my autobiography

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?

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:

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.

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.

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:

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:

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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Home / Book Writing / How to Write an Autobiography and Publish it in 7 Easy Steps

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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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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• Education and Communications
• Autobiographies

How to Write an Autobiography and Tell Your Life Story

Last Updated: June 6, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Gerald Posner . Gerald Posner is an Author & Journalist based in Miami, Florida. With over 35 years of experience, he specializes in investigative journalism, nonfiction books, and editorials. He holds a law degree from UC College of the Law, San Francisco, and a BA in Political Science from the University of California-Berkeley. He’s the author of thirteen books, including several New York Times bestsellers, the winner of the Florida Book Award for General Nonfiction, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. He was also shortlisted for the Best Business Book of 2020 by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. There are 8 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 2,303,259 times.

What's your story? Anyone who has lived a full life has something fascinating to share with the world. 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. You may want to think about a certain theme or idea that has been present in your daily life to revolve your story around. Read on to learn how to craft the story of your life and polish your writing to make it sing.

Writing Your Own Autobiography

Begin by contemplating and writing down some important moments in your life, and think about how they're connected to create a cohesive narrative. Start your autobiography with an engaging scene or idea that introduces readers to yourself.

Mapping Out Your Life

• Your autobiography doesn't have to begin with your birth. You may want to include some family history as well. Write down information about your ancestry, your grandparents' lives, your parents' lives, and so on. Having information about your family history will help readers get a sense of how you became the person you are.
• What happened when you were a teenager? What led you to make the decisions you made?
• Did you go to college? Write about those transitory years, too.
• Write about your career, your relationships, your children, and any big life-altering events that occurred.

• Teachers, coaches, mentors, and bosses are extremely influential in people's lives. Decide whether someone who has been a role model (or the opposite) for you will figure into your story.
• Ex-boyfriends and girlfriends might co-star in some interesting stories.
• What enemies have you had in life? Your story will be boring if you don't include some conflicts.
• Offbeat characters such as animals, celebrities you've never met, and even cities are often points of interest in an autobiography.

• The childhood story. Whether your childhood was happy or traumatic, you should include a few anecdotes that give a picture of who you were and what you experienced at the time. You can tell the story of your childhood by breaking it down into smaller anecdotes that illustrate your personality - your parents' reaction when you brought home a stray dog, the time you climbed out of the window at school and ran away for 3 days, your friendly relationship with a homeless person living in the woods… get creative.
• The coming of age story. This heady and often sensual period in a human's life is always of interest to readers. Remember that it's not about writing something unique; everyone comes of age. It's about writing something that resonates with readers.
• The falling in love story. You could also write the opposite of this, the never-finding-love story.
• The identity crisis story. This usually occurs in the 30s or 40s and is sometimes referred to as a mid-life crisis.
• The story of facing down some force of evil. Whether it's your battle with addiction, a controlling lover, or a madman who tried to kill your family, you've got to write about conflict you've experienced.

• Write as though you're opening your heart to a trusted friend, in prose that's clear, strong and not too cluttered with vocabulary words you rarely use.
• Write so that your personality is revealed. Are you funny? Intense? Spiritual? Dramatic? Don't hold back; your personality should come through in the way you tell your story.

• Don't always cast yourself in a positive light. You can have foibles and still be the protagonist. Reveal mistakes you've made and times when you've failed yourself and other people.
• Reveal your inner thoughts. Share your opinions and ideas, including those that may spark controversy. Be true to yourself through your autobiography.

Crafting a Narrative

• What's your central conflict? What's the biggest obstacle life presented that took years to overcome or come to terms with? Maybe it's an illness you were diagnosed with at an early age, a relationship wrought with turmoil, a series of career setbacks, a goal you worked for decades to achieve, or any other number of things. Look to your favorite books and movies for more examples of conflicts.
• Build tension and suspense. Structure the narrative so that you have a series of stories leading up to the climax of the conflict. If your central conflict is trying to reach the goal of competing in the Olympics for skiing, lead up to it with stories of small successes and plenty of failures. You want your readers to ask, will she make it? Can he do it? What's going to happen next?
• Have a climax. You'll get to the point in your story when it's time for the conflict to come to a head. The day of the big competition has arrived, a showdown happens with your worst enemy, your gambling habit gets the better of you and you lose all your money - you get the picture.
• End with a resolution. Most autobiographies have happy endings because the person writing the story lived to tell the tale - and hopefully get it published. Even if your ending isn't cheerful, it should be deeply satisfying. You somehow accomplished your goal or won the day. Even if you lost, you came to terms with it and gained wisdom.

• You could frame the entire autobiography with reflections from the present, telling your story through a series of flashbacks.
• You could begin the story with a poignant moment from your childhood, go backward to tell the story of your heritage, move forward to your college years, and launch into the story of your career, with anecdotes from your childhood sprinkled in for comic relief.

• Consider ending chapters on a poignant or suspenseful note, so people can't wait to start the next one.
• The beginnings of chapters are a good place to take a bird's eye view of your past, describe the setting of a place, and set the tone for what's to come.

Editing the Book

• You can stretch the truth about your own goals and intentions, but don't include fabricated conversations with real people, or altered versions of events that really happened. Of course, you won't remember everything perfectly, but you should reflect reality as best you can.
• Get permission to use people's names or quote them if you're including content on what other people said or did. Some people don't appreciate appearing as a character in someone else's autobiography, and you should respect that by altering the way you describe them or changing their names if necessary. [6] X Research source

• If several people recommend cutting a certain section, strongly consider making the cut.
• Try to get opinions from people outside your circle of family and friends. People who know you might try to spare your feelings, or they might be biased - especially if they appear in the story.

• Bossy Pants , by Tina Fey.
• My Confession , by Leo Tolstoy.
• A Long Walk to Freedom , by Nelson Mandela.
• The Sound of Laughter , by Peter Kay. [7] X Research source

Publishing Your Story

• If you don't want to pay for a publishing service, you can still create a nice copy of your book by taking it to a copy store and having it printed and bound.

• Start the query letter with an airtight blurb succinctly describing the highlights of the book. Situate your book in the correct genre, and describe what will make it stand out from the rest. Tell the agent why you think he or she is the right person to shop your book around to publishers.
• Send sample chapters to agents who show interest.
• Sign a contract with an agent you trust. Make sure to read the contract carefully and check into the agent's history before signing anything.

Agents open doors and help propel your work forward. "I'll admit that it's not easy to get an agent, but becoming successful in anything requires perseverance."

• Many publishers don't accept unsolicited manuscripts or queries. Make sure you only send letters to publishers that accept them.
• If a publisher decides to move forward with a book deal with you, you'll need to sign a contract and set up a schedule for editing, designing, proofreading, and finally publishing the book.

Writing Help

Expert Q&A

• Your biography can also include a dedication, foreword, vital statistics, chronology sheets, family tree, and epilogue. Thanks Helpful 7 Not Helpful 0
• If the purpose of your autobiography is to pass on your story to your heirs, consider including memorabilia (e.g. pictures, heirlooms, medals, mementos, letters, etc.) and putting your story in a scrapbook format. Of course, you may not be able to copy the memorabilia that accompanies your autobiography, so you still have to think about what you intend to do with your original work and other items, such as medals or bulky heirlooms. Thanks Helpful 7 Not Helpful 0
• Make your story vivid but don't get bogged down in unimportant details. While you want your autobiography to be memorable, you don't want it to be boring. Too many details—listing everyone that was at a party or trying to include all the events of each day—will bog the story down. Thanks Helpful 6 Not Helpful 1

• Be aware of what constitutes libel. If you write something defamatory or maliciously untrue about another person in an autobiography that you intend to publish, consider changing his or her name (if still living). Otherwise, you might find yourself facing a lawsuit. If you're unsure about what to change, consult a lawyer who specializes in libel. Thanks Helpful 5 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

Expert Interview

Thanks for reading our article! If you'd like to learn more about writing as a career, check out our in-depth interview with Gerald Posner .

• ↑ https://theamericanscholar.org/how-to-write-a-memoir
• ↑ https://self-publishingschool.com/how-to-write-an-autobiography/
• ↑ https://blog.reedsy.com/narrative-arc/
• ↑ https://cdn5-ss8.sharpschool.com/UserFiles/Servers/Server_222705/File/Parents%20and%20Students/Star%20Works/How%20to%20write%20an%20Autobiography.pdf
• ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/04/how-to-write-a-memoir-jeanette-winterson-and-helen-macdonald
• ↑ https://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/defamation-and-invasion
• ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/feb/07/biographies-autobiography-nielsen-2001
• ↑ https://www.pw.org/literary_agents

About This Article

To write an autobiography, start by making a timeline of your most important life events that you feel you could write about. Then, identify the main characters in your life story, including family members, ex-boyfriends or girlfriends, friends, and enemies. Once you have your cast of characters, pull life events from your timeline, such as a story from your childhood, a coming of age story, a love story, or a triumphant story. Write about these events and then connect them with a cohesive plot by writing in your own voice and being honest with the reader. To learn more about how to edit and publish your autobiography once it's finished, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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• Humanities ›
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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."

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 Long Should My Paper Be?
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• How to Write a News Article That's Effective
• Writing an Annotated Bibliography for a Paper
• When to Cite a Source in a Paper
• Convince Me: A Persuasive Writing Activity
• Finding Trustworthy Sources

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.

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Home » Blog » How to Write an Autobiography in 31 Steps

How to Write an Autobiography in 31 Steps

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Table of contents.

If you’re thinking about writing an autobiography, then you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we will be telling you all about how to write an autobiography – breaking it down and helping you along with the process.

Writing an autobiography is an opportunity to reflect on your life and share your experiences with others. The process can be enjoyable and rewarding, offering a chance to revisit key moments while helping you shape your story in a meaningful way. With the right approach, you can craft a narrative that resonates with readers and captures the essence of your journey.

1. What is an Autobiography?

So you want to know how to write an autobiography? First off, let’s start with what an autobiography is. Put simply, a biography is a book written about someone’s life. It includes all elements of their life, particularly featuring any significant events that took place.

The word ‘autobiography’ is made up of the two Greek words ‘autos’ and ‘bios’, meaning self and life. Put them together and you get a book that is a mix of who you are, and the life you have lived.

2. Memoir vs. Autobiography

Before you start any kind of writing process, it is important to know what kind of book it is you want to write. There is no way to know how to write an autobiography if you can’t distinguish the two. Memoirs and autobiographies are often plumped into the same genre because they are both about someone’s life.

But they are two genres of their own. So here’s the difference:

It’s pretty simple – if the book is about the person’s entire life – it’s an autobiography; if it’s about one or two events, themes, or memories within their life, it’s a memoir .

Knowing the difference will save you time and energy. It will also help you to shape and plan your book (if that’s your style).

You can always change your mind and switch genres, but at least you will know what you are doing and how both of them work. Whichever you choose will change a lot about your book – particularly the content you choose to include and the structure of the entire piece.

Memoir is the perfect platform to share your personal life experience, and you don’t have to share every other significant moment of your life. (A wise decision if only one really interesting thing has happened to you during your lifetime.)

Writing an autobiography is much different. While they both to do with the author’s life, biography is more to do with what happened throughout your life.

That means all significant events from birth ’till now.

If you set out to write a biography and it turns into a memoir, this is not a problem. The problem is when you don’t know what you’re doing at all. This leads to confusion in the writing process. And a lack of professionalism outside of it.

A great way to learn how to write an autobiography is to read. A lot. Reading other autobiographies will give you an idea of which direction to go in and how this genre is structured. It can also help you to develop your style and tone of voice, and to pinpoint which writing techniques you find most effective. All good tools to have in your writing toolbox.

Here are a few examples of autobiographies you might want to read:

• My Autobiography, Charlie Chaplin (1964)
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin
• Long walk to freedom, Nelson Mandela
• The story of my experiments with truth, Mahatma Gandhi
• The story of my life, by Helen Keller
• The autobiography of Malcolm X, Alex Haley, Malcolm X
• An Autobiography, Agatha Christie (1965))
• The confessions of St. Augustine, Augustine of Hippo
• Scar tissue, Anthony Kiedis, Larry Sloman
• Open: An Autobiography, Andre Agassi
• Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
• Autobiography of a yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda

4. When to Write an Autobiography

Experience and youth. Photograph by Ivette Ivens. Source: abcnews.go.com

Cellini (1500-1571) wrote one of the finest autobiographies of the Renaissance. He stated:

“No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem great achievements, if he cares for truth and goodness, ought to write the story of his own life in his own hand; but no one should venture on such a splendid undertaking before he is over forty.” Cellini

Knowing how to write an autobiography can have a lot to do with your life experiences. This fact brings into question the age of the reader.

Many biographies are written later on in life when experience has been gathered and there are many exciting moments to draw from. But this isn’t always the case.

If you are a younger writer and feel that your life has been sufficiently fantastic, or you feel a growing desire to get down all of the details of your childhood days, there is no rule that says you can’t. So don’t let others’ perceptions stop you.

Twenty-one-year-old Edouard Louis, for example, published a hugely successful fictional autobiography (aka an autofiction), The End of Eddy about his childhood and adolescence. So it is possible. Sorry Cellini.

That said, an older, more experienced writer may have an easier time writing an autobiography, simply because they have more material to draw from.

Like memoirs, autobiographies tend to center around a theme, even though you are including many life events. That is because people tend to also be themed, in a way. Want to know how to start an autobiography? Thinking about a theme can be a useful way in.

If you are a professional dancer, and that is the passion of your life, it makes sense that your book would also center around the theme of dancing and how you reached that success.

If you are ghostwriting for a celebrity, naturally they will be famous for something in particular.

The main theme, of course, is the person’s life. But that is not enough to sustain interest across time. So bear in mind a secondary theme that ties it all together.

If your theme or themes are relatable, then that will stand you in good stead. If you are not writing a glitzy celeb autobiography, then having a very relatable and original theme is more likely to find a readership than any other. Be careful not to choose and manufacture your theme, however. If you are meant to write an autobiography, you will likely already feel compelled to write about your life. So try not to put too much thought into it. Just keep it in mind, as it will keep you on track.

6. How to Pick a Theme

How to start an autobiography? One way is to pick a theme. And stick to it.

One way of picking a theme is to choose an aspect of your personality that you feel is awesome and make that your sole focus. Maybe you’re great at maths, for example. Perhaps you made it to the world championships in mathematics or something. That would be a story worth telling.

Another is to look at your philosophy in life and make that the focal point of your book. Showing your values throughout the book can inspire and uplift the reader as it can show a good example of a life well-lived. It also reveals quite clearly who you are as a person, without you having to explicitly spell it out.

A third would be to consider the things that are most important to you in your life and to make a reference to these as you work your way through each significant event mentioned in your book. (This works especially well if you are writing an autobiography for those who know you.)

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7. Exceptions

You might also want to know how to write an autobiography because you want to share your story with your family. This is an admirable reason to write a story. It means that your family will always have a special connection to you through a story, no matter what. It also means that generations to come will have that link to their own past and history.

From that sense, everybody should write one!

This kind of story can even be compiled as an oral history of your family’s history and lives, which makes for an extremely personal keepsake.

Autobiographies are sometimes written in short form, as essays for college assignments. This is a similar exercise to writing a full book but in a condensed format.

Another form of autobiography is as an autofiction. This book is based mostly upon autobiographical content but is also a work of fiction. This is an easy way of avoiding any concerns you might have about privacy. If you want to distance yourself a little and take more control over the content, then this may be the way to go.

You can also consider other formats, such as writing an autobiographical graphic novel, which has the essence of cool written all over it. If you are an artist or have a passion for strong visuals, this is something to consider.

8. How to Plan

“Look for the times when your life changed the most, and when you changed the most, those are the times of peak drama in your life.” Janice Erlbaum, The Autobiographer’s Handbook

An excellent practice when learning how to start an autobiography is to begin by writing out all of the significant events in your life. These could be anything; from graduating college to losing your virginity, to being born. Whatever you think is most important and noteworthy, write it down.

You can later play with the order of events if you like, to shake things up a little bit,  but for now, just get anything and everything you can think of written down.

When considering how to write an autobiography, it seems to be the most natural of all genres to plan. This is because within its very construction there is a presumption of what it will be about: events in your life. In this sense, it is already set up for you. In some ways, this makes writing a lot easier. On the other hand, the risk that easy planning poses is boredom. For the reader or yourself. The challenge then becomes, how to make these life events interesting and stand out. But we’ll get to that a bit later on…

Nb If you are a pantser (someone who likes to write by the seat of your pants) then you might want to skip this step. In all likelihood you have something in mind to write about, so just start there.

9. Writing Schedule

A schedule helps you to get things done. You will know what works best for you after trying a few things out. You could try planning out how much you are going to write by the hour (i.e. I will write for an hour a day, every weekday) or by word count (I will write 500 words a day). Be realistic and don’t overwhelm yourself. If you are too overambitious, you may find you end up not writing at all.

Otherwise, you could aim to write a certain section of the book per week or month if that works better for you. Because autobiography is so clearly and easily arranged into story beats (was born, had first pimple, dyed hair red, etc.) organizing your writing by these events works for almost all writers, even if you are not a fan of planning.

Ask yourself the question, what’s the minimum I could manage on a regular basis? And be honest.

Everyone has their own writing style, including the way they schedule (or don’t schedule) their writing habits. So don’t ever let anyone tell you how you should be writing. It’s up to you.

10. How to Start an Autobiography

The blank page. Source: petersansom.wordpress.com

Well, now you have a list of important events in your life, starting to write should be pretty straightforward. If you don’t like planning, it’s even simpler, just pinpoint a significant moment in time and get to work! If you have a plan, all you need to do is start writing out a first draft of each event.

Next up we have a few tips and tricks to get you started.

11. Go Digging

While figuring out how to write an autobiography, you will want to have everything you are writing as fresh and vivid in your mind as possible. This clarity will translate onto the page and give your readers a strong impression of each moment.

To do this, you will want to dig out any old photos of you and whomever you might be writing about and begin filing things away for each chapter or section of the book.

You also might find it beneficial to interview anyone who remembers what happened. This can bring a new light on old events. Try using a recorder or dictaphone and typing up the best bits once you’re done.

12. Fill Up Your Senses

A good way to get into the moment before a writing session is to surround yourself with the materials relating to that particular event. Look at photos or listen to recordings from around that time, and jot down any thoughts you might have about them.

You may also want to listen to some music from the time. If you have any old clothes or keepsakes from the person, you will also want them to be around or near as you write. Listen to any interviews about the time or the characters before writing.

13. Write a letter

If you’re struggling to start writing, you can try writing a letter to yourself or to other members of the family from the time. This is a very personal way of connecting with the past. Remembering your connection to your characters will help your writing to flow more easily and mean you have material to draw from before you even start writing.

14. Emotions

Writing about certain life events is likely to be emotional. Say you had a car crash when you were younger or had to deal with some maltreatment of some kind, this will impact your writing, and how you feel about it.

It can be a difficult balance. You need to care enough about your subject matter to write it. But you don’t want your emotions to take over to the point where the style and the content of your book suffers.

While feeling impassioned by your writing, it is also important to be able to step back and take a second look at your viewpoint. This may take several rewrites to get right.

If you are finding it difficult, then consider writing out as many different viewpoints of the event as you possibly can. This will open up how you see it and may even lead to an inspiring revelation for both you and your book.

15. New Insights

One of the benefits of learning how to write an autobiography is that, as you develop as a writer, new insights will likely occur.

So while emotions can run high, it is good to know that writing about anything difficult that has happened in your life can help you psychologically.

Dr. James Pennebaker, a professor at Austin Texas University discovered that students who wrote for just fifteen minutes a day over three days about difficult or emotional experiences had a better level of well-being. He found that going through the process was upsetting for them, but it was the new insights the students discovered through the process of writing, that led to their improved levels of psychological health.

16. Take Care

As with memoir, if you feel that it is too much to write any subject matter, always take a break and come back to it (or not). Your mental health and general well-being are always more important than a book.

17. Know Your Why

Make sure that you don’t add topics or incidents simply to vent about them. Instead, get all your feelings out about it during your first draft, and then start with a fresh perspective. If your writing is only about venting, it will not interest the reader. You may come across as petty or whiny.

Instead, you will want to make sure you can see the benefit of sharing your experiences with people. When you truly know how to write an autobiography, it should empower and enlighten people and help them connect to your story, rather than reading like an unfinished diary entry. It is perfectly acceptable for it to start out that way. But by the end of your writing process, you should be confident in the purpose of why you are writing your book, and what kind of impact it will have on its readers.

Knowing why you are writing will keep you on the right track, and help you like a compass in the storm, when you are lost.

18. Tone of Voice

An important aspect of telling your story will be your narrative style and tone of voice. This completely depends upon who you are writing for and the purpose of your book.

If you are writing for your grandchildren, for example, you may use more simplistic language. If you are writing for a broader audience, then you may use a more neutral tone. Writing for friends? You might want to use more familial or colloquial terms.

This also depends a lot on what kind of person you are, and you will want your attitude and personality to be reflected in your writing. This should happen naturally, but don’t be afraid to write as if you are talking or to use a recording device and write up your account of each chapter afterward.

Pro tip: Relax. You won’t find your tone of voice by constantly thinking about how you might come across. Just write as you think and your natural expression will do the rest.

19. First or Third Person?

You can experiment with viewpoints as you go along, but once you have chosen, you will want to stick with it. The third person gives us the feeling it has been written by someone else. So, if you are employing a ghostwriter or are working on a fictional work, then this is a good way to go.

First-person is the generally accepted viewpoint for most autobiographies, because it is your story, and you are the one writing it.

20. Conflict

As you recall the people in your life, adding in any conflicts, even if they are comical, will add to the richness of the book. Conflict drives drama, intrigue, and interest. And that’s what you want, if you want your book read, that is.

21. Story Arc

The hero’s journey. Source: wildgratitude.com

One of the most critical components of writing an autobiography is the story arc. Like most genres of story, autobiography is no exception and will need some sort of an all-encompassing story arc. This is one of the main challenges you may face while writing this kind of book.

It simply can’t be a long list of events and then an ending. They have to all meld together cohesively in order to have some sort of an impact on your reader.

A story arc gives writers a structure, in which our main character aims to do something, and then either manages (or doesn’t) to achieve it. There are normally many obstacles in the protagonist’s way, and they must overcome them. Simply put, our main character must get from A to B. And you will need to decide at some point, what your start and end points in the story will be.

This ties into your overall message in the book. The great thing about autobiography is that it basically tells your reader who you are as a person.

You can start by making a note of your core beliefs and who you feel you are as a person before you begin. But don’t be surprised if, as you write, you reveal a value you hold that you had never especially acknowledged. This is a true gift to the reader, to leave them with your wisdom or knowledge.

Your philosophy can play a big role in the book, as it has likely led you to make certain decisions and can be featured and interlaced with certain events when your process of decision-making was integral to the direction of your life.

22. Comedy and Funny Anecdotes

While you don’t want to overdo it on the comedy (unless it is a comedic autobiography, in which case, carry on!) a little comic relief can work wonders in this genre. It can lighten the mood and even make sad moments even more poignant. Funny stories specific to your family can add to the color of your characters, so they don’t fall flat .

23. Where to Begin?

Think about when you might want to start your story. The logical point to start is from birth, but as your writing evolves over time, you may change your mind. You may want to add some perspective about your life from before you were even born. Your heritage may also be a large influence on who you are as a person today.

Once you have written a full first draft, you can consider changing around the order. Editing in this way can make for a more dynamic and varied read. If placed in the right way, you can even add in a plot twist or add to the suspense of your book.

24. Consider Your Reader

Don’t rest on your laurels. This can especially be a risk if you are writing only for friends or family. Just because someone knows you, it doesn’t mean your story will automatically become interesting to them. It will likely make it more interesting than if you were a random passerby, true. But this is not something to take for granted.

This point can be ignored during the first draft, but as you begin to develop your story, it becomes an implicit part of the process.

If you are wanting your book to sell, this becomes even more important as the reader’s interest and word of mouth can mean the difference between a book being put down or another sale.

25. How to Make Events More Colorful

Once you have written the thing, you will want to make sure that it is an interesting read. Even if you are writing just for friends and family, they will want to be excited by your life. And surely, that is why you are writing this in the first place?!

So a few tips to make sure that each story beat pops with color is to:

• 1. Keep a notebook with you at all times for when you remember particular details about a person or place. Details will always give your story more originality and color.
• 2. Show don’t tell – this is always relevant to any kind of writing and autobiography is no exception. Try adding in things you saw, smelt, tasted, or touched within the scene. Avoid making a statement and describe what happened in the moment, instead.
• 3. Add metaphor or simile- when describing a character or a vivid memory, don’t just describe how it looked on the surface. Unless this is not at all your writing style, you can enjoy emphasizing how something made you feel through descriptions that include metaphor. (use ext link for how to use a metaphor) For example, ‘she was as fit as a fiddle’.
• 4. Avoid common descriptive words – words such as ‘nice’ and ‘good’ should be considered with great caution once you have reached the third draft of your book.

26. Consider Your Reader

An important part of knowing how to write an autobiography is having an awareness of the reader throughout the entire manuscript. This is not only a book for you. So don’t rest on your laurels.

This can especially be a risk if you are writing only for friends or family. Just because someone knows you, it doesn’t mean your story will automatically become interesting to them. It will likely make it more interesting than if you were a random passerby, true. But this is not something to take for granted.

Many new writers are tempted to leave in every detail of their lives. But longer doesn’t always equal better – often it means that you simply haven’t cut out the parts that aren’t needed. So make sure you have your ego in check – don’t make your book too long just for the sake of it. Just because it’s interesting to you, does not mean every reader will want to know about it – family and friends included.

The average autobiography is around 75,000 words long. Much shorter than 60,000 and you might want to find other sources to write about, and any longer than 100,000, you might want to cut it down a bit.

28. Consider Privacy/Confidentiality

Much like a memoir, an autobiography includes characters who are real people. This means that some might be negatively affected by your work. So make sure to talk to those involved and to have an attorney at hand, just in case.

If you are unsure about leaving in their real name, it is best to give their character a pseudonym.

29. Editing

Both editing your book and getting it proofread will make or break it.

That means that you will want to find a professional editor to work with, who knows what she or he is doing. Ideally, you will want to find someone who is experienced in editing autobiographies or memoirs. Check that you have similar values and that you are both clear on what you are going to be working on before you start.

30. Proofreading

Make sure that all your hard work shows. You can have a strong storyline and everything else in place, but if there’s a typo on the front cover, there is no way you will be taken seriously.

So, ask friends to check over your manuscript, or better yet, employ a few proofreaders to check it over for you. Don’t use the same editor to proofread, as they will find it more challenging to spot minute mistakes by the time they have reread the story more than once. A fresh pair of eyes will likely do a better job.

31. Autobiographies on the Shelf

The autobiographies in our bookshops today, you will notice, are mostly written by celebrities. This is because they often have interesting lives that we want to read about. They include incidents that we could never have access to otherwise, in our day-to-day lives.

And that’s what makes them so appealing.

Most people are not so interested in other’s lives unless they have done something extraordinary. So if you’re thinking of writing something purely to try and get it sold, then you might want to rethink the genre you are writing in. We’re not saying it doesn’t happen that unknown authors sell a lot of autobiographies. It does. It’s just a lot less likely.

But don’t be dismayed, this is only a problem if that is the only reason you are writing your book. If it is because you feel impassioned to do so, then that is all the reason you need.

If it is for your friends and family to read, then you need not worry about big sales or landing a large publisher. It is so easy to self-publish these days on a relatively small budget, that you are pretty much guaranteed to achieve your aim.

If you are looking for a book deal, then you might be hard-pushed, if you can’t say your life has an original element to it at all. If this is the case, consider writing a memoir , instead. There are many more memoirs written by ordinary people with extraordinary stories, than autobiographies. Because people love to hear about how ordinary people overcame the odds.

No matter what your reason, if you believe in your book enough to start writing the first page, then don’t let anyone stop you from writing the book inside of you.

So there you have it. Hopefully, you will now feel confident about how to write an autobiography and ready to start. All it takes, is putting pen to paper.

 Conclusion

Writing an autobiography is a profound way to share your life story, capturing the essence of your personal experiences, family history, and life lessons for future generations. By detailing major life events and highlighting the roles played by various family members, you weave a narrative that showcases the intricate tapestry of a person’s life story. Following a structured approach, such as the 31 steps outlined in this guide, ensures that your autobiography is not only comprehensive but also engaging, making it a good story that resonates with readers. This reflective process allows you to chronicle your life journey in a way that honors your past, informs the present, and inspires those who will come after you.

 The following are some frequently asked questions about writing an autobiography:

How to write an autobiography step by step?

To write an autobiography step by step, start by outlining major life events and gathering materials like photos and mementos. Choose a central theme and create an outline to structure your story. Begin with a strong opening and write in a conversational tone, incorporating vivid details and key events to highlight life lessons. Include family history to enrich the narrative and reflect on your life journey. Edit and revise for clarity, seek feedback, and finalize your manuscript for publishing.

What is the format to write an autobiography?

The format of writing an autobiography involves starting with an engaging introduction that provides background information, followed by chronological chapters detailing major life events and experiences. Each chapter should focus on a specific period or theme, incorporating vivid descriptions and personal reflections. The conclusion should reflect on your overall journey and its impact on your present and future.

How do I start an autobiography about myself?

To start an autobiography about yourself, begin with a compelling anecdote or significant memory that captures your personality and sets the stage for your story. Provide brief background information and explain why you’re writing your autobiography.

How to write an autobiography for class 7?

To write an autobiography for class 7, jot down important events in your life, pick a theme, and write clearly using simple language. Add emotions and maybe some pictures for interest. Edit for clarity.

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15 Autobiography Examples to Inspire Your Own

So you’re ready to write an autobiography ! Congratulations; this can be a gratifying personal project. And just like any creative endeavor, it’s a great idea to start by getting inspired. 

In this article, we’re sharing 15 stellar autobiography examples to get your wheels turning. We’ll also share some need-to-know info on the different types of autobiographies and autobiography layouts, and we’ll leave you with a list of catchy ways to start your book. Let’s get going!

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What are the different types of autobiographies? 

As it turns out, there are many different ways to write a book about yourself. You can go the traditional autobiography route, which is a chronological account of your entire life. Or you can write a memoir , which zeroes in on specific themes or time periods in your life. 

If you’d like, your autobiography can be composed of individual personal essays, or you can blend your autobiography with literary techniques to create a piece of creative nonfiction . 

There are graphic autobiographies that use comics or other combinations of images and text to illustrate your life story, or you can simply publish an edited version of your journal or diary . 

You can write a travelog that documents your life through your adventures or blend elements of your life with made-up stories to create autobiographical fiction . 

When it comes to sharing your life story, there are few rules!

How can I lay out my autobiography? 

Did you know there are multiple ways you can structure your autobiography? The most common is to put it in chronological order . But you can also lay out your book in reverse chronological order or even jump around in time .

Here are a few other layouts to consider: 

• Thematic or topical . As you outline your autobiography, pay attention to themes that emerge. You can lay out your autobiography by central ideas rather than by time. 
• Flashback and flash-forward. This nonlinear approach can be a great way to create some excitement and intrigue in your life story.
• Cyclical structure. Is there one event that you feel defined your life story? Why not try circling back to it throughout your book? This can be an interesting way to demonstrate how your perspective changed with time. 

If you need a little more help laying out your autobiography, we have free autobiography templates and free book templates to help you. 

Related: 50 Eye-Catching Autobiography Titles

15 Autobiographies to inspire your own 

Ready to get your creative juices flowing? Here are some examples of autobiography to add to your reading list. 

1. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

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 

A favorite of Steve Jobs, this autobiography details the author’s spiritual journey through yoga and meditation. It’s a wonderful example of how to blend the recounting of events with spiritual insights and philosophical teachings. 

3. Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela 

The former South African president wrote this stunning autobiography about his struggle against apartheid, his imprisonment, and his presidency. Aspiring autobiography writers who want to write a book about social change should read this one. 

4. The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mahatma Gandhi

In his autobiography, Gandhi explores his philosophy of nonviolent resistance through his political and spiritual journey. Writers will appreciate this book for the way it weaves stories of personal growth into a larger narrative of social change. 

5. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

One of several autobiographical works by Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings explores her coming-of-age experience amidst racism and a traumatic childhood. Writers should read this to hear Angelou’s powerful story and be inspired by her vivid language. 

6. The Story of My Life by Hellen Keller

Keller details her remarkable life as a deaf and blind person, sharing intimate details about her education and advocacy work. Aspiring writers will benefit from reading Keller’s sensory-rich language since she has the unique experience of navigating the world through touch.

7. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X

This autobiography, written in collaboration with journalist Alex Haley, tracks Malcolm X from his youth through his adulthood as a prominent activist in the civil rights movement. Read this one to learn tips and tricks for writing about your personal evolution. 

8. The Story of My Life by Clarence Darrow 

Darrow shares his experiences as a civil libertarian and prominent American Lawyer in this enlightening autobiography. Writers should read this one to learn how to build a persuasive argument in their book. 

9. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah 

South African comedian, television host, and political commentator Trevor Noah wrote this autobiography detailing his upbringing during apartheid in South Africa. This is a must-read for writers who are looking to infuse humor into their autobiographies—even when writing about heavy subjects . 

10. I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai

In her autobiography, Yousafzia recounts her tumultuous and sometimes terrifying journey advocating for equal education for girls. If you want to write your own autobiography, read this one first to learn how to bring an authentic voice to your narrative. 

11. The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom

Boom’s autobiography shares the harrowing story of her family’s efforts to hide Jews from the Nazis during World War II. Writers should read this to witness how Boom weaves a historical narrative into her life story. 

12. Agatha Christie: An Autobiography by Agatha Christie 

Renowned mystery writer Agatha Christie took time away from her suspenseful novels to write a book about herself. If you plan to write an autobiography, read Christie’s first to learn how to build a sense of intrigue. 

13. Chronicles: Volume 1 by Bob Dylan 

If you’re an artist writing your autobiography, you’ll be inspired by Dylan’s. It shares his unique perspective on the creative process in music and literature and delves into what it means to maintain your artistic vision. 

14. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi 

This well-known autobiography may make you cry, but it’s well worth the read. Written by a surgeon as he faces a terminal illness, it’s a must-read for any author exploring themes of mortality in their writing. 

15. Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama 

This autobiography by the former U.S. president is a great read for anyone aspiring to write an autobiography that intertwines their personal story with a larger societal and political narrative. 

• 31 Best Autobiographies
• 30 Celebrity Autobiographies

What is a catchy autobiography introduction? 

Sometimes the hardest part of a new project is getting started. If you’re ready to begin writing your autobiography and need a good opener, here are some angles to consider: 

• Start by describing a childhood dream and how it influenced your journey. 
• Open with a letter to your younger self.
• Share a formative childhood memory. 
• Start with a thought-provoking question you’ll answer as your book progresses.
• Talk about an object that’s meaningful to you and tie it to a larger story about your life.

With so much inspiration and so many wonderful resources, there’s never been a better time to write your autobiography. If, after reading a few books on this list, you’re not sure where to start with yours—let us help! Just sign up for a book consultation to get started.

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Autobiography Examples, Guide & Outline

Amanda Green was born in a small town in the west of Scotland, where everyone knows everyone. I joined the Toastmasters 15 years ago, and I served in nearly every office in the club since then. I love helping others gain confidence and skills they can apply in every day life.

Do you believe you’ve lived an exciting life? If you do, then it’s about time you write an autobiography.

This article will give you several autobiography ideas through six effective tips. You’ll also discover the best personal autobiography examples from which you can take inspiration.

What Is an Autobiography?

An autobiography is a type of publication that includes one’s life story. Unlike biographies, autobiographies are a narrative written by oneself instead of other professional writers.

An autobiography can include details about one’s childhood, school life, and professional life. The topic ideas are endless since self-written biographies may explore an abundance of experiences and life events.

Many people find autobiographies more interesting than biographies because they are personal narratives. Some were not necessarily intended for publication, such as a diary, memoir, or journal.

Some examples of inspiring autobiographies include the works of famous people like Benjamin Franklin, Maya Angelou, Frederick Douglass, Malala Yousafzai, and Anne Frank.

What Are the 5 Types of Autobiographies?

Full autobiography.

A full autobiography includes extensive details about a person’s every element of life. The content of this type of autobiography may start with his life from birth to the present.

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Full autobiographies follow the complete structure of books because of their length. They often include an exposition, climax, and resolution like fictional works.

Some examples of autobiographies include Benjamin Franklin’s and Elia Kaza’s.

A memoir does not focus on extensive details about one’s life experiences. Instead, it focuses on a specific event in time or any central theme. It can be about one’s college experiences, family life, or relationship with someone.

Expert writers know that memoirs use a first-person narrative voice. One example of an incredible autobiography of this format is Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes.

Confessional autobiographies do not include important details about life events or daily lives. This type of autobiography is written by someone who has done something wrong.

Honesty is an integral factor that one must consider when writing a confessional autobiography. Some essential topics may include faith, sexuality, and other intimate themes.

Some amazing examples of personal autobiographies of confession include Confessions by Saint Augustine and Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Overcoming Adversity

Many people are interested in learning about one’s adversities in life and how they were able to move on.

This type of autobiography may include essential details about kidnapping, murder, and accidents. The character may also recall memories and factual details of divorce and abuse.

An experienced writer knows how to turn these autobiographies into inspiring ones. These stories should help readers express their emotions and heal.

Some innovative autobiography examples include The Center of the Universe by Nancy Bachrach and In Order to Live: A North Korean’s Journey to Freedom by Yeonmi Park .

Personal Narrative Essay

An autobiographical essay is a common school assignment that English teachers require students. An autobiography for students is also present in millions of college application essays.

This format of autobiography includes an introduction, body, and conclusion like any other essay. It may focus on a common theme or field for conciseness and clarity.

What Are the 6 Steps in Writing Autobiography?

Brainstorm Your Autobiography

Writing an autobiography takes a lot of research and brainstorming. It would help if you spent valuable time having a thorough background of the autobiography template and format. Reading factual and fictional autobiographies is the best way to do this.

Then, write a mind map or a collection of memories you want to include in your writing. Do you want to include your entire life, from your earliest memory until your present experience? Or do you want to focus on a particular aspect of your life?

Choose Between an Autobiography or a Memoir

Traditional autobiographies include an account of a person’s entire life, while a memoir is only a part of their life. If you want to focus on specific struggles, travel experiences, funny life incidents, childhood dreams, or your marriage life, it’s better to write a memoir.

You might also want to write an autobiography essay, which is much shorter than both an autobiography and a memoir.

Organize Your Outline

Creating an outline will help you create a chronological structure for your autobiography and eliminate unnecessary details. In general, it should include two elements:

• Key events (meaningful, formative life experiences)
• Illustrative events (individual experiences, lessons, humor, romances, etc.)

A good example of a key event would be a war, your parent’s separation, or a relocation. From these experiences, add illustrative events, such as how your parents’ separation affected your romantic relationships, religious encounters, and funny anecdotes.

Write Your First Draft

Now that you have an outline, it’s time to tell the story. Make sure it has a conflict, theme, goals, climax, and resolution. You also want to ensure you’ve produced compelling characters in your autobiographical work.

Writing the initial draft also means figuring out your transitions. Divide the key events in your life into chapters. This strategy gives you a clear and descriptive way to end a part of your life and start another.

Take a Break and Edit

Take a few days off once your first draft is complete. After this, examine the entire piece paragraph by paragraph, then line by line. You can also consider hiring an editor who will correct any mistake or confusing sentence in your work.

Write Your Second, Third, and Final Draft

Consider the revisions suggested by your editor when writing the next draft. Keep re-editing and proofreading your work until it’s perfect. Don’t be afraid to reach ten drafts. What matters is you refine your writing skills and publish the perfect book.

Sample Autobiography Outline

This outline will help you create a well-structured autobiography.

Introduction

• Introduce yourself in the first chapter or paragraph of your autobiography.
• Include basic information, such as name, age, personality traits, etc.
• Family history (important childhood events, crises, deaths, illnesses in your family)
• School history (where you studied, school experiences, successes, and failures at school)
• Work history (where you worked, what you liked most about your work, difficult parts of your job)
• Spiritual development (Do you believe in God?)
• Relational development (events in your friendship, romantic relationships)
• Personal development (hobbies, addictive tendencies, personal strengths, weaknesses)
• Finish with a thought-provoking detail or moral lesson.

Autobiography Examples

Want to read more autobiographies before writing one? Here are some examples of books I recommend.

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

Anne Frank was a Jewish teenager who kept a diary as her family hid from Nazis. As one of the best autobiographies of all time, The Diary of a Young Girl became a best-seller worldwide and a part of Holocaust instruction for decades.

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela

Long Walk to Freedom is a famous personality autobiography that exhibits the fight for black liberation in South Africa. It’s a favorite book among many readers because Mandela founded democracy and promised no one would be discriminated against as the first Black president in his country.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

In her autobiography, Maya Angelou discussed how difficult it was to be a black poet and author. According to her, people didn’t listen to her voice because of her skin color, making her feel like a slave.

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

The newly-published funny autobiography by Jennette McCurdy features a controversial title that centers on the iCarly and Sam & Cat star’s struggles as a former child actor.

She discussed her complicated relationship with her overbearing mother, addiction, eating disorder, and how she moved on.

Learn More About Autobiographical Writing

I hope this guide has helped you study the types of autobiography and the difference between biography and autobiography. I also provided six essential tips on how to write an autobiography.

Writing an autobiography will help you perfect your autobiographical know-how and writing skills. If you have any questions about writing, let us know!

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Oct 18, 2019 | Writing

Are you looking for an autobiography template that will help you more easily write your life story? If so, you’re in the right place so long as you’re willing to think a little outside the box of what a “traditional” one looks like. A traditional autobiography has chapters, characters, an engaging storyline and is almost always very difficult to write. A “modern-day” autobiography has all of those elements except one – they’re incredibly easy to write and you will finish your life story at the end of your efforts – guaranteed.

What’s a modern-day autobiography?

In a nutshell, it’s an interview about your life. To write it, all you need to do is answer some questions.

Taking a quick step back, have a think about your favourite TV news anchor or talk show host. No matter who you think of, whether it’s Oprah Winfrey, Diane Sawyer or someone else, the one thing they have in common is that they interview guests. Interviews are both captivating to viewers as well as being the most practical way to get interesting and meaningful information from people. That’s true for a talk show host interviewing a celebrity or a news anchor interviewing an expert for a story. A good interview is the key to their popularity and success.

Part of why we find interviews so captivating to watch or read can be explained by basic psychology. As soon as we hear a question we want to know the answer. We can’t help it – our  mind wants to close the “curiosity gap” between what we already know and what we’d like to know.

Take a minute and answer these three questions:

• What’s one memory from your childhood that makes you smile?
• What’s the most valuable thing your parents taught you?
• What do you think is the key to a successful relationship?

In answering the questions above, you’ll probably notice two things: firstly, an answer immediately pops into your head, and secondly, your answer is an honest and authentic reflection of who you are and the values you hold. Part of the magic of an interview is the way you answer a question says so much about who you are. Each answer is as unique as you are.

So what does all this mean for writing your own autobiography? To write a captivating and authentic life story you need an autobiography template with a series of questions that prompts you to discuss your life experiences and values.

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. There’s no major editing or rewriting – we want your voice to be heard.

Your autobiography template

While our full interview is over 100 questions, here are just 15 question prompts across different “life chapters” to get you started on the journey. Get the full template here.

QUICKFIRE QUESTIONS

• Name your favorite: Book, Movie, Musician, Quote, Animal, Word…
• What did you love most about school?
• Do you remember any fads from school?
• Which of these words do you associate with your work: Love, Hate, Routine, Money or something else?
• What’s something that you did at work that you’re proud of?
• What’s the bravest thing you’ve done in the name of love?

FRIENDSHIPS

• How would your close friends describe you?
• What’s one quality you think is important in a friend?
• What is one thing your children have taught you?
• What was your proudest moment as a parent?

BIG QUESTIONS

• 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?
• Don’t forget to include photos in your book. They really are worth 1,000 words!

Want more questions to answer? Turn your life story into a printed book with that your family and loved ones will treasure forever.  Find out more about our process here .

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Autobiography vs. Biography: The Differences + Examples

Autobiography vs. Memoir - Differences, Examples, & Writing Tips!

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Have you ever thought about telling your life story? 

An autobiography is like a special book about you – your experiences, ups, downs, and everything in between. 

But when it comes to autobiography writing , putting it all into words, it can feel a bit tricky, especially for students like you.

In this blog, we're here to help you understand what an autobiography is all about and make it easier for you to write one with the help of examples. 

We'll dive into practical examples and autobiography templates to help you see how it's done. 

So, let's dive in!

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• 1. Memoir Vs Autobiography Example 
• 2. Autobiography Outline Examples
• 3. How to Write an Autobiography - Examples
• 4. Autobiography Examples for Students
• 5. Personal Autobiography Examples
• 6. Famous Autobiography Examples

Memoir Vs Autobiography Example 

Memoirs and autobiographies both delve into personal experiences, but they have their own styles and purposes. 

Let’s jump into example to see what is the actual difference between memoir and autobiography:

Memoir Vs Autobiography Example PDf

Autobiography Outline Examples

Any academic or professional writing needs to follow a proper format to organize the information. And an outline is the best way to follow the proper format. It helps you organize your information and structure your data into a proper format.

Here are some autobiography outline examples to help you learn the basics of the autobiography format .

Autobiography Outline for College - Example

Autobiography Sample Outline

How to Write an Autobiography - Examples

As we have mentioned earlier, there are as many stories as there are people on earth. Each of the stories is different from the others; no two of them could be the same. 

How you present your ideas really matters. That's why using the right strategies and the correct format is essential to make your writing creative.

It is important to know the difference between autobiography and biography . These examples will help you learn how to start an autobiography that leaves a good impression on the reader’s mind.

Autobiography Sample PDF

Writing an Autobiography - Example

Autobiography Examples for Students

An autobiography is your life story. If your teacher tells you to write one, they just want to hear about your life. Even if you think your story isn't super exciting, following the structure can make it work better.

These autobiography examples for students will help you understand how you can properly format the autobiography.

Autobiography Examples for Kids 

School is a time of discovery, and what better way to explore your own journey than through the lens of an autobiography? Here are some great autobiography examples crafted specifically for kids.

Autobiography Examples Ks2

Autobiography Examples For Grade 7

Autobiography Examples For Class 6

Short Autobiography Example for Students

Here is a sample of a short autobiography for you. Give it a good read and learn how to write an excellent short autobiography.

Short Autobiography for Students - Example

High School Autobiography Example

Check out this sample and learn to write an incredible  autobiography for  high school students.

High School Autobiography - Example

Spiritual Autobiography Example for College Students

Spiritual autobiographies give a glimpse into the spiritual person's life. Have a look at the following sample spiritual autobiography and give it a good read to learn more.

Spiritual Autobiography for College Students - Example

Cultural Autobiography Examples 

Here is a sample of a cultural autobiography that contains detailed information on culture. Have a look at the sample to know more about it.

Cultural Autobiography Examples

Funny Autobiography Examples 

Autobiographies are thought to be boring and mundane, but that is not the case. You can make an interesting story, as well as funny. Learn to write a funny autobiography by this example.

Funny Autobiography Examples

Educational Autobiography Example

Here is a sample educational autobiography that will help you formulate an effective and inspiring autobiography.

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Social Class Autobiography Example

Writing a social class or sociology assignment could be a bit difficult. This sample will help you work on yours easily.

Rambling Autobiography Examples

Rambling autobiographies are like a casual conversation with a friend, where stories unfold in their own unique way. 

Let’s jump into some fascinating examples about this type of autobiography:

Personal Autobiography Examples

Personal autobiography or personal narrative essay provides a complete picture of the author’s life story. The following personal autobiography demonstrates how to write a personal narrative autobiography.

Personal Narrative Autobiography - Example

Autobiography Examples for Students About Yourself

Famous Autobiography Examples

Autobiographical essays are usually about famous people or historical figures. Just as a renowned autobiography of Benjamin Franklin tells us about his life, his unfinished records, his accomplishments, etc.

Below are some examples of famous autobiographies for your better understanding:

Famous Literacy Autobiography Example

Famous Autobiography - Sample

All in all, we have explored different examples, like understanding what makes memoirs different from autobiographies and exploring rambling ones. These examples are like guides to help you tell your own story and maybe inspire others on your writing journey. 

So, go ahead, give it a try, and have fun telling your unique tale.

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Place your order today, and we’ll create your custom autobiography in no time!

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How To Write An Autobiography

Autobiography Examples

Top Autobiography Examples & Samples For Your Help

Published on: Sep 10, 2021

Last updated on: Nov 19, 2024

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An autobiography is a story of a person's life written down or told. They are interesting to read, but they can be even more interesting to write.

An autobiography is different from a biography. A biography is someone else's story about a person's life. But, an autobiography is the person's own story about their life.

This may make autobiographies more interesting to read than biographies. Also, they give the thoughts and feelings of the person rather than someone else's interpretation.

There are many different stories in the world. Uniquely telling your story is not easy. You need to describe what is happening to make the reader feel like they are right there with you.

In this blog, you will learn about some amazing examples of autobiographies. So, start reading now.

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Autobiography Examples For Students

An autobiography is the story of someone's life written by them. They might write about their hardships or success. Here are some examples of autobiographies that might inspire you to write your own.

Need help with your autobiography? Get pro assistance!

Short Autobiography Examples

This is a good example of a creative and interesting autobiography to read. It will teach you how to write your own great autobiography.

Autobiography Examples For Class 6

Autobiography essays are not easy to write. They are different from other essays because they tell the story of a person's life experiences. Every person has a lot of interesting experiences, so it can be hard to choose which ones to write about.

For your help, we compiled an example that you can use for your help and make your writing process easy.

Autobiography Examples For Grade 7

Only you know yourself best. Writing an autobiography is a great way to share your life with others. Everyone has a story to tell, and writing an autobiography is one way to leave your mark on history.

Here is an example that gives you a better idea of sharing your life story with others.

Autobiography Examples For College Students

An autobiography is a text that tells your life story. It can be in the form of a  memoir , which is more informal or more formal. Autobiographies can be written for different reasons:

• To introduce yourself to the world.
• To get into a program at school, for a job, volunteering, etc.

You can find more ideas for an autobiography from this example.

Note: As a college student, you might encounter confusion distinguishing between an autobiography and a statement of purpose . While both involve personal narratives, autobiographies provide a comprehensive life story, while statements of purpose focus on specific goals and qualifications for academic or professional opportunities. Understanding their distinct purposes and structures can help streamline your application processes effectively.

Autobiography Examples For High School Students

An autobiography is a self-written biography that someone writes about themselves. They might write about all of their life or just some parts. They do this to share their experiences, put them in a larger cultural or historical context, and entertain the reader.

Take a look at the below example and create a well-written one without any mistakes.

Want to tell your story perfectly? Let us write for you

Spiritual Autobiography Examples

A spiritual autobiography is your life story. In it, you write about how God has been present in your life. This includes your journey in and out of organized religion and everything spiritual.

Writing your spiritual autobiography is a chance for you to identify specific experiences with God. You will then reflect on how those experiences have impacted you.

Below is an example for your ease.

Autobiography Examples in Literature

An autobiography is a book written by somebody about their own life. It tells the story of the author’s life, accomplishments, things they have done, etc.

The following is an example that can help you better understand how to write an autobiography.

Cultural Autobiography Examples

A cultural autobiography is more than just telling your life story. Your cultural identity reveals your beliefs and ideas about culture. It also shows how culture affects different cultural groups that make up who you are.

You may want to write a cultural autobiography better to understand yourself and your culture's role in your life. It is important to be aware of your own cultural identity in a multicultural world and be open to other cultures.

An example of a perfect cultural autobiography is below for your help.

Educational Autobiography Examples

The educational autobiography is a way to tell your life story. This type of autobiography includes what you did in school and how it affected other parts of your life.

Take a look at this example to see how to write a good educational autobiography.

Social Class Autobiography Examples

In most sociology classes, students are assigned to write a socio-autobiography. This assignment helps them understand that the subject is relevant to their daily lives. Your interactions with society have a big impact on who you become as a person.

Writing your social class autobiography is a great way to show people how you fit into society. The following example will show what kind of social autobiography looks like.

Autobiography Examples For Kids

Children are often encouraged to write an autobiography, but few people recognize the importance of this task. Everyone has something special from their childhood that they should remember and reflect on. Writing about your life is a good way to do this.

There are many different ways to write an autobiography. If you are writing about yourself, it is best to start by writing about your early life and work experience.

You can also mention your school experiences. After that, you can write about other topics that may be of interest to readers, like your hobbies or interests.

Here is an example that will help in starting an autobiography.

We all have the opportunity to write our own story, but it doesn't always come easy. If writing about yourself seems difficult, then follow the examples mentioned above.

However, if you want a professional writer to write it for you, just say ' write an essay for me ' and consult a professional at CollegeEssay.org .

We have expert writers who will help you write an autobiography, personal narrative, college essay, and any academic assignment.

AI essay writing tools are also readily available to provide you with additional assistance and support.

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As a Digital Content Strategist, Nova Allison has eight years of experience in writing both technical and scientific content. With a focus on developing online content plans that engage audiences, Nova strives to write pieces that are not only informative but captivating as well.

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Autobiography Writing Steps, Structure, and Tips

by GetPublished | Jun 26, 2020 | Blog , Writing

Table of Contents

You have decided to share your inspiring life story with the world by writing an autobiography.

While this may appear to be an overwhelming task at the outset, you may find your story almost writing itself if you follow the basic autobiography guidelines.

Autobiography writing can be incredibly edifying, especially when you identify recurring themes in your life that can ultimately inspire others.

Suddenly, the book isn’t just all about you. An effective autobiography is driven by an underlying purpose that uses the author’s life experiences to provide something useful to the reader.

Before beginning the autobiography project, it helps to define the reason for writing your life story.

Is the book to be a chronicling of your life to be passed down to future generations for posterity? Or, is the undertaking driven by a desire to use your life lessons to teach, motivate, help, or inspire others?

Regardless of the purpose for retelling your unique story, having a fundamental understanding of autobiography guidelines will keep you on track from start to finish.

What is an Autobiography?

The word ‘autobiography’ derives from three Greek roots: the prefix, auto (self), the root word, bio (life), and the suffix, graphy (writing)—self-life-writing.

In essence, an autobiography is a first-person narrative detailing the highlights of one’s life.

Because it is a true accounting of your life, it is important to stick to the facts and resist any impulse to embellish or fabricate.

Writing about your life will entail sorting through the key events, relationships, and life lessons learned and then turning these details into a manuscript that will hopefully captivate the reader.

It is important to note that an autobiography is different from a memoir.

Generally, an autobiography covers the author’s entire lifespan, where a memoir devotes attention to a particular period when faced with daunting challenges to overcome, or an unusual or life-defining event.

Memoirs are often written with a pen name to obscure the identity of the author, giving them more freedom to share the details of their life story. Authors use their real names on autobiographies.

4 Autobiography Ideas to Inspire Your Own

When you decide to tackle your autobiography, you may immediately find yourself stumped. “What should I write about?” you wonder. “How do I write an autobiography of myself?”

Consider these ideas to nudge you toward creating a compelling account of your life:

1. Research popular autobiographies.

Read some of the most popular autobiographies to gain inspiration for your own story, as well as to familiarize you with autobiographical structure and content. There are many to choose from, including:

• A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
• Agatha Christie: An Autobiography by Agatha Christie
• Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• The Story of My Life by Helen Keller

2. Highlight an inspiring comeback story.

Consider a particularly trying period in your life, or an ongoing theme of adversity, and how it shaped you into the person you are today. Maybe you suffered from serious health challenges, abuse or neglect, or addiction. The idea is to take the reader on a journey through the struggles and toward the restoration of mental or physical health.

3. Target cultural themes.

Cultural themes make very interesting autobiographies. If you were born in a different country and experienced a childhood entirely different from the typical American child, it can make for a fascinating read. Share about the holidays, rituals, faith beliefs, and customs that are unique to your culture.

4. Leverage unique experiences.

Perhaps you rose to the top of your profession or were an accomplished athlete, performer, or public figure. Leverage those unique experiences, from the defeats and disappointments to the pinnacles of success, and inspire the reader along the way.

Remember that writing an autobiography is about revealing the pivotal moments in your life while allowing the reader a glimpse into your interior world. What inspired you, what scared you, what moved you—these are the rich details that keep the reader engrossed in your story.

5 General Tips for Writing an Autobiography

Autobiography writing follows the same basic principles of all storytelling. Writing an autobiography requires well-crafted prose, structure, and organization of timelines and themes, a defined purpose, and a keen awareness of the audience. Understanding how to write an autobiography involves the following steps:    

1. Define your purpose.

What motivated you to embark on autobiography writing in the first place? What message do you want to deliver to the reader? Define the purpose for writing your story and keep that purpose in mind throughout the project.

2. Identify your audience.

Is the autobiography intended for family only? If so, there might be a need to consider family members’ feelings while writing the book. If your story is for a public audience, then consider how the book can use your life lessons to help others.

3. Create a timeline.

Sorting through a lifetime of experiences is a cumbersome task. Identify the key events that align with the purpose of your storytelling, and list them in chronological order. This becomes a guide for creating chapters or sections.

4. Add the details.

Under each key event of the timeline, add the details that will drive the narrative, the personal struggles, triumphs, lessons learned, as well as key relationships. Refer to journals, photo albums, letters, or any recorded descriptions of the key events to help refresh your memory and get the details right.

5. Bring your story to life.

To capture the heart of the reader, the story must have flavor and emotion and life. This is accomplished through good writing that paints a mental picture of your life and the people who inhabited it. Use descriptive words to bring the scenes to life, and do not hesitate to insert your heart and soul into the tale of your life.

How to Structure an Autobiography

Autobiography structure, as established by the publishing industry, should be kept in mind while writing your personal story. An autobiography essentially mimics traditional story principles, using the same core elements to help draw the reader into the story:

• Setup. Early childhood experiences, introducing family members, describing home life, school, friendships, family customs, and other foundational facts.
• Complication or crisis. Early adulthood experiences that caused strife, such as parents divorcing, moving out of state, dropping out of school, injuries that ended sports careers, substance abuse, or failed relationships. Major twists in your adult life, and pivotal moments that eventually lead to a major life achievement or victory.
• Resolution. This is where the theme of the book comes to fruition, where the author reveals the lessons learned after rising above adversity.

Generally, autobiographies are structured chronologically, unwinding the narrative from birth to the present. Even when using the chronological structure, these storytelling principles should be integrated accordingly.

Some authors begin the autobiography in the middle of their life story, introducing the crisis right off, and then reverting to their childhood days. This has the effect of grabbing the reader’s attention and making them curious about how the author got to that point, thus committing early on to continue reading.

Interested in Self-Publishing Your Autobiography?

Even if you already know how to write an autobiography, it helps to enlist the expert skills of a professional editor who can advise you on structure, format, and provide the full range of editing services prior to going to publication. Check out Gatekeeper Press today for a free sample edit of up to 1,000 words, and see for yourself how we can improve your autobiography manuscript.

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How to Write an Autobiography in 3 Steps

Writing autobiographies is not an easy task.

Not only do authors need to recall all memories and decide on milestones to include, but they also spend time and energy organizing and structuring all the material into a  narrative .

In this article, we’ll guide you through the nature of this type of writing, the process of how to write an autobiography, and practical tips on how to write an autobiography essay if assigned this paper type in college.

Table of Contents:

• What is an autobiography?
• What about an autobiography essay?
• Key elements to include in your autobiography
• Choose a core idea
• Write an autobiography essay
• Practical tips on writing autobiography
• Mistakes to avoid when writing autobiography
• Further reading

What Is an Autobiography?

Authors write autobiographies in tales, novels, diaries, or stories closely mirroring events of their real lives. This genre is about describing personal experience or self-discovery.

• Long Walk to Freedom , by Nelson Mandela
• A Moveable Feast , by Ernest Hemingway
• Dreams from My Father , by Barack Obama
• I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban , by Malala Yousafzai
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin , by Benjamin Franklin

In writing autobiography, authors attempt to leave a legacy for their descendants, bridging the gap between people of different ages, backgrounds, and generations by sharing their wins, losses, and lessons learned. With an essay maker , authors can create stories that will both inspire and motivate readers.

The structure of a classic autobiography is complex yet straightforward:

It’s written in chronological order and is specific about dates, times, places, real people, and events. Autobiographies include personal memories and details, reflecting on how those positive or negative experiences shaped the author and giving insights into their thoughts, feelings, and hopes.

Biography vs. Autobiography vs. Memoir

An autobiography = you tell about your life; a biography = you tell about somebody else’s life.

Examples of biographies:

• A Beautiful Mind,  by Sylvia Nasar (about mathematician John Nash)
• Mao: The Unknown Story,  by Jung Chang
• The Minds of Billy Milligan ,  by Daniel Keyes
• Churchill: A Life,  by Martin Gilbert
• Steve Jobs,  by Walter Isaacson

A memoir is super close to an autobiography format, but these two aren’t identical. While autobiographies typically describe authors’ entire lives, memoirs document a selected period of their life journeys.

Examples of memoirs:

• The Diary of a Young Girl , by Anne Frank
• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft , by Stephen King
• Becoming , by Michelle Obama
• Educated,  by Tara Westover
• Eat, Pray, Love,  by Elizabeth Gilbert

What About an Autobiography Essay?

Here at Bid4Papers, our writers help students with how to write an  autobiography essay . It’s a type of academic paper often assigned in college or required as a part of application documents to enter a university, participate in contests, or  get a job  or a scholarship.

An autobiography essay is not about describing your whole life but focusing on your particular accomplishment or experience, with an illustration of the lessons you’ve learned retrospectively. This paper has a “self-focused” nature, is accurate yet creative and expressive, and intends the usage of the first person (the pronoun “I”) when writing.

An autobiography essay is your chance to stand out and reveal some details about your personality and character that you couldn’t mention in your application form or resume.

In academia, you can also refer to autobiographies as  personal essays .

Key Elements to Include in Your Autobiography

Before writing autobiography, it’s essential to know its key elements to understand what to include in your essay.

While people write autobiographies to include all the details of their life, it doesn’t mean yours should contain every step you took during a lifetime. With the focus on particular moments interesting to you, consider including the following elements into your work:

• A compelling title .  (Try avoiding generic phrases like “the story of my life,” “my autobiography,” etc.
• A first-person narrative voice.
• A short description of your background.  (It can be your family story, your hometown, or some touchstone moments in your school life.)
• Significant experiences t hat shaped your personality, worldview, or your approach to life. (Think of the moments that could inspire readers and make them remember your story.)
• A failure  followed up with your story of how you responded and what lessons you’ve learned from it.

How to Write an Autobiography Essay in 3 Steps

Whether you write an autobiographical book or an autobiography essay for a college, your work needs to follow three core principles:

It should be  logical ,  not boring , and  easy to read .

To make it logical, you need to combine all your memories into one meaningful whole, choose one core idea, and express it as a  thesis statement .

For it to be interesting, you need to reveal something you didn’t ever tell anyone, some personal details no one but you know.

If you want it to be easy to read, you need to format and structure your autobiography accordingly. You can follow the standard essay structure (and introduction , a body, and a  conclusion ), but do your best to avoid complicated language and grammar constructions.

Easier say than do, right?

No worries:

Below are the details and instructions on every step to take when writing autobiography.

Step 1: Brainstorm

Your writing process begins with exploring your background and brainstorming all the life experiences you believe might be interesting to a reader. Try recalling memories from all periods and areas of your life and decide which to include in your autobiography.

What can help:

1)  Talk with parents, grandparents, cousins, and old friends,  asking them to help you remember details of significant events.

2) Also, you can  ask each family member  to tell one favorite story from your life: The big chances are they remember some exciting details you can’t recall.

3)  Look through family photos, letters, and emails . Plus, if you keep a  diary  – fantastic! It can become the best source to recall emotions you experienced back then.

4)  Answer these questions:

• What are your most significant achievements?
• Can you remember your biggest failures?
• Any lessons learned from it?
• Can you name the best and worst moments in your life?
• What events have changed your life?
• How have you changed?
• Are there any people or places that shaped and impacted your life?

To make autobiography brainstorming easier, you can use checklists like these:

5) When brainstorming facts and events for your autobiography, think of how you will answer the 5 W’s:  who, where, what, when, and why . “How?” is good to consider too.

Once ready, it’s time for the second step:

Step 2: Choose a core idea

When people write autobiographies, they build the whole narration around one central idea. This idea dominates in text, unifying the entire life story throughout the autobiography. So, after you’ve explored your background, it’s time to choose a core idea for your autobiography essay.

In essay writing, we call it a thesis statement.

A few ways to pick a central thesis for your autobiography exist:

• You can choose a  personality trait  that you believe makes you awesome. Maybe you’re great at math or  time management , for example. Why not make this fact a basement of your story?
• What is your  life philosophy ? You can show values throughout the autobiography essay, inspiring readers and serving as an example for them.
• Think of the  most significant concept  to you in life: love, family, friendship, wealth, freedom – you choose. Use one as a core idea of your autobiography, referring to it through every event you’ll mention in your essay.

What also matters is the format you choose for representing the core idea in your autobiography. It can help you be  more creative  and  persuade readers  to support you or agree with you.

Choose an autobiography format

Often, a question on how to write an autobiography essay appears when students don’t know or don’t understand what writing format to choose for their work.

Unless a teacher or an admission officer noted otherwise, consider formatting it as a standard essay, focusing on a specific moment or theme in your life. Feel free to use dialogues and imagery like in online magazines and blogs.

And yet, if you plan your work to stand out from others, you might want to try some alternative formats:

• A  traditional autobiography  that covers the events from your birth to the present.
• A  memoir  that limits the information, focusing on particular moments related to one theme.
• Vignettes  that cover one event at a time, formatting them as short chapters. In essays, you can structure events as subheads.
• A  script  that represents your story through dialogue, like in theater or film.
• A  graphic novel  that tells your story via images, like in comics or cartoons. It looks more like a  visual essay  where you use original pictures instead of words to complete your writing assignment.

Step 3: Write an autobiography essay

• Create an autobiographical outline

Regardless of the format you choose, an autobiographical outline is a must to craft so you would keep a writing process organized.

Think of it as a standard  essay outline :

Order the sections into an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.

Now, organize the body into sections, from medium to high interest from your brainstorm template; they can be five or more: events, people, challenges, successes, life lessons, and others.

After that, organize the ideas of each section, also ordering them from medium to high interest. For example, when writing about significant people in your life, decide whom you will tell about first, second, etc.

Your  story arc  is the most critical component of how to write an autobiography. Do your best to organize a narrative around the core idea from your brainstorm so that your story would engage readers from beginning to end.

• Write your first draft

Now you have everything to start writing the draft of your autobiography essay. It may seem too long at first, but no worries: you’ll have time to refine it later.

For some students, the most challenging part is to choose a start sentence for their autobiography. Here go a few examples to consider:

• Of all the experiences in my life, this one was the most…
• It wasn’t even a…
• My name is…
• I’ve been a…
• It all started when…
• Growing up in…
• I was born…

None of them is a copybook maxim for you to follow. Depending on your autobiography format, you can start your story from a different angle.

Once you finish the draft, please take a little break (a few days off) to check it with the freshest possible perspective later.

• Proofread and refine

Proofreading is not about looking for typos and grammar mistakes only. You should also identify weak moments in your story and decide on improvements.

When proofreading and editing, you may want to change the sections’ order, make your writing more dynamic, or add a plot twist for your autobiography to become even more exciting for readers. Don’t hesitate to ask a friend or a family member to read your draft and help you spot mistakes or plot gaps.

Or, you can  ask a professional editor to help you . Choose those with experience in editing autobiographies or memoirs, and they’ll assist with polishing your writing as best as possible.

Practical Tips on Writing Autobiography

The below tips will help you write autobiographies that are memorable and stand out from the crowd.

1) Choose a person

As far as autobiographies are personal stories to tell, most authors write them in the first person, using “I,” “my,” and “we” pronouns. Like this:

However, you can choose to write autobiography in the second or the third person:

The second person uses the “you” pronoun, referring to a reader. It’s how you can put the reader in your place, but it’s challenging to maintain throughout the whole story.

The third person users “he” and “she,” referring to your autobiography’s characters, including yourself. Here you act like an outside observer who’s telling your story.

2) Choose your story’s tense

Most autobiographies use past tense as they recall events that already happened. And yet, present tense can also be an option if you want your work to look more stylish and create a sense of immediacy for readers.

But whatever tense you choose, it’s critical to maintain it throughout the whole essay. Remember about the sequence of tenses from grammar lessons? 🙂

3) Hook readers from the very beginning

As you know from the tips on  essay hooks , it’s critical to engage readers from the very beginning of your story. You need to convince them that your writing is distinctive and worth their time.

So, play upon their nostalgia or curiosity so they wouldn’t help but continue reading to find out what your story is about. Palmary examples of the  best opening lines  come from fiction books; why not consider some for inspiration?

4) Keep it simple

This tip is convenient for those writing an autobiography essay in college. Admission officers know about your birth, grades, and academic achievements from other documents; so do your best to give them something new.

In your autobiography, avoid clichés and pompous language as well as trivial information. Keep it simple and use a writing style that goes with your personality. Be honest, and start and finish your work in an engaging, friendly way.

5) Add details and “alive” characters

When authors write autobiographies, they want readers to feel the atmosphere and relate to it. That is why details matter here.

It doesn’t mean that you have to write a super long autobiography to mention everything (literally!). It means that you should try to describe your story so that a reader could “see,” “smell,” and “feel” it.

Sensory words  can be your writing instrument here:

Plus, if you’re not the only character in your autobiography and tell about significant people of your life, introduce them to your audience. Describe them and add some dialogues to give them a voice for readers to understand them and their role better.

Speaking about real people, ask for permission to mention them in your work. Or, you can use fake names when writing about them.

Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Autobiography

And now, here go your five don’ts of writing an autobiography essay:

• Don’t stuff  it with inessential details. Make it sound genuine and exciting to read.
• Don’t make  it too long. Try to stay within a prescribed word count or stick to an essay average word count range.
• Don’t miss  important details. Ensure you avoid significant gaps in your narration.
• Don’t mention  any personal or embarrassing information about the characters of your autobiography essay. When writing about relatives or friends, let them know what you’re going to tell about them.
• Don’t forget  about word choice,  grammar, punctuation , and the overall style of your essay. These details affect the meaning and the impression your work will make on others.

Further Reading

The best way to learn how to write an autobiography is to  read a lot . Reading others’ works will give you an idea of what this genre looks like and how to structure your autobiography essay or book.

Here are a few examples of autobiographical books you might want to read (apart from those already mentioned in this article):

• My Autobiography , by Charlie Chaplin
• The Story of My Life , by Helen Keller
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , by Book by Maya Angelou
• Mark Twain’s Own Autobiography , by Mark Twain
• Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail , by Cheryl Strayed

For more tips on how to write an autobiographical essay, these resources are worth checking:

• The Best Way to Write an Autobiographical Essay
• 7 GREAT College Essay Tips to Help You Stand Out (video)

Any questions left? Feel free to ask in the comments or  get professional help from our writers .

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