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A biography is the written compilation of a person’s life . If the author of the work and the subject are the same, we would be talking about an autobiography . Biographies are usually narratives that progress chronologically through the different stages or events of the subject’s life. Some authors claim that good biographies should be like novels, developing a triumphant or tragic story that begins in youth and whose major events lead the subject to a climax that ends with the resolution of conflicts or the death of the subject. protagonist.
We can also find the biographical essay . In this case, we are dealing with a non-fiction work that deals with certain aspects of a person’s life and may not be structured in chronological order. Thematic segmentation is common, depending on the intent of the essay, and the text usually focuses on experiences and events in the subject’s life that are intertwined with the theme being developed in the essay.
Between history and fiction
Due to the similarities between a biography and a novel, the author often uses certain literary and creative devices to fill in the gaps that might not be attractive to the reader or that must build a certain mystery necessary to prepare the ground for the description of a story. future event in history.
Other authors disagree with the existence of these unclear boundaries between the biography and the novel. An opinion against it could be based on the appropriation that the authors make of the lives of others to make them a written product. There is also the idea that these written portraits of a person’s life present us with only a vision of the facts, as if we could only observe the life of that protagonist through the eyes of the author.
The main difference between biographies and creative nonfiction, such as memoirs, is that biographies often cover a person’s entire life, from birth to death. For its part, creative nonfiction can include different themes or aspects of an individual’s life, but not necessarily throughout their entire life.
write a biography
Those who want to write a biography should make sure to do proper research that includes a variety of sources, such as newspapers, scholarly journals, images, and direct testimonials if possible.
Biographers must also be careful not to misrepresent the subject and the events of the subject’s life. Representing the reality of the subject, without bias or prejudice, can become a challenge for any author. In this sense, it is often thought that writing a biography is easier than an autobiography, since as authors of our own history it is more difficult to free oneself from personal bias and tell one’s own story as objectively as possible.
References
Del Olmo, M. (2015) Theory of biography. Editorial DYKINSON. Available at: https://books.google.co.ve/books?id=nOa7CwAAQBAJ&
