You have been given the task of writing a Biography Essay, and you are worried about how to write it and how it should look. If this is the case, the article below will give you all the information you need about the essay.
❓ What Is a Biographical Essay?
You might have read a few essays that turned out to be biographies of famous people, but you might not have been able to tell because you don’t know how a biography essay is put together. A simple essay about someone’s life can give the reader a lot of information about that person.
Let’s look at an example to help you get a better idea of what this is all about. If you are reading a script about a famous person like Bob Marley or Mike Tyson, for example, the biography essay will start with a description of the person’s childhood. You might be reading about someone like Mike Tyson or Bob Marley.
After that, the essay will move on to other parts of his or her life, describing different parts of that person’s life as it goes. This will also include the things that made them famous, like the bad things that people went through in their own lives.
Now that you have a general idea of what a biography essay is about, let’s talk about what it is in more technical terms. It is a piece of academic writing in which the author describes the events of someone else’s life.
Since the word “biography” comes from the Greek word for “life,” it means the history of a person’s life. It’s possible that the person being asked about is you.
Most of the time, it isn’t about the life of a famous or interesting person. Instead, it can be about anyone you know. Let’s get rid of that first. A biography-style essay about you can be written by anyone. But if you want to write a good biography essay, you must first make sure you know enough about the subject. This is always true, no matter whom you choose to write about. You need to know a lot about the facts, numbers, and dates related to the person you are writing about.
I think the last few sentences have given a good example of what a biographical essay looks like.
💡 Main Purpose
Since you already know what a biography essay is and how it works because of the previous paragraphs, it should be much easier for you to understand the point of writing one now that you have this background information.
They have different purposes, some of which are:
1. Taking a record of the personal life of a personality
By writing a biography of a person, the writer usually stores the life events of that person in written form. As a result, most of the time, these essays begin with early childhood events and progress chronologically until the person’s death.
2. Telling a Story about Life with Facts
Other essays that include a story are usually fictional and not based on reality. Biography essays, on the other hand, tell the true story of someone’s life. And the writers are telling the story of the life of that person in detail. That is why these essays are usually backed with facts and figures about that person, and they are well researched.
3. Highlighting some hidden facts about a person’s life
Sometimes it is common that a whole biography essay elaborates only on a single phase of a person’s personality. Let us explain with an example if you are perplexed. For instance, if you are writing a biography of Mahatma Gandhi, you can only write about his political struggle in the whole essay, from the beginning to the end. There might be several other aspects of his life that other writers have covered in their essays, but you have chosen to write details about his political life.
4. Covering the real life events of a person
Let us take another example. If you are writing a biography essay on a sportsman, it is probable that other writers have written extensive accounts of his or her career achievements, but there has been little data about his personal life. So, you might write the essay that will cover his personal life, including childhood, education, family life, and other aspects of it, too.
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✍️ How to Write a Biography Essay: 7 Steps
So far, this article has talked about how to start a biography essay. This should be enough information for you to recognize a biography essay when you see one. But knowing these things is not enough to let you write a good essay about a person’s life on your own. In the next few paragraphs, we’ll talk about a few important steps that, if you follow them, will help you a lot when you’re writing an essay on your own.
Before writing the essay, it’s important to plan it out. These steps will help you make a plan that, if followed, will result in a great biography essay when it’s done.
1. Choose your subject
Finding a topic to write about is the first and most important step in putting together a biography essay. You need to write about something that is well-known. Another important piece of advice is that there should be a wide range of facts available about the subject.
People most often make the mistake of choosing an interesting topic but then finding out they don’t know enough about it. If you are doing an assignment for school or college, on the other hand, the professor will almost certainly give you the topic. You are also expected to do research on the subject. If you do your research and find that there is no information available about the issue, you should talk to your teacher about changing the subject. Even if you do some preliminary research on your own, you can still suggest the topic.
Research should always be a big part of academic writing, whether you’re writing a proposal, an essay, or something else. When you’re writing a biography essay, there are two kinds of research you can do: The first kind of research gives you the information you need to decide if the topic you want to write about can actually be written about.
When you’re sure that the topic you’re working on is manageable, you can move on to secondary research. This time, you will read and analyze all of the sources you have access to.
In this day and age of the internet and other online tools, you probably already know that doing research online can help you find reliable sources for your essay. For secondary research, you can read any of the millions of articles and books that have been written about a certain topic.
But if you’d rather do your research on the issue using physical copies of books and research papers, you can do that if that’s what you want to do.
After you’ve done all the research you need on the topic, it’s time to start making an outline for your essay. The best thing about making an essay outline is that you have to stay on topic. Most beginning writers make the common mistake of not making an outline before they start writing their essays. This makes it easy for them to get off track almost as soon as they start writing.
So, if you want to write the perfect biography essay, you need to make an outline before you start writing. Here is an example of a simple outline that you can use as a guide:
- Early Childhood
- Married life
But keep in mind that this outline is just to give you an idea of what an outline looks like. You can write your own outline according to the subject’s requirements.
4. Introduction Paragraph
The reader’s ability to understand the rest of the essay is greatly enhanced by the introduction paragraph. This serves as a sort of navigation to the entire essay. It provides the reader with information regarding the contents of the essay. At this point, the reader is also presented with the primary focus and concept of the essay. After reading the introductory paragraph, the reader has enough information to make an educated prediction regarding the organization of the essay.
There are a number of different ways that one might begin a biography essay. You might want to begin with a well-known remark from the individual whose life you are writing about at the beginning. Alternately, you might begin with a generic introduction such as “Throughout the course of history, there have been millions of political figures, but Mr. X has acquired an amazing name in the political sphere of America.”
Having said that, these are not ironclad rules; you are free to begin the introduction with a sentence that is straightforward and simple for you. And how you start out your essay on someone’s life will also depend on the kind of writer you are as an individual.
5. Thesis Statement
Typically, the thesis statement of the essay can be found in the very final sentences of the introduction. It is the most important part of your essay. The remainder of your essay should support what you’ve stated in your thesis statement. We are going to recommend that you schedule some time in your schedule to think about how you can develop an excellent thesis statement for your paper. The reason for this is that the rest of the essay is built around the thesis statement. Two different samples of a thesis statement for an imaginary essay are going to be provided for you here.
- Once a person comes to know his potential and is determined to exploit it, no matter how many difficult times he may face in the future, he eventually achieves success in one way or another. This is true even though her early childhood circumstances were not in her favor. However, her consistency and dedication in the field earned her a name that no one could ever achieve.
I believe that these two examples of thesis statements have provided you with a sufficient amount of information on the format of a thesis statement. Now that you have a thesis statement, the rest of the essay will revolve around it, and you will have to prove it in your essay.
6. Body Paragraphs
As far as the content is concerned, it is the lengthiest part of the essay. In other words, the body of an essay consists of more than one paragraph. It usually consists of more than one paragraph. However, the number of paragraphs depends on the total length of the essay.
Moreover, it is also dependent upon the subject about which you are going to write. Here we will tell you more about the body paragraphs.
Body paragraphs tell the story of the information that you have gathered through the research for your essay. It is important for a biography essay to maintain continuity with the point or purpose of your paper, as expressed in the thesis statement.
Typically, the writer follows the chronological order in a biography essay; using a timeline, begin with their infancy and work your way up to their youth. You can also add exciting details such as what their family members, friends, and coworkers had to say about them, what kind of an effect they left on people, and so on. Basically, you are building the character by giving all these details about the subject.
To make it more exciting and engaging, you can also add on the complex features of their personalities. For instance, if the subject’s personality changed after an event in his or her life, you can also discuss that event in detail to excite the reader about the subject. You should only give this information a cursory examination before moving on to other private details about the individual in question or about those who are very close to them.
Similarly, if the subject of the essay has achieved something in their life, you can also discuss the impact of their achievements on the lives of other people and society.
In order to maintain continuity, you should link the events that occurred later in their lives with those that occurred in their early lives. Every significant turning moment in their lives that led them in a different direction should also be addressed in the body of the essay as an additional important point. It is important to discuss things like how they were able to overcome challenges.
The conclusion, like any other part of the essay, is important. In this part of the essay, the writer wraps up the whole thing in a paragraph or two. The effective conclusion also reflects back on the essay.
One important thing that most writers miss is that they repeat the content of the introduction again in the conclusion. But you should try to discuss only the important things from the biography essay in the conclusion.
For instance, you can discuss the main events that have shaped the subject’s life. But keep in mind that there is no need to go into all the details of the event again in the conclusion. It’s just the idea of the essay.
✏️ How to Write a Biography Essay About Someone Else
Although writing about the life of another person is not always simple, you can improve your chances of producing a decent essay about another person by planning ahead and familiarising yourself with some helpful hints. The following is a step-by-step guide that will walk you through the process of writing an excellent biography essay about another person.
Do exhaustive research on that individual’s life and career. You can collect the information you need by reading articles, books, and any other relevant materials that are available to you. If a person is still alive, you have the option of conducting an interview with them in order to collect the additional pieces of information required for the essay.
Having acquired a general understanding of the life of the individual in question now, At this point, you should sketch out the organisation of the essay. You are in charge of determining how the essay should begin. You may begin your story with the subject’s childhood if that’s how you prefer to write, or you could begin with a particular incident if that’s more your speed.
In addition to adding more excitement to the essay, you can also do research on how other writers have seen that individual and what they have written about them. Because of this, you will be able to form more than one perspective, and in the end, you will have a wide variety of options to elaborate on and take into account in the essay.
You can also get to know that person’s family members and relatives to get a better sense of their personalities, which will make the essay more interesting to read.
After you have completed all of the necessary research, you may move on to actually writing the essay. To accomplish this, start by drafting an outline, and once you have that, move on to the actual writing. After you have completed writing the entire essay, you should go back and read it several times in order to improve the material.
✒️ What If I Have to Write a Biography Essay About Myself?
Although writing about yourself may appear to be easier, it can be difficult if you are writing for the first time. Here are a few steps that will help you write a biography essay about yourself.
First, rewind in your mind the major events that occurred in your life. You can also talk to your friends and family members to get new perspectives on your life.
You can also discuss this with your parents to learn about the detailed events of your childhood and family background. Your relatives can also help you by giving you exciting accounts of your life that you have not thought of yourself.
You can gather a lot of information this way that will help you write a biography of yourself.
🆚 Biography Essay VS Narrative Essay
Do you feel like you don’t know what makes a story narrative and different from a biographical essay? So, allow us to help you get your thoughts in order.
The word “narrate” tells you right away that a narrative essay is more like a story. For example, if you’re writing about an event, you’ll talk about the part a certain character played in it.
Let me offer a more detailed example. For example, if you are writing an essay about George Washington’s role in the events that happened in American history, you will write it in the form of a story.
If you are writing a biography essay, on the other hand, you will talk about George Washington’s whole life, from when he was a child until he died. I hope that after reading this, you can see how a story essay is different from a biography essay and that it makes sense to you now.
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🏆 Biography Essay Topics
Since the word “biography” comes from the Greek word for “life,” it shouldn’t be a surprise that these essays are usually about the life of a certain person. These people could be anyone from history who is well-known. But you don’t have to write about a famous person; you can write about anyone you want. Still, choosing the subject is one of the most important steps.
You have to choose a topic for which there are a lot of resources, or else it will be hard to find out anything about the person in question. For example, if you choose a person you don’t know very well, like someone who might be a friend of a friend of yours, it will be hard to find out information about that person.
Here are some ideas for what you could write:
- Historical figure
- Religious personality
- A person with extraordinary abilities
- person with huge achievements
- A person you personally know
- Any close friend of yours
- Your family member
To sum up, there are a lot of different things you can write about in your biography essay. Who you choose to learn more about and write about in your biography essay will depend on what you like and what interests you.
🌹 Examples of Biography Essay
To give you a better understanding, here is a practical example of a short biography essay.
Let’s say we are writing about the famous philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche; our biography essay will look like this:
Friedrich Nietzsche was a German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture. He was born on October 15, 1844, in Rocken, Saxony, Prussia, and died on August 25, 1900, in Weimar, Thuringian States. He is known as one of the most influential modern thinkers. He tried to find out why traditional Western faith, moral standards, and ideology are the way they are.
His granddad on his father’s side wrote books defending Protestantism and became a church superintendent. His grandfather on his mother’s side was a country parson. His father, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, was appointed pastor at Rocken by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, who was named after Friedrich Nietzsche.
Nietzsche lost entire control of his faculties and fainted in the streets of Turin, Italy, in January 1889. His Christian theologian friend, Franz Overbeck, travelled to Italy to bring Nietzsche back to Basel after receiving bizarre but relevant messages from Nietzsche shortly after his breakdown.
After spending his final years in a Basel institution, with his mother in Naumburg, and then with his sister in Weimar after her death in 1897, Nietzsche’s next 11 years were spent in complete mental darkness. When the year 1900 rolled along, he passed away. Atypical global paralysis from latent tertiary syphilis was long considered to be the root cause of his mental collapse. Retro-orbital meningioma, a tumour of the brain meninges located behind the (right) eye, and cerebral blood vessel degeneration were among the subsequent findings.
🔥 Additional Tips on Writing a Biography Essay
There are several additional tips that you must keep in mind to write a perfect biography essay. Some of them are:
- wisely choose the subject.
- Always plan before writing the essay.
- Do primary research on the topic.
- Think outside the box to get other perspectives on the topic.
- Incorporate interesting events and facts to make the essay more amazing.
- Use your own writing expression to make it more natural.
- Always try to retain the cohesion and continuity of the essay.
- You can add emotions and sentiments to the essay for the readers’ interest.
🙋♀️ Final Words
Writing an academic essay can be a problem for any new writer, but having knowledge of the complete steps involved can make the task easier. This article has provided all of the information, including examples and tips, to assist you in writing a perfect biography essay on your own.
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❓ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
The first step in writing a biographical essay is choosing the subject. Once you are done with it, do your research and structure the essay to complete it.
The basic five elements of a biography are as follows:
- Thesis statement
- Body paragraphs
You can simply brainstorm ideas for your biography, and then you can get the help of any expert for better ideas about your biography.
The first step in writing a biography is choosing the subject, then researching the topic.
A simple biography is an account of the life of any personality.
Any biography has three important features:
- written in formal language
- Follow the structure.
- Continuity and cohesiveness between the ideas
The most common structure of a biography includes the following:
- Body paragraphs
A good biography is:
- Easy to read
- Link between ideas
- Revolve around a single subject or idea.
- Should have a structure
- Must be in formal language