6R8tX-Z~fXJWSF7bbAh5z6P5RsbN9vFHrcoyQ-RjvTMATKBRH3v9IhH3lKHTuJ612qyMw7oV7XHESZei~zUvZJCif2ertTfkMWrCFj-40YQbFL1oEEfnq~ahDQstdsOEWR7YVgU83armm1a-xQisqKJHldMb0McRTGg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIN7SVXNLPAOVDKZQ)
A re you still writing?” he asked.
“I am,” I answered.
“What are you working on at the moment?”
“An autobiography,” I said.
“Interesting,” he replied. “Whose?”
The implication here, you will note, is that mine hasn’t been a life sufficiently interesting to merit an autobiography. The implication isn’t altogether foolish. Most autobiographies, at least the best autobiographies, have been written by people who have historical standing, or have known many important people, or have lived in significant times, or have noteworthy family connections or serious lessons to convey . I qualify on none of these grounds. Not that, roughly two years ago when I sat down to write my autobiography, I let that stop me.
An autobiography, to state the obvious, is at base a biography written by its own subject. But how is one to write it: as a matter of setting the record straight, as a form of confessional, as a mode of seeking justice, or as a justification of one’s life? “An autobiography,” wrote George Orwell, “is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.” Is this true? I prefer to think not.
Autobiography is a complex enterprise, calling for its author not only to know himself but to be honest in conveying that knowledge. “I could inform the dullest author how he might write an interesting book,” wrote Samuel Taylor Coleridge. “Let him relate the events of his own life with Honesty, not disguising the feelings that accompanied them.” One of the nicest things about being a professor, it has been said, is that one gets to talk for fifty minutes without being interrupted. So one of the allurements of autobiography is that one gets to write hundreds of pages about that eminently fascinating character, oneself, even if in doing so one only establishes one’s insignificance.
The great autobiographies—of which there have not been all that many—have been wildly various. One of the first, that of the Renaissance sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, is marked by an almost unrelieved braggadocio: No artist was more perfect, no warrior more brave, no lover more pleasing than the author, or so he would have us believe. Edward Gibbon’s autobiography, though elegantly written, is disappointing in its brevity. That of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, heavily striking the confessional note, might have been told in a booth to a priest. Ben Franklin’s autobiography is full of advice on how the rest of us should live. John Stuart Mill’s is astounding in its account of its author’s prodigiously early education, which began with his learning Greek under his father’s instruction at the age of three. Then there is Henry Adams’s autobiography, suffused with disappointment over his feeling out of joint with his times and the world’s not recognizing his true value. In Making It , Norman Podhoretz wrote an autobiography informed by a single message, which he termed a “dirty little secret,” namely that there is nothing wrong with ambition and that success, despite what leftist intellectuals might claim, is nothing to be ashamed of.
Please note that all of these are books written by men. Might it be that women lack the vanity required to write—or should I say “indulge in”—the literary act of autobiography? In Mary Beard’s Emperor of Rome , I recently read that Agrippina the Younger, the mother of Nero, wrote her autobiography, which has not survived, and which Mary Beard counts as “one of the great losses of all classical literature.” I wish that Jane Austen had written an autobiography, and so too George Eliot and Willa Cather. Perhaps these three women, great writers all, were too sensibly modest for autobiography, that least modest of all literary forms.
A utobiography can be the making or breaking of writers who attempt it. John Stuart Mill’s autobiography has gone a long way toward humanizing a writer whose other writings tend toward the coldly formal. Harold Laski wrote that Mill’s “ Autobiography , in the end the most imperishable of his writings, is a record as noble as any in our literature of consistent devotion to the public good.”
If Mill’s autobiography humanized him, the autobiography of the novelist Anthony Trollope did for him something approaching the reverse. In An Autobiography , Trollope disdains the notion of an author’s needing inspiration to write well. He reports that “there was no day on which it was my positive duty to write for the publishers, as it was my duty to write reports for the Post Office,” where he had a regular job. “I was free to be idle if I pleased. But as I had made up my mind to undertake this second profession [that of novelist], I found it to be expedient to bind myself by certain self-imposed laws.” Trollope recounts—emphasis here on “counts”—that as a novelist he averages forty pages per week, at 250 words per page. He writes: “There are those who would be ashamed to subject themselves to such a taskmaster, and who think that the man who works with his imagination should allow himself to wait till inspiration moves him. When I have heard such doctrine preached, I have hardly been able to repress my scorn.” Trollope then mentions that on the day after he finished his novel Doctor Thorne , he began writing his next novel, The Bertrams . For a long spell the literati refused to forgive Trollope for shearing inspiration away from the creation of literary art, for comparing the job of the novelist to a job at the post office. Only the splendid quality of his many novels eventually won him forgiveness and proper recognition.
A serious biography takes up what the world thinks of its subject, what his friends and family think of him, and—if the information is available in letters, diaries, journals, or interviews—what he thinks of himself. An autobiography is ultimately about the last question: what the author thinks of himself. Yet how many of us have sufficient self-knowledge to give a convincing answer? In her splendid novel Memoirs of Hadrian , Marguerite Yourcenar has Hadrian note: “When I seek deep within me for knowledge of myself what I find is obscure, internal, unformulated, and as secret as any complicity.” The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the scrupulously examined one is rare indeed.
My own life has not provided the richest fodder for autobiography. For one thing, it has not featured much in the way of drama. For another, good fortune has allowed me the freedom to do with my life much as I have wished. I have given my autobiography the title Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life , with the subtitle Especially If You’ve Had a Lucky Life . Now well along in its closing chapter, mine, I contend, has been thus far—here I pause to touch wood—a most lucky life.
My title derives from the story of Croesus, who ruled the country of Lydia from circa 585–547 b.c. , and who is perhaps today best known for the phrase “rich as Croesus.” The vastly wealthy Croesus thought himself the luckiest man on earth and asked confirmation of this from Solon, the wise Athenian, who told him that in fact the luckiest man on earth was another Athenian who had two sons in that year’s Olympics. When Croesus asked who was second luckiest, Solon cited another Greek who had a most happy family life. Croesus was displeased but not convinced by Solon’s answers. Years later he was captured by the Persian Cyrus, divested of his kingdom and his wealth, and set on a pyre to be burned alive, before which he was heard to exclaim that Solon had been right. The moral of the story is, of course: Never say you have had a lucky life until you know how your life ends.
I have known serious sadness in my life. I have undergone a divorce. I have become a member of that most dolorous of clubs, parents who have buried one of their children. Yet I have had much to be grateful for. In the final paragraph of a book I wrote some years ago on the subject of ambition, I noted that “We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, or the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing.” In all these realms, I lucked out. I was born to intelligent, kindly parents; at a time that, though I was drafted into the army, allowed me to miss being called up to fight in any wars; and in the largely unmitigated prosperity enjoyed by the world’s most interesting country, the United States of America.
Writing is a form of discovery. Yet can even writing ferret out the quality and meaning of one’s own life? Alexis de Tocqueville, the endlessly quotable Tocqueville, wrote: “The fate of individuals is still more hidden than that of peoples,” and “the destinies of individuals are often as uncertain as those of nations.” Fate, destiny, those two great tricksters, who knows what they have in store for one, even in the final days of one’s life? I, for example, as late as the age of eighteen, had never heard the word “intellectual.” If you had asked me what a man of letters was, I would have said a guy who works at the post office. Yet I have been destined to function as an intellectual for the better part of my adult life, and have more than once been called a man of letters. Fate, destiny, go figure!
T he first question that arises in writing one’s autobiography is what to include and what to exclude. Take, for starters, sex. In his nearly seven-hundred-page autobiography, Journeys of the Mind , the historian of late antiquity Peter Brown waits until page 581 to mention, in the most glancing way, that he is married. Forty or so pages later, the name of a second wife is mentioned. Whether he had children with either of these wives, we never learn. But then, Brown’s is a purely intellectual autobiography, concerned all but exclusively with the development of the author’s mind and those who influenced that development.
My autobiography, though less than half the length of Brown’s, allowed no such luxury of reticence. Sex, especially when I was an adolescent, was a central subject, close to a preoccupation. After all, boys—as I frequently instructed my beautiful granddaughter Annabelle when she was growing up—are brutes. I came of age BP, or Before the Pill, and consummated sex, known in that day as “going all the way,” was not then a serious possibility. Too much was at risk—pregnancy, loss of reputation—for middle-class girls. My friends and I turned to prostitution.
Apart from occasionally picking up streetwalkers on some of Chicago’s darker streets, prostitution for the most part meant trips of sixty or so miles to the bordellos of Braidwood or Kankakee, Illinois. The sex, costing $3, was less than perfunctory. (“Don’t bother to take off your socks or that sweater,” one was instructed.) What was entailed was less sensual pleasure than a rite of passage, of becoming a man, of “losing your cherry,” a phrase I have only recently learned means forgoing one’s innocence. We usually went on these trips in groups of five or six in one or another of our fathers’ cars. Much joking on the way up and even more on the way back. Along Chicago’s Outer Drive, which we took home in those days, there was a Dad’s Old Fashioned Root Beer sign that read, “Have you had it lately?,” which always got a good laugh.
I like to think of myself as a shy pornographer, or, perhaps better, a sly pornographer. By this I mean that in my fiction and where necessary in my essays I do not shy away from the subject of sex, only from the need to describe it in any of its lurid details. So I have done in my autobiography. On the subject of sex in my first marriage (of two), for example, I say merely, “I did not want my money back.” But, then, all sex, if one comes to think about it, is essentially comic, except of course one’s own.
On the inclusion-exclusion question, the next subject I had to consider was money, or my personal finances. Financially I have nothing to brag about. In my autobiography I do, though, occasionally give the exact salaries—none of them spectacular—of the jobs I’ve held. With some hesitation (lest it seem boasting) I mention that a book I wrote on the subject of snobbery earned, with its paperback sale, roughly half-a-million dollars. I fail to mention those of my books that earned paltry royalties, or, as I came to think of them, peasantries. In my autobiography, I contented myself with noting my good fortune in being able to earn enough money doing pretty much what I wished to do and ending up having acquired enough money not to worry overmuch about financial matters. Like the man said, a lucky life.
If I deal glancingly in my autobiography with sex and personal finances, I tried to take a pass on politics. My own political development is of little interest. I started out in my political life a fairly standard liberal—which in those days meant despising Richard Nixon—and have ended up today contemptuous of both our political parties: Tweedledum and Tweedledumber, as the critic Dwight Macdonald referred to them. Forgive the self-congratulatory note, but in politics I prefer to think myself a member in good standing of that third American political party, never alas on the ballot, the anti-BS party.
Of course, sometimes one needs to have a politics, if only to fight off the politics of others. Ours is a time when politics seems to be swamping all else: art, education, journalism, culture generally. I have had the dubious distinction of having been “canceled,” for what were thought my political views, and I write about this experience in my autobiography. I was fired from the editorship of Phi Beta Kappa’s quarterly magazine, the American Scholar —a job I had held for more than twenty years—because of my ostensibly conservative, I suppose I ought to make that “right-wing,” politics. My chief cancellers were two academic feminists and an African-American historian-biographer, who sat on the senate, or governing board, of Phi Beta Kappa.
T he official version given out by Phi Beta Kappa for my cancellation—in those days still known as a firing—was that the magazine was losing subscribers and needed to seek younger readers. Neither assertion was true, but both currently appear in the Wikipedia entry under my name. The New York Times also printed this “official” but untrue version of my cancellation. In fact, I was canceled because I had failed to run anything in the magazine about academic feminism or race, both subjects that had already been done to death elsewhere and that I thought cliché-ridden and hence of little interest for a magazine I specifically tried to keep apolitical. During my twenty-two years at the American Scholar , the name of no current United States president was mentioned. If anything resembling a theme emerged during my editorship, it was the preservation of the tradition of the liberal arts, a subject on which I was able to acquire contributions from Jacques Barzun, Paul Kristeller, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Frederick Crews, and others.
That I was fired not for anything I had done but for things I had failed to do is an indication of how far we had come in the realm of political correctness. I take up this topic in my autobiography, one theme of which is the vast changes that have taken place in American culture over my lifetime. A notable example is an essay on homosexuality that I wrote and published in Harper’s in 1970, a mere fifty-three years ago. The essay made the points that we still did not know much about the origin of male homosexuality, that there was much hypocrisy concerning the subject, that homosexuals were living under considerable social pressure and prejudice, and that given a choice, most people would prefer that their children not be homosexual. This, as I say, was in 1970, before the gay liberation movement had got underway in earnest. The essay attracted a vast number of letters in opposition, and a man named Merle Miller, who claimed I was calling for genocide of homosexuals, wrote a book based on the essay. Gore Vidal, never known for his temperate reasoning, claimed my argument was ad Hitlerum . (Vidal, after contracting Epstein-Barr virus late in life, claimed that “Joseph Epstein gave it to me.”) I have never reprinted the essay in any of my collections because I felt that it would stir up too much strong feeling. For what it is worth, I also happen to be pleased by the greater tolerance accorded homosexuality in the half century since my essay was published.
The larger point is that today neither Harper’s nor any other mainstream magazine would dare to publish that essay. Yet a few years after the essay was published, I was offered a job teaching in the English Department of Northwestern University, and the year after that, I was appointed editor of the American Scholar. Today, of course, neither job would have been available to me.
Do these matters—my cancellation from the American Scholar , my unearned reputation as a homophobe—come under the heading of self-justification? Perhaps so. But then, what better, or at least more convenient, place to attempt to justify oneself than in one’s autobiography?
Many changes have taken place in my lifetime, some for the better, some for the worse, some whose value cannot yet be known. I note, for example, if not the death then the attenuation of the extended family (nephews, nieces, cousins) in American life. Whereas much of my parents’ social life revolved around an extensive cousinage, I today have grandnephews and grandnieces living on both coasts whom I have never met and probably never shall. I imagine some of them one day being notified of my death and responding, “Really? [Pause] What’s for dinner?”
I take up in my autobiography what Philip Rieff called, in his book of this title, the Triumph of the Therapeutic, a development that has altered child-rearing, artistic creation, and much else in our culture. Although the doctrines of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and others are no longer taken as gospel, their secondary influence has conquered much of modern culture. My parents’ generation did not hold with therapeutic culture, which contends that the essentials of life are the achievement of self-esteem and individual happiness, replacing honor, courage, kindness, and generosity.
In my autobiography, I note that when my mother was depressed by her knowledge that she was dying of cancer, a friend suggested that there were support groups for people with terminal diseases, one of which might be helpful. I imagined telling my mother about such groups, and her response: “Let me see,” she is likely to have said. “You want me to go into a room with strangers, where I will listen to their problems and then I’ll tell them mine, and this will make me feel better.” Pause. “Is this the kind of idiot I’ve raised as a son?”
T hen there is digital culture, the verdict on which is not yet in. Digital culture has changed the way we read, think, make social connections, do business, and so much more. I write in my autobiography that in its consequences digital culture is up there with the printing press and the automobile. Its influence is still far from fully fathomed.
One of my challenges in writing my autobiography was to avoid seeming to brag about my quite modest accomplishments. In the Rhetoric , Aristotle writes: “Speaking at length about oneself, making false claims, taking the credit for what another has done, these are signs of boastfulness.” I tried not to lapse into boasting. Yet at one point I quote Jacques Barzun, in a letter to me, claiming that as a writer I am in the direct line of William Hazlitt, though in some ways better, for my task—that of finding the proper language to establish both intimacy and critical distance—is in the current day more difficult than in Hazlitt’s. At least I deliberately neglected to mention that, in response to my being fired from the American Scholar, Daniel Patrick Moynihan flew an American flag at half-mast over the Capitol, a flag he sent to me as a souvenir. Quoting others about my accomplishments, is this anything other than boasting by other means? I hope so, though even now I’m not altogether sure.
I have a certain pride in these modest accomplishments. Setting out in life, I never thought I should publish some thirty-odd books or have the good luck to continue writing well into my eighties. The question for me as an autobiographer was how to express that pride without preening. The most efficient way, of course, is never to write an autobiography.
Why, then, did I write mine? Although I have earlier characterized writing as a form of discovery, I did not, in writing my autobiography, expect to discover many radically new things about my character or the general lineaments of my life. Nor did I think that my life bore any lessons that were important to others. I had, and still have, little to confess; I have no hidden desire to be spanked by an NFL linebacker in a nun’s habit. A writer, a mere scribbler, I have led a largely spectatorial life, standing on the sidelines, glass of wine in hand, watching the circus pass before me.
Still, I wrote my autobiography, based in a loose way on Wordsworth’s notion that poetry arises from “emotion recollected in tranquility.” Writing it gave me an opportunity to review my life at the end of my life in a tranquil manner. I was able to note certain trends, parallels, and phenomena that have marked my life and set my destiny.
The first of these, as I remarked earlier, was the fortunate time in which I was born, namely the tail end of the Great Depression—to be specific, in 1937. Because of the Depression, people were having fewer children, and often having them later. (My mother was twenty-seven, my father thirty at my birth.) Born when it was, my generation, though subject to the draft—not, in my experience of it, a bad thing—danced between the wars: We were too young for Korea, too old for Vietnam. We were also children during World War II, the last war the country fully supported, which gave us a love of our country. Ours was a low-population generation, untroubled by the vagaries of college admissions or the trauma of rejection by the school of one’s choice. Colleges, in fact, wanted us.
Or consider parents, another fateful phenomenon over which one has no choice. To be born to thoughtless, or disagreeable, or depressed, or deeply neurotic parents cannot but substantially affect all one’s days. Having a father who is hugely successful in the world can be as dampening to the spirit as having a father who is a failure. And yet about all this one has no say. I have given the chapter on my parents the title “A Winning Ticket in the Parents Lottery,” for my own parents, though neither went to college, were thoughtful, honorable, and in no way psychologically crushing. They gave my younger brother and me the freedom to develop on our own; they never told me what schools to attend, what work to seek, whom or when to marry. I knew I was never at the center of my parents’ lives, yet I also knew I could count on them when I needed their support, which more than once I did, and they did not fail to come through. As I say, a winning ticket.
As one writes about one’s own life, certain themes are likely to emerge that hadn’t previously stood out so emphatically. In my case, one persistent motif is that of older boys, then older men, who have supported or aided me in various ways. A boy nearly two years older than I named Jack Libby saw to it that I wasn’t bullied or pushed around in a neighborhood where I was the youngest kid on the block. In high school, a boy to whom I have given the name Jeremy Klein taught me a thing or two about gambling and corruption generally. Later in life, men eight, nine, ten, even twenty or more years older than I promoted my career: Hilton Kramer in promoting my candidacy for the editorship of the American Scholar , Irving Howe in helping me get a teaching job (without an advanced degree) at Northwestern, John Gross in publishing me regularly on important subjects in the Times Literary Supplement , Edward Shils in ways too numerous to mention. Something there was about me, evidently, that was highly protégéable.
I haven’t yet seen the index for my autobiography, but my guess is that it could have been name-ier. I failed, for example, to include my brief but pleasing friendship with Sol Linowitz. Sol was the chairman of Xerox, and later served the Johnson administration as ambassador to the Organization of American States. He also happened to be a reader of mine, and on my various trips to Washington I was often his guest at the F Street Club, a political lunch club where he reserved a private room in which we told each other jokes, chiefly Jewish jokes. I might also have added my six years as a member of the National Council of the National Endowment for the Arts, whose members included the actors Robert Stack and Celeste Holm, the Balanchine dancer Arthur Mitchell, Robert Joffrey, the soprano Renée Fleming, the novelist Toni Morrison, the dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, the architect I. M. Pei, the painter Helen Frankenthaler, and other highly droppable names.
Confronting one’s regrets is another inescapable element in writing one’s autobiography. Ah, regrets: the red MG convertible one didn’t buy in one’s twenties, the elegant young Asian woman one should have asked to dinner, the year one failed to spend in Paris. The greater the number of one’s regrets, the grander their scope, the sadder, at its close, one’s life figures to be. I come out fairly well in the regrets ledger. I regret not having studied classics at university, and so today I cannot read ancient Greek. I regret not having been a better father to my sons. I regret not asking my mother more questions about her family and not telling my father what a good man I thought he was. As regrets go, these are not minor, yet neither have I found them to be crippling.
Then there is the matter of recognizing one’s quirks, or peculiar habits. A notable one of mine, acquired late in life, is to have become near to the reverse of a hypochondriac. I have not yet reached the stage of anosognosia, or the belief that one is well when one is ill—a stage, by the way, that Chekhov, himself a physician, seems to have attained. I take vitamins, get flu and Covid shots, and watch what I eat, but I try to steer clear of physicians. This tendency kicked in not long after my decades-long primary care physician retired. In his The Body: A Guide for Occupants , Bill Bryson defines good health as the health enjoyed by someone who hasn’t had a physical lately. The ancients made this point more directly, advising bene caca et declina medicos (translation on request) . For a variety of reasons, physicians of the current day are fond of sending patients for a multiplicity of tests: bone density tests, colonoscopies, biopsies, X-rays of all sorts, CT scans, MRIs, stopping only at SATs. I am not keen to discover ailments that don’t bother me. At the age of eighty-seven, I figure I am playing with house money, and I have no wish to upset the house by prodding my health in search of imperfections any more than is absolutely necessary.
The older one gets, unless one’s life is lived in pain or deepest regret, the more fortunate one feels. Not always, not everyone, I suppose. “The longer I live, the more I am inclined to the belief that this earth is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum,” said George Bernard Shaw, who lived to age ninety-four. Though the world seems to be in a hell of a shape just now, I nonetheless prefer to delay my exit for as long as I can. I like it here, continue to find much that is interesting and amusing, and have no wish to depart the planet.
Still, with advancing years I have found my interests narrowing. Not least among my waning interests is that in travel. I like my domestic routine too much to abandon it for foreign countries where the natives figure to be wearing Air Jordan shoes, Ralph Lauren shirts, and cargo pants. Magazines that I once looked forward to, many of which I have written for in the past, no longer contain much that I find worth reading. A former moviegoer, I haven’t been to a movie theater in at least a decade. The high price of concert and opera tickets has driven me away. The supposedly great American playwrights—Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, Edward Albee—have never seemed all that good to me, and I miss them not at all. If all this sounds like a complaint that the culture has deserted me, I don’t feel that it has. I can still listen to my beloved Mozart on discs, read Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Dickens, George Eliot, Willa Cather, and the other great novelists, watch the splendid movies of earlier days on Turner Classics and HBO—live, in other words, on the culture of the past.
“Vho needs dis?” Igor Stravinsky is supposed to have remarked when presented with some new phenomena of the avant-garde or other work in the realm of art without obvious benefit. “Vho needs dis?” is a question that occurred to me more than once or twice as I wrote my autobiography. All I can say is that those who read my autobiography will read of the life of a man lucky enough to have devoted the better part of his days to fitting words together into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into essays and stories on a wide variety of topics. Now in his autobiography all the sentences and paragraphs are about his own life. He hopes that these sentences are well made, these paragraphs have a point, and together they attain to a respectable truth quotient, containing no falsehoods whatsoever. He hopes that, on these modest grounds at least, his autobiography qualifies as worth reading.
Joseph Epstein is author of Gallimaufry , a collection of essays and reviews.
Image by Museum Rotterdam on Wikimedia Commons , licensed via Creative Commons . Image cropped.
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50 Eye-Catching Autobiography Titles (+ How to Write Your Own)
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You’ve written your life story.
You’ve laid your heart bare before the world
So, what’s the best title for your one-of-a-kind masterpiece?
“____________: An Autobiography”?
Seriously, unless you’re a household name, using “autobiography” as part of your title might not work in your favor, but not to worry. You don’t have to be famous to write an autobiography , but you do need a title that will grab a buyer’s attention, so they know your book is worth a second look.
Don't like it?
The purpose of this article is to break down what makes a standout autobiography title and the process for creating your own.
Need autobiography titles? Let’s dive in!
The secret sauce for writing an amazing book title.
The process of creating an autobiography book title that gets noticed starts with a marketer’s mindset.
Yes, it all boils down to strategic book positioning in the marketplace. Creativity is a big part of it, but that’s a small part of the bigger picture. After all, if your book doesn’t get in front of the people who would be most likely to read it, you can’t change lives with the content inside!
Unlike fiction books or other types of nonfiction books (e.g. business books or textbooks) where there’s a specific category or genre expectation, autobiographies play by their own set of rules—the more creative the better.
How to think like a marketer when creating your title
If you are self-publishing your book, then you’re probably already aware that marketing is a key component of your book’s success, but what is marketing exactly?
The American Marketing Association defines marketing as
Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.
When marketing your book, knowing how to write a good book title matters, because, along with your cover, it’s the first thing a potential buyer sees (reads) before making a buying decision. A casual search for “autobiography” on Amazon pulled up over 700,000 results. This doesn’t mean that every book belongs in the category, but it’s still a lot of books.
You might be asking how you get your book to rise to the top of search results.
Start with a great title.
Here are some best practices:
- Make your title relevant – You can never go wrong with a title that reflects the theme of your book . This will clue buyers into what to expect. You can also go with a significant statement or quote drawn directly from your story. Clever titles also work, but try to stay away from the cheesy ones that confuse buyers.
- Appeal to your ideal audience’s needs – Every book is not for everyone. Target a specific reader type when creating your title. For example, meteorologist and television personality Ginger Zee titled her book Natural Disasters. This title works well for her because her book’s content is about the unpredictable “storms” of life she has faced and she also covers storms in her reporting.
- Stay away from clickbait – Or anything that leads readers to believe your book is about one thing but it’s something else. This only frustrates readers and could potentially lead to bad reviews.
- Use a primary keyword in your title if it fits – First Gen by Alejandra Campoverdi and Cooked by Jeff Henderson include keyword(s) that are relevant to buyer searches.
- Invite the reader into your story – This can be done by asking a question like the autobiography title What Are You Doing Here? by Baroness Floella Benjamin. Or, create an image in their mind like The Ugly Cry by Danielle Henderson or The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish.
Hint: Keep it short. According to Amazon, “Customers are more likely to skim past long titles (over 60 characters). There are exceptions to the rules. You’ll see some in the list that follows.
Don’t forget about writing a subtitle for your book . They are optional but a great way to add a splash of flavor.
50 eye-catching autobiography titles that inspire
After an exhaustive search in the autobiography categories of the top online book retailers, I selected 50 incredible autobiography titles as a starting point for creating an amazing title for your autobiography. Note: Memoir titles listed under the autobiography category are included in the list.
Autobiography titles about celebrities
- What Are You Doing Here? – Baronness Floella Benjamin
- Tis Herself – Maureen O’Hara
- F inding Me by Viola Davis
- Not That Fancy: Simple Lessons on Living, Loving, Eating, and Dusting Off Your Boots By Reba McEntire
- Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories by Kelly Ripa
- Thicker than Water by Kerry Washington
- We Were Dreamers by Simu Liu
- Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I Am Today by Valerie Bertinelli
- Just as I am by Cicely Tyson
- A Promised Land by Barack Obama
- Making It So by Patrick Stewart
- Inside Out by Demi Moore
- In Pieces by Sally Field
- The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish
- Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder by William Shatner
- Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology by Leah Remini
- Look Out for the Little Guy! By Scott Lang
- I Can’t Make This Up: Life Lessons by Kevin Hart, Neil Strauss
- No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality by Michael J. Fox
- Scenes from My Life by Michael K. Williams
- The Way I Heard It by Mike Rowe
- I Came as a Shadow – John Thompson
Autobiography titles about authors
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- Lit by Mary Karr
Autobiography titles about family
- The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
- Mott Street by Ava Chin
- The Girl in the Middle by Anais Granofsky
- All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
- The Ugly Cry by Danielle Henderson
Autobiography titles about immigration, culture, and race
- Good Morning, Hope: A True Story of Refugee Twin Sisters and Their Triumph over War, Poverty, and Heartbreak by Argita Zalli, and Detina Zalli
- Negroland by Margo Jefferson
- First Gen by Alejandra Campoverdi
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
- Heart of Fire: An Immigrant Daughter’s Story – Mazie K. Hirono
- The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clementine Wamariya, Elizabeth Weil
Autobiography titles about beating the odds
- Cooked by Jeff Henderson
- The Pale-Faced Lie by David Crow
- Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind Mann, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust by Michael Hingson and Susy Flory
- When the Tears Dry by Meredith Hawkins
- Reaching for the Moon by Katherine Johnson
- 80 Percent Luck, 20 Percent Skill: My Life as a WWII Navy Ferry Pilot by Ralph T. Alshouse
Autobiography titles about faith
- Like a River: Finding the Faith and Strength to Move Forward After Loss and Heartache by Granger Smith
- The Barn by David Hill
- All My Knotted-Up Life by Beth Moore
Autobiography titles about journalists, reporters, and media
- Natural Disaster: I Cover Them. I am One by Ginger Zee
- Going There by Katie Couric
- Rough Draft by Kati Tur
- The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day
Use a free tool to generate your own autobiography title
You obviously can’t use these published autobiography titles for your own book – but you can use our free book title generator to come up with suggestions that you could use.
It’s really easy to use, and instantly gives you an unlimited amount of working titles – or even final titles – to use for your book!
1. Select nonfiction for the book’s genre in the drop-down menu
2. Fill in the details
For the next question, if you have a book description, type “yes” and add your description in the text box.
If you don’t have a description yet, answer “no” and fill out the questions. Eventually, you will need to write a book description , but this is often something our authors do after they complete their manuscript .
3. Click “generate”
That’s it! Get ready for some unique autobiography book title suggestions. Remember, if you don’t like the one that you see, you can continue to generate as many as you’d like.
Final thoughts
Your autobiography title can be the difference between someone scrolling past your book on Amazon or stopping to read a sample. Whatever title you choose, remember that it’s just as much about you as your reader. Make them want to read your story by giving them something unique that piques their interest.
You can also look for inspiration in other genres. For example, some memoir book titles could also lend well to an autobiography – like What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo. Intriguing, isn’t it? Don’t limit yourself!
Are you ready to take the next steps with your autobiography? We have a professional publishing team ready to guide you through the book development process.
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What is a Biography? Definition, Elements, and More
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Hey there, looking to get started on your autobiography but stuck on what to call it? Don’t worry, we’ve got your back! Choosing the perfect name for your life story can be tough, but it’s also a fun and important decision. So, grab a cup of coffee and get ready to brainstorm some awesome autobiography name ideas!
Table of Contents
Choosing a memorable autobiography name, reflecting your personal journey in the title, incorporating key themes and milestones, using humor or wit to engage readers, seeking feedback and suggestions from others, in conclusion.
When it comes to choosing a memorable name for your autobiography, there are a few things to consider. The title of your life story should be captivating, intriguing, and reflective of the journey you’ve been through. It’s the first thing people will see when they come across your book, so it’s important to make it memorable.
One approach to creating an autobiography name is to brainstorm keywords or phrases that encapsulate the essence of your story. Think about the major themes, events, or turning points in your life, and try to distill them into a few impactful words. Consider using **metaphors or symbolism** to convey deeper meanings and emotions. It’s also helpful to evoke a sense of curiosity or mystery with the title, sparking interest in potential readers.
Another strategy is to draw inspiration from literature, poetry, or famous quotes that resonate with your life experiences. **Quoting a meaningful line** from a favorite book or poem can add a layer of depth and resonance to your autobiography title. Additionally, incorporating personal mottos or mantras that have guided you through life can lend authenticity and significance to the name of your book.
For **creativity and impact**, consider experimenting with wordplay, alliteration, or unconventional phrasing. A catchy, unique title can make your autobiography stand out and pique curiosity. Remember to also consider the marketability and resonance of the title, as it will play a major role in attracting potential readers. By taking the time to consider these factors, you can create a memorable autobiography name that truly captures the essence of your life story.
Themes | Events | Metaphors |
Mental Health | Love and Loss | Phoenix Rising |
Resilience | Family Legacy | Roots and Wings |
Finding Purpose | Career Breakthroughs | The Road Less Traveled |
Are you ready to share your personal journey with the world? Choosing the perfect title for your autobiography is crucial in capturing the essence of your story. Your title should reflect the unique experiences, challenges, and triumphs that have shaped you into the person you are today. Here are some tips and ideas for creating an impactful and meaningful title that truly represents your personal journey:
### Tips for When brainstorming ideas for your autobiography title, consider the following tips to ensure it resonates with your readers:
– **Think about the central theme**: What is the main message or theme of your life story? Is it resilience, love, overcoming adversity, or personal growth? – **Use imagery**: Incorporate vivid imagery that reflects key moments or symbols from your life that have had a significant impact on your journey. – **Highlight your unique perspective**: What sets your story apart from others? Emphasize what makes your experiences and insights distinctive and valuable.
### Autobiography Title Ideas Here are some creative and inspiring title ideas to spark your imagination and help you craft the perfect name for your autobiography:
| Title Ideas | Description | |—————————-|————————————————–| | Unbreakable Spirit | A powerful and evocative title reflecting resilience and strength. | | From Struggle to Strength | Capture the essence of overcoming obstacles and personal growth. | | In My Own Words | Emphasize the personal and intimate nature of your story. | | The Road Less Traveled | Highlight the unique and unconventional path of your journey. |
Find a title that resonates with you and captures the heart of your personal narrative. Taking the time to reflect and choose the perfect name for your autobiography will ensure that your story is told in a compelling and authentic way.
When it comes to choosing a name for your autobiography, it’s important to incorporate key themes and milestones from your life. These elements help to tell your unique story and make your book memorable to readers. Whether you’re focusing on a specific event, a personal journey, or an overarching theme, the title of your autobiography should encapsulate the essence of your life story.
One approach to brainstorming autobiography name ideas is to reflect on significant milestones and themes in your life. Consider the following prompts to help spark inspiration for your autobiography title: – What are the defining moments or turning points in your life? – What themes or patterns have been recurring throughout your journey? – What unique experiences or challenges have shaped your perspective and identity?
By incorporating these key themes and milestones into your autobiography title, you can create a compelling and meaningful representation of your life story. Remember to choose a title that resonates with you and accurately captures the essence of your unique narrative. Embrace creativity and authenticity as you explore different autobiography name ideas that reflect the depth and richness of your personal journey.
When it comes to choosing a name for your autobiography, it’s essential to create a title that is engaging, memorable, and reflective of your personality and experiences. One way to capture readers’ attention is to use humor or wit in your autobiography title. Incorporating humor into the title can make it more relatable and appealing to a wider audience, while adding wit can add a clever and thought-provoking element.
Here are some ideas for autobiography names that use humor or wit to engage readers:
- “Laughing Through the Tears: My Life Story” – This title combines humor and emotion, drawing readers in with the promise of both lighthearted moments and poignant reflections.
- “The Chronicles of Awkwardness: A Memoir” – Using humor to acknowledge the inherent awkwardness of life can resonate with readers who can relate to the challenges and humorous moments that come with navigating through life.
- “Sarcastic and Sassy: My Journey to Self-Discovery” – This title employs wit and humor to convey a bold and confident narrative, appealing to readers who appreciate a sharp sense of humor.
Are you in the process of writing your autobiography and in need of a catchy and captivating name? Naming your autobiography is a crucial step in the publishing process. A well-thought-out title can pique the interest of potential readers and encapsulate the essence of your life story. If you’re currently brainstorming autobiography name ideas, we’re here to help.
can provide valuable insights and fresh perspectives that you may not have considered. It’s always beneficial to gather input from a diverse group of people to ensure that your autobiography name resonates with a wide audience. Whether you’re a first-time author or a seasoned writer, feedback from others can make a significant impact on the success of your book. Here are some suggestions for soliciting feedback and suggestions for your autobiography name:
– Reach out to friends, family, and colleagues who know you well – Join writing groups or forums and participate in discussions about autobiography titles – Utilize social media platforms to conduct polls and gather opinions from a broader audience – Attend book clubs or literary events to engage with avid readers and gather feedback By , you can gain valuable insights that will help you choose a compelling and memorable name for your autobiography. Your book deserves a title that truly captures the essence of your life story, and the input of others can help you achieve that goal. So, don’t be afraid to reach out and ask for feedback – the perfect autobiography name may be just a suggestion away.
Q: I’m struggling to come up with a catchy title for my autobiography. Any tips? A: Yes, think about the main theme or message of your autobiography and try to capture that in a few words.
Q: Can I use a quote as the title of my autobiography? A: Of course! A meaningful quote can make a great title for your autobiography and give it a personal touch.
Q: How long should my autobiography title be? A: It should be relatively short and punchy, ideally no more than a few words or a brief phrase.
Q: What if I can’t think of anything good? A: Don’t stress too much about it – sometimes a simple, straightforward title can be just as effective as a clever or creative one.
Q: Should I include my name in the title? A: It’s up to you! Including your name can make the autobiography feel more personal, but it’s not necessary.
Q: Can I ask friends and family for title ideas? A: Absolutely! Getting input from others can help you brainstorm and come up with something that truly resonates with you.
Q: Are there any common themes or phrases used in autobiography titles? A: Yes, many autobiographies use phrases like “My Story” or “Life and Times of [Name]” but feel free to get creative and come up with something unique to you.
So if you’re considering writing your own autobiography, choosing the perfect title is an important first step. Whether you decide to go with a catchy phrase or a meaningful quote, make sure it reflects the essence of your life story. Hopefully, the ideas we’ve shared here have sparked some inspiration for your own memoir title. Happy writing!
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Bibi: My Story Hardcover – Deckle Edge, October 18, 2022
- Print length 736 pages
- Language English
- Publisher Threshold Editions
- Publication date October 18, 2022
- Dimensions 6.25 x 1.6 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-10 1668008440
- ISBN-13 978-1668008447
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- Publisher : Threshold Editions; First Edition (October 18, 2022)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 736 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1668008440
- ISBN-13 : 978-1668008447
- Item Weight : 2.6 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 1.6 x 9.25 inches
- #6 in Jewish Biographies
- #39 in Presidents & Heads of State Biographies
- #326 in Memoirs (Books)
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Customer Review: A precious account of history of Israel and the Jews
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Customers say
Customers find the writing quality very well written, exciting, and candid. They also appreciate the historical content, saying it provides great insight into a person's life and a terrific history of Israel. Readers describe the reading experience as great and worth the price of admission. They find the pictures amazing and worth looking at.
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Customers find the historical content interesting, inspiring, and instructive. They also describe the book as a terrific history of Israel from the inside out. Readers also mention that the book appears factual.
"...hard work & effort in affording, to me, my own, well written, historical book , in which you witnessed, in person, many of the accounts...." Read more
"...This book is eye-opening and a must read for anyone who is interested in the truth of world politics and the State of Israel." Read more
"...in the book, I can attest that it appears factual and gave me a better understanding of what Israel has been through, and from the perspective of a..." Read more
"A thoroughly passionate memoir from the ingenious & courageous leader - who is almost always falsely characterized by the press & extremely..." Read more
Customers find the book a fantastic must read, worth every minute, and perfect for anyone interested in Mr. Netanyahu. They also describe it as a remarkable work, detailed, rational, and compelling.
" great book on a great man" Read more
" A great read . Reading this book has cemented my thinking that Netanyahu is one of the best leaders of the last century...." Read more
"“Bibi: My Story” is a very good autobiography, perfect for anyone interested in Mr. Netanyahu and/or the state of Israel...." Read more
"... Great book and recommend you read it!" Read more
Customers find the writing quality of the book very well written, candid, and fascinating. They also say it's long, yet never boring, and filled in a lot of information. Readers also say the Prime Minister comes across loud and clear.
"...Yetanyahu for your hard work & effort in affording, to me, my own, well written , historical book, in which you witnessed, in person, many of the..." Read more
"... Good reading !" Read more
"...REAL leadership(S), truthful histories, and astute wisdoms - really enjoyable to read !!!" Read more
"...I knew a lot about him already, but this book filled in a lot of information and made me realize how smart and courageous he is...." Read more
Customers find the book an amazing life story, with an outstanding story of recent world politics and important personalities. They also say the writing is detailed and easy to read, and the book gives a very detailed insight into nationalism, patriotism, and ability to be an American.
"...It is a great story with tremendous insights into a purpose driven leader, pragmatic in his approach to governing who marshalls the resolve to..." Read more
"Bibi, My Story is a compelling, in-depth look at the life story of one of the most extraordinary individuals on the world stage...." Read more
" Amazing life story . The writing was detailed and easy to read. The book was written in a chronological order...." Read more
"...This is an amazing and ongoing story that will be reviewed by probably more detractors than admirers. Political, of course...." Read more
Customers find the writing style interesting, nice, and beautiful. They also say the book includes images and many unknown details.
"... So many truly vivid & inspirational examples of REAL leadership(S), truthful histories, and astute wisdoms - really enjoyable to read !!!" Read more
"...Such a beautiful story ! My biggest problem is I don't want to put it down!..." Read more
"...He is definitely a unique individual and has done much for his country and his countrymen." Read more
"...And even the pictures are amazing and worth the price of admission! It's a long book, but absolutely worth the time...." Read more
Customers find the character strong, decisive, and pragmatic in his approach to governing.
"...account of his family history and his inspirational and extremely effective leadership as Prime Minister of Israel..." Read more
"...with tremendous insights into a purpose driven leader, pragmatic in his approach to governing who marshalls the resolve to persevere despite tough..." Read more
"...Truly a prophet and Godly leader !..." Read more
"...Interesting and informative read about a strong and decisive leader of his country." Read more
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Dear Annie: I’m so jealous of my mother that it’s ruining my life
- Published: Jul. 24, 2024, 11:30 a.m.
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Annie Lane writes the Dear Annie advice column. NJ Advance Media
DEAR ANNIE: I am so jealous of my mother; it is ruining my life. It is all I obsess about. Three years ago, she met a younger man at a supermarket where she worked. He was 40 then, and she was 52. Three years later and they are happily married and she has become the most spoiled woman I know. She was always slim and beautiful but now dresses in elegant designer clothes, has tennis lessons twice a week, a personal trainer, a cleaner who comes twice a week and a weekly allowance that’s more than I make in a month. She never lifts a finger, and they live in a beautiful house and travel constantly.
Her husband even cooks all the meals and cleans up afterward. He makes more than enough money to support them, and she hasn’t worked a day since they started going out. Whenever we are together, everyone turns to look at her, not me, even though she has gray hair.
She has changed completely in the last three years. She has ghosted all her old friends and now hangs out with a completely different crowd. Her husband lost his wife five years ago to cancer and has two children in university. They love her and all go on long holidays together every year. Her life is so perfect now it drives me crazy.
I now live in my mother’s old house, and she has turned over the ownership to me. I should be happy that my mother found happiness. Her husband is handsome, successful, generous, intelligent and so in love with her I can’t stand it. He is closer to my age than her age, and that just irks me.
How can I stop obsessing about my mother and get on with my life? -- Jealous of Mom
DEAR JEALOUS: It is understandable that you are jealous. But know that jealously is just a sign of what you really want in your life. You want this type of life and relationship. Instead of focusing your energy on what you’re lacking, use your mother’s example as a role model for you. Focus on finding a boyfriend of your own, one who has all the qualities of Mom’s new husband. Best of luck to you in finding a partner.
Send your questions for Annie Lane to [email protected] .
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Ashlee Simpson Revisits Debut Album Autobiography with Deluxe Version 20 Years Later: 'Beautiful Time in My Life'
"It is really fun to look back on this memory and celebrate," the singer says of the release
Chris Barilla is a Digital News Editor at PEOPLE. He has been working at PEOPLE since 2023. His work has previously appeared on Distractify, The Blast, and Entertainment Daily.
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Ashlee Simpson is going back to her roots!
The singer-songwriter, 39, has officially shared a deluxe edition of her debut album, Autobiography , which was originally released 20 years ago and established the pop-rocker's stardom as a solo act.
“I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since the release of Autobiography ,” Simpson said in a statement. “It was such a beautiful time in my life and so much has changed in the best way! It is really fun to look back on this memory and celebrate.”
Frank Micelotta/Getty
The deluxe, available on streaming platforms, features every song from the original album as well as a selection of rare cuts: international bonus track “Harder Every Day," United Kingdom bonus track “Sorry" and Japanese bonus track "Endless Summer."
Fans will also be treated to a high-quality Dolby ATMOS version of “Pieces Of Me," the album's standout single that reached a peak position of No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories
Autobiography was a critical and commercial success upon its initial release, debuting at No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart with roughly 398,000 units sold in the first week. Shortly thereafter, the project was certified triple-platinum by the RIAA.
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In June, Simpson reflected on "all great memories" of her early career and touring with her sister, Jessica Simpson , as a backup dancer before branching out on her own.
"I feel like we've definitely had great moments , and I feel like even when I would do shows, just having her there [was great]," she shared.
Simpson also chatted with PEOPLE in April about her life with husband Evan Ross and their kids, identifying herself and Ross as "cool parents."
"We're at Coachella, I think we're cool parents . We brought [son] Bronx and his friend here today," she said at the time. Simpson and Ross married in 2014 and share daughter Jagger, 8 and son Ziggy, 3. Simpson also shares son Bronx, 15, with her ex, Pete Wentz .
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JJ Starling on playing more point guard, handling the ball: ‘That’s what I’ve done all my life’
- Updated: Jul. 24, 2024, 9:07 a.m.
- | Published: Jul. 24, 2024, 8:59 a.m.
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Syracuse guard JJ Starling will take on more ball-handling duties for the Orange next season. (N. Scott Trimble | [email protected]) N. Scott Trimble | [email protected]
- Mike Waters | [email protected]
Syracuse, N.Y. ― JJ Starling is spending this summer revitalizing a part of his game that hasn’t been used or seen much over the past two years.
Starling spent most of his basketball career with the ball in his hands. Not a pure point guard, but a ball-handling guard capable of pushing the tempo and creating scoring opportunities for himself and his teammates.
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Esta TerBlanche, who played Gillian Andrassy on 'All My Children,' dies at 51
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Esta TerBlanche , an actress best known for her performance on the long-running soap opera " All My Children ," has died. She was 51.
A representative for TerBlanche confirmed her death to USA TODAY on Sunday after it was first announced on Facebook by publicist Lisa Rodrigo.
"I can not believe I am posting this," Rodrigo wrote on Facebook . "It's with a heavy heart that my friend and client Esta TerBlanche passed away Thursday of natural causes. An autopsy report is pending."
The publicist added: "I am still processing and in shock. Esta was a beautiful soul in and out. I was proud to know her and work with her. More to come in the days ahead."
The South African actress played princess Gillian Andrassy on the ABC soap opera beginning in 1997 until the character was killed off in 2001. She also starred on the South African series "Egoli: Place of Gold" and appeared in an episode of "Spin City," per IMDb .
According to Soap Opera Digest , TerBlanche was a former Miss Teen South Africa.
Alec Musser: 'All My Children' actor's cause of death revealed
In a 2021 interview with Soap Central , TerBlanche — who was born in South Africa's Rustenburg — reflected on the "very scary" experience of moving to the United States to pursue an acting career in America.
"I was terribly scared, and the two weeks before I had to go, I was crying nonstop, thinking, 'Why am I doing this?!' " she said. "I was really questioning myself, like, 'Why am I putting myself through this? Why?!' But I just knew I had a deeper calling, that I had to come."
Pamela Blair dies: 'All My Children' and 'A Chorus Line' actress was 73
TerBlanche's death was another loss for the soap opera community after Doug Sheehan , who played Joe Kelly in more than 200 episodes of "General Hospital," died in June. In January, "All My Children" actor Alec Musser died at age 50, and in May, "General Hospital" star Johnny Wactor was shot and killed in Los Angeles .
Contributing: Alyssa Goldberg, Edward Segarra and Pamela Avila, USA TODAY
Growing up, my parents didn't discipline me. Now, I'm doing authoritative parenting — and it's working.
- I grew up with 16 siblings, and our household was often chaotic.
- My parents never really disciplined us, and I decided that when I had kids, I'd parent differently.
- My husband and I have an authoritative parenting style, and it works well for us.
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People always think the Brady Bunch had a wild family — until they hear about me and my 16 siblings.
My parents always wanted to give us the best childhoods by creating a safe environment for everyone to be themselves. That's why they had me and my three biological siblings, then adopted 13 other children.
Our parents adored us, but they also lacked the ability to discipline us when my siblings and I inevitably butted heads. They were always so exhausted from our busy lives that they struggled to keep everyone in line.
I grew up seeing how constant chaos with no discipline didn't create the best environment. Some of my siblings lost faith in authority figures. I knew my future parenting style would incorporate more authoritative style, which has proven to be the best thing for my 5-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter.
An authoritative parenting style was the right choice for my family
Evaluating my family's dynamics as a kid made me vow that my kids would always know there were consequences for poor choices. When my husband and I decided to have children, we discussed how we'd raise them. I wanted to parent them from a place of logic while prioritizing discipline in response to bad behaviors.
That kind of authoritative parenting means having age-appropriate conversations about how actions have consequences in addition to enforcing those consequences, such as temporarily revoking some of my kids' childhood privileges.
My role in parenting our kids is more logical. I understand that both having conversations with kids and enforcing consequences help them learn to do better next time.
Meanwhile, my husband has always handled our children's emotional well-being more naturally. He's there to guide us through the first step while we talk with our kids about how they can do better next time.
Our parenting style encourages emotional stability while equally enacting the consequences that help our children grow into better versions of themselves.
Don't get me wrong — I'm a softie deep down. Disciplining my children is hard. In those moments, I remind myself they'll achieve greater things because they developed core values and an understanding of consequences.
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We channel both of our approaches through disciplinarian actions and kindness. This gives our parenting a higher purpose than just trying to keep the peace to get through the day as a family.
I've thought about how I would parent my kids for decades. Even as a teenager, I saw how important it was to give attention to your children because my parents didn't always have the time to do so. And for good reason — they rarely had a moment to rest.
What our parenting style looks like in action
I keep these values in mind during moments such as yesterday. My husband and I had to enforce our authoritative parenting style in the grocery store, even though we were rushing to get home.
Our 5-year-old son grabbed a box of mac and cheese off the shelf and threw it in our cart. While I put the box back, my husband told him it wasn't on our list.
Our son immediately started crying and yelling. He said we were mean, which I shut down right away. I told him he couldn't speak to us like that because he needed to respect us, and if he said it again, he'd lose TV privileges after dinner.
The crying continued as we walked down other aisles. When my husband shushed our son, he repeated that we were mean. When we got home, we stuck to our word, and he didn't get to watch "Paw Patrol."
My parents would have tried to quiet him in the store and eventually given up. Instead, my husband and I explained why our son's language was wrong before enforcing the promised consequence.
While our son pouted in his room later that night, we talked about why respecting us was important, how much we loved him, and how he should apologize. I know he'll learn over time that he can't do whatever he wants, which will make him a happier adult who people love to be around.
Last week, we also discussed how actions have consequences with our 8-year-old daughter. She wanted to ride her bike to a friend's house after dinner, but it was too late on a school night. My husband said no, and our daughter rolled her eyes and ran to her room, slamming the door behind her.
We immediately went to her room and told her we don't do either of those things because they're disrespectful. She needed to apologize and accept her punishment — no bike for the rest of the week.
She's old enough to see how other parents treat their kids, so she pointed out how her best friend slams the door and never gets punished. She thought it was unfair that other kids could express their anger without punishment while she couldn't.
My husband told her she was allowed to feel mad. He also explained she should tell us about her feelings with words so we could work through them together and said that would be more helpful than slamming doors or rolling her eyes.
He made a great point by asking how our daughter felt when her best friend rolled her eyes at her. My 8-year-old said it was annoying. I saw her realize in real time that it wasn't as helpful as talking through her feelings.
When we need to take a loving approach to discipline , we do so by discussing why their consequences happen and how much we love our kids no matter what. I believe that our kids benefit from my slightly emotionally detached, logical approach and my husband's strength in emotional vulnerability.
Enforcing rules sometimes makes me feel like a bad mom, but those moments when I see the lightbulb spark in my children's minds are worth it. When I doubt myself while setting boundaries or making disciplinary decisions, I remember that we're preparing them to be well-rounded adults.
My kids are incredible now, and they'll be even more amazing in adulthood because we're committed to consequences.
Correction: July 22, 2024 — An earlier version of this story incorrectly used the terms "authoritative parenting" and "authoritarian parenting" synonymously.
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4. Include plenty of detail. In case we haven't drilled down on this enough, let's reiterate once more: an autobiography should be a complete overview of your life from beginning to end. That means that as you get into properly writing it, you should include as much detail as you can remember.
An autobiography is when you write about your own life. A biography, on the other hand, is when you write the story of someone else's life. So, if I write a book about the life of the President, that's a biography. If the President writes a story about his or her own life, that's an autobiography. What Not To Include In an Autobiography
The goal of an autobiography is to allow readers to explore a factual, chronological telling of the author's life. Autobiographies aren't merely catalogues of events, however; they need soulful introspection too. Think about why certain episodes mattered more than others and how those experiences influenced your perspectives or decisions ...
One of the best-known autobiographies, The Diary of a Young Girl, is an excellent example of a journal-style layout. Featuring the story of a young girl who is hiding during the Holocaust, aspiring writers will find inspiration in Frank's raw emotions and candor. 2. Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda.
An autobiography is a whole thing - a life, usually told chronologically as a series of significant events. Sometimes with the help of a ghostwriter. You should only ever have to write one autobiography! But to qualify for it, you must have either: a) lived a life worth living. b) been infamous or famous.
The word autobiography literally means SELF (auto), LIFE (bio), WRITING (graph). Or, in other words, an autobiography is the story of someone's life written or otherwise told by that person. When writing your autobiography, find out what makes your family or your experience unique and build a narrative around that.
Autobiography Definition, Examples, and Writing Guide. Written by MasterClass. Last updated: Aug 26, 2022 • 6 min read. As a firsthand account of the author's own life, an autobiography offers readers an unmatched level of intimacy. Learn how to write your first autobiography with examples from MasterClass instructors.
7 steps to write your own life story: Brainstorm your autobiography's focus and scope. Skim autobiographies for inspiration. Choose between autobiography and memoir. Outline key and illustrative life events. Draft key scenes from your life. Find strong transitions. Check details and get beta readers. 1.
This is the process we use at A Life Untold to help people write and print captivating and professionally designed autobiographies in an easy and interesting way. Importantly, we leave the final book in "Q&A format" so anyone who reads your book feels like they're listening in on an incredible conversation with you.
Step 6: Get a Professional Editor. Once you've made your autobiography as good as you can make it, it's time to seek help. While you can certainly give a copy of the book to some friends and family to see what they think, keep in mind they're likely biased. Chances are they're also not professional editors, either.
Google "How to write my autobiography" and see what pops up. Chances are, one of the top results is a WikiHow article with 1.84 million views. Its popularity would make you think the article is helpful — but try and apply this advice: "The trick to writing an autobiography is to treat it like any good story: it should have a protagonist ...
Tips on How to Write an Autobiography. Your own autobiography should include details that encompass your life from birth to the present. When the writing process begins, you should write in the past tense to let the readers know that the events you are writing about have already occurred. When you get to the present day, remember to switch your ...
What is an autobiography? The basic definition of an autobiography is that it's a first-person account of your life. It differs from a memoir, which usually focuses on a single event or group of events that lead you to a discovery about yourself, your life, or some other revelation. An autobiography is a look at the total sum of your life from birth (early childhood) to the time of your book ...
2. Introduce yourself… like a real person. This is one of the most important pieces of understanding how to write a personal biography. Always start with your name. When many people start learning how to write a bio, they skip this important part. People need to know who you are before they learn what you do.
2. Attention to Detail and Chronological Order. Since autobiographies are about chronicling their subject's life, it makes sense that it should be in chronological order. Research for your book is key. A well-written autobiography should go from birth to the present-day.
LifeStoryPRO is an easy-to-use computer-based tool that helps create a book of your life. We help you step-by-step as you bring your memories to life. Your knowledge and life history are precious gifts that may influence your future great-great-grandchildren. Family is about love. You can share memories of hard work and determination, your ...
Make it logical. Choose one main idea and express it in a thesis statement to combine all memories into a meaningful whole. Do not be a bore. Reveal some personal details and tell something that nobody but you can tell. Make it easy to read. Include an introduction, main body, and conclusion; do not hesitate to use a new paragraph to develop a ...
Use one of these phrases as the first sentence of your autobiography: Example: I was born in…. I was an active (or quiet, knowledge-loving, shy, curious, etc.) child. My childhood dream was…. My earliest memory is…. I am grateful to my parents (or teachers, friends, etc.) because…. My role model was….
Still, I wrote my autobiography, based in a loose way on Wordsworth's notion that poetry arises from "emotion recollected in tranquility." Writing it gave me an opportunity to review my life at the end of my life in a tranquil manner. I was able to note certain trends, parallels, and phenomena that have marked my life and set my destiny.
1. Select nonfiction for the book's genre in the drop-down menu. 2. Fill in the details. For the next question, if you have a book description, type "yes" and add your description in the text box. If you don't have a description yet, answer "no" and fill out the questions.
Here are some ideas for autobiography names that use humor or wit to engage readers: "Laughing Through the Tears: My Life Story" - This title combines humor and emotion, drawing readers in with the promise of both lighthearted moments and poignant reflections. "The Chronicles of Awkwardness: A Memoir" - Using humor to acknowledge ...
In Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu's "compelling" (The Economist) and "fascinating" (The Wall Street Journal) New York Times bestselling autobiography, the prime minister of Israel tells the story of his family, his path to leadership, and his unceasing commitment to defending his country and securing its future.From their earliest days, Bibi and his close-knit brothers, Yoni and Iddo ...
DEAR ANNIE: I am so jealous of my mother; it is ruining my life. It is all I obsess about. Three years ago, she met a younger man at a supermarket where she worked. He was 40 then, and she was 52 ...
"Love of my life," Gomez wrote on her Instagram Story across a photo of the 36-year-old record producer and songwriter, snapped as he hugged and kissed Gomez on the forehead.
Ashlee Simpson is revisiting 'Autobiography,' the album that put her career on the map and spawned hits like "Pieces of Me" and "La La," with a deluxe version for its 20th anniversary.
Syracuse, N.Y. ― JJ Starling is spending this summer revitalizing a part of his game that hasn't been used or seen much over the past two years. Starling spent most of his basketball career ...
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"'The Matrix' changed my life, and then over these years, it's changed so many other people's lives, in really positive and great ways," Reeves said, his voice quivering.
People always think the Brady Bunch had a wild family — until they hear about me and my 16 siblings.. My parents always wanted to give us the best childhoods by creating a safe environment for ...