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Blog • Perfecting your Craft

Posted on Jun 05, 2024

How to Write an Autobiography: The Story of Your Life

About the author.

Reedsy's editorial team is a diverse group of industry experts devoted to helping authors write and publish beautiful books.

About Savannah Cordova

Savannah is a senior editor with Reedsy and a published writer whose work has appeared on Slate, Kirkus, and BookTrib. Her short fiction has appeared in the Owl Canyon Press anthology, "No Bars and a Dead Battery". 

Anyone who’s lived a long, interesting life (as many of us have in one way or another!) may dream of someday turning their life into a book. However, the practicalities of how to write an autobiography can be daunting — especially to those who don’t have much writing experience.

If you feel ready to write your autobiography but aren’t sure where to start, this guide will take you from opening lines to (hopefully) publishing your autobiography for all the world to read.

1. Understand what an autobiography entails

When asked to picture an autobiography, you might think of a celebrity tell-all or political memoir. This isn’t inaccurate ; a memoir would definitely fall under the autobiography umbrella. But to be really precise, there are a few key differences between memoirs and autobiographies:

• Memoirs tend to be more thematic and focus on a  central narrative (similar to a novel), whereas an autobiography is highly factual and reads more like “classic” nonfiction.
• Memoirs focus on a specific period or theme in a person’s life, while autobiographies aim to give a complete, chronological picture.
• Lastly, many memoirs are written while the writer is still young. An autobiography, though, should be written later in one’s life — at a point where one’s life story can be told comprehensively.

An autobiography is also different from a biography in that it is always narrated by the subject. Note that we’ve said “narrated” instead of “written” because, indeed, many autobiographies are created with the help of ghostwriters!

Ghostwritten autobiographies aren’t just for celebrities, either. People from all walks of life work with ghostwriters to record their stories or simply guide them through the process.

If that sounds like you, have a look through  our vetted ghostwriters on the Reedsy marketplace . You might just find your dream collaborator!

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Should you write a memoir or an autobiography?

In other words, if you’re still young (be honest here!), and/or if the book you want to write is more a series of vignettes revolving around a central theme, you may have a memoir on your hands. If that’s the case, check out our guide to how to write a memoir for more tailored advice.

But if you’ve already lived a long, interesting life — one that you feel prepared to share chronologically and completely — then an autobiography is the medium for you.

2. Outline your life's main “beats”

You might think you don’t need to be too picky about what to include in your autobiography since it’s supposed to be a “complete” account — and you’d be mostly right! That said, even in a fairly exhaustive autobiography, it’s still useful to identify the key “beats” before you begin.

What should you include in an autobiography?

While each person’s autobiography will be unique to them, readers expect certain “beats” to be covered. To get the ball rolling, here’s a list of classic autobiographical beats to hit:

• 🐣 Your birth and family background – possibly including how your parents met, where they were living at the time of your birth, whether you have any siblings, etc.
• 📚  Your early days at school – including the friends you made (whether long-lasting or not), your academic achievements (and failures), and any critical moments related to your future goals/actions.
• 🧑🏽‍💻  Your first job – this is often enlightening for readers, particularly if it had some bearing on your later career; whether because you realized that you loved the work or, more likely, that you didn’t want to work your first job forever.
• 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩  Your first relationship – similar to your first job, this is often a major stepping stone into adulthood and understanding your priorities.
• Moving house;
• Having children;
• Getting promoted;
• Receiving an award;
• Traveling somewhere new;
• Or discovering anything significant about yourself.
• 💼  Your retirement – if applicable, this will likely be one of the last beats you cover; it might include why you decided to retire, how you are spending your time nowadays, and any plans for the future.

Remember that each beat you include should contribute to a holistic portrait of your life — whether it’s something that shaped your character or lends context to another parallel moment later on.

But not everything will be relevant. There’s no need to include random things that have no bearing on any other event or important element of your life; that said, the lucky thing about memory is that you likely won’t recall most of those things anyway!

Need some help outlining your autobiography? Check out our Biography Outline Template below — while not entirely chronological, it’s a great starting point for any aspiring autobiographical author.

FREE RESOURCE

Biography Outline Template

Craft a satisfying story arc for your biography with our free template.

3. Try to write in chronological order

Having come up with a solid outline, you should now feel (somewhat) prepared to start writing your autobiography… and, ideally, to start writing it in chronological order.

While many books can be drafted non-chronologically, an autobiography is not one of them. This is because each new chapter quite literally builds on the last; this is different even from a memoir, which often skips around in time and leaves out details. The best way to ensure you’re not missing anything is to write your autobiography as chronologically as possible!

How to start an autobiography

On the note of starting your autobiography, it’s pretty straightforward: begin either with your birth or slightly before, e.g., with your parents. Unlike a memoir, which can start in medias res ( in the middle of the action ), an autobiography should start ab ovo , or “from the egg.”

This is one of the biggest benefits of writing chronologically: you always know where to start, and indeed, what should come next. Here are two strong autobiography openings to give a sense of how yours might sound:

I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb

When I was born, people in our village commiserated with my mother and nobody congratulated my father. I arrived at dawn as the last star blinked out… I was a girl in a land where rifles are fired in celebration of a son, while daughters are hidden away behind a curtain, their role in life simply to prepare food and give birth to children.

Iacocca: An Autobiography by Lee Iacocca and William Novak:

Nicola Iacocca, my father, arrived in this country in 1902 at the age of twelve — poor, alone, and scared. He used to say the only thing he was sure of when he got here was that the world was round. And that was only because another Italian boy named Christopher Columbus had preceded him by 410 years, almost to the day.

Though each opening takes a different tack — Yousafzai’s autobiography begins with her actual birth, while Iacocca’s begins even earlier, with his father’s arrival in America — both serve as effective starts to their respective books and set the tone for what’s to come.

4. Include plenty of detail

In case we haven’t drilled down on this enough, let’s reiterate once more: an autobiography should be a complete overview of your life from beginning to end. That means that as you get into properly writing it, you should include as much detail as you can remember.

Taking one of our previous suggested beats — “your first job” — as an example, here are a few questions you might ask yourself to recount your memories in more detail:

• How did you get your first job?
• What made you want to work there?
• What was the environment/atmosphere like — physically and emotionally?
• What was your greatest accomplishment at this job? Your greatest failure?
• What did you learn from working there? How did it affect your later career?

As you can probably tell from these questions, the natural corollary to the advice of “be detailed!” is to also be honest . Don’t shy away from your failures or regrets — an autobiography without mistakes is not an autobiography, but rather a puff piece.

Examples of strong biographical detail

For those wondering how to inject detail into their writing, here are two examples from great autobiographies that do exactly that. Each takes a different approach to engage readers — perhaps you can pick up some descriptive techniques to suit your own life story.

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela

There was no natural light in my cell; a single bulb burned overhead twenty-four hours a day. I did not have a wristwatch and I often thought it was the middle of the night when it was only late afternoon. I had nothing to read, nothing to write on or with, no one to talk to [...] After a time in solitary, I relished the company even of the insects in my cell, and found myself on the verge of initiating conversations with a cockroach.

This passage’s evocative details — the single lightbulb, Mandela’s loss of his internal clock — convey the crushing loneliness of solitary confinement, yet also add levity with the bit about cockroaches.

This give-and-take style may be useful if you, too, are writing an autobiography which includes difficult or traumatic elements. Don’t shy away from the hard parts, but don’t let solemnity overpower your personality and voice!

Becoming by Michelle Obama

When you’re little, a piano can look like it has a thousand keys. You’re staring at an expanse of black and white that stretches farther than two small arms can reach. [...] The keys on Robbie’s piano had a subtle unevenness of color and shape, places where bits of ivory had broken off over time, leaving them looking like a set of bad teeth.

This passage uses sensory details and an intimate tone to draw readers in, describing not just how the piano looks, but how it feels to play. All this makes for a very compelling narrative style — almost like that of a novel. If you want your autobiography to flow this way, try reading more nonfiction in this style (indeed, many memoirs read quite similarly).

📚 Looking for more examples of brilliant biographical writing? Check out this list of The 30 Best Biographies of All Time to inspire you.

5. Do research to fill in the gaps

No matter how carefully you rack your brains, you won’t be able to recall every detail of your life. That’s where research comes in! Here are a couple of things you can do to learn more about yourself and your past.

Interview friends and family

While you’ve likely retained the core of each important life memory, some details will still elude you. For these, you might call on friends, family members, and anyone else who was in your life at the time — interviewing them should help flesh things out in your autobiography.

You might try a few different interview strategies, depending on what you’re hoping to achieve:

• Ask specific questions based on what you can’t remember/don’t know (e.g. “Whose wedding was that again?” or “Why did Dad quit that job in Pasadena?”);
• Ask your subject to recount everything they can about an event (e.g. “Tell me how you remember our high school graduation”); or
• Ask them if they have any key memories of you which they would like to talk about.

The first interview style will be the quickest, but the latter two might yield more interesting results. If you’re prioritizing thoroughness, we’d highly recommend calling up a few old friends or close family members, sitting down, and recording your interview for a few hours.

Do “traditional" research if needed

Having written as much as you can, and interviewed other people to add their stories, you might still find yourself missing information. If applicable, this is where you could turn to “traditional” research — that is, looking up relevant records and documentation, or even taking a field trip or two to previous neighborhoods.

It’s up to you how far to go with this; just don’t go mad, and try to avoid any rabbit holes that tempt you to write an entirely new book. (Then again, that could always be your next project! Check out our post on how to write a nonfiction book to learn more.)

6. Give your draft a discerning edit

You’ve finally finished a detailed draft — congratulations! Even if you don’t do anything else with your autobiography, your friends and family will be wildly impressed, and your descendants will have a fascinatingly thorough record of your life.

But if you want to publish your autobiography — or even if you suspect it hasn’t turned out quite as expected — you’ll now need to enter the editing stage. There are a few different types of editing to consider for your autobiography, including:

• Structural editing to heighten the impact of your key beats;
• Line editing to improve the syntax, flow, and clarity of your sentences; and
• Fact-checking and proofreading to ensure your book doesn’t contain any errors.

Again, it’s up to you how extensively you want to edit your autobiography. If you’re doing it yourself, we’d suggest going top-to-bottom — first structural editing, then line editing, then proofreading — to avoid unnecessary work. ( Check out this post on how to self-edit your book for key tips!)

And if this all feels overwhelming, you can always work with a professional editor to get your autobiography in tip-top shape . Autobiography and memoir specialists can help turn your work into an Iacocca-worthy masterpiece.

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7. Format and publish your autobiography

Now comes the really fun part, if you so choose it — formatting and publishing your autobiography for everyone to read!

Biography fans out there will know that auto/biographies often contain a selection of personal photos within the text. If you’re envisioning this, it will require specialty formatting; you’ll either need to intersperse photos throughout the text or format your book with a “photo section” in the middle (the more common option).

You can do this with free book formatting tools like Reedsy Studio . Or if you’re not confident in your formatting abilities, consider hiring a professional typesetter to help !

As for publishing, many autobiographers choose to self-publish their books to get them out as quickly as possible, and to have more control over the process. However, if you’re interested in selling your autobiography to a publisher — a reasonable option if you are a businessperson, and especially if you already have a decent following — we’d suggest this post on how to write a non-fiction query letter to get you started.

Whatever path you take, whether you decide to publish it or not, writing the story of your life is an incredibly enlightening endeavor. If you're interested in novels instead, check out this advice from NYT bestselling author Caroline Leavitt ! We hope this guide has helped you on your journey; indeed, as autobiographical writing teaches us, the journey really is the greatest reward.

Continue reading

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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 2,296,398 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/
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• ↑ 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
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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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An Easy Autobiography Template Anyone Can Use

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.

QUICKFIRE QUESTIONS

• Name your favorite: Book, Movie, Musician, Quote, Animal, Word…
• What’s the most valuable thing your parents taught you?
• 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 .

2 simple steps, a lifetime of stories..

Record a loved one’s life story in a beautifully printed book. A truly meaningful gift for anyone special in your life.

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

How to Write an Autobiography in 31 Steps

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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.

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.)

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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Shaping Your Legacy: How to Write a Compelling Autobiography

• The Speaker Lab
• March 12, 2024

Table of Contents

Ever thought about how your life story would read if it were a book? Writing an autobiography is like creating a map of your personal journey, each chapter representing milestones that shaped you. But where do you start and how can you ensure the tale holds interest?

This guide will help unravel those questions by delving into what makes an autobiography stand out, planning techniques to keep your narrative on track, writing tips for engaging storytelling, and even ethical considerations when revealing private aspects of your life.

We’ll also touch on refining drafts and navigating publishing options. By the end of this read, you’ll be equipped with all the insights you need to create a compelling autobiography!

Understanding the Essence of an Autobiography

An autobiography provides a comprehensive view of one’s life journey from birth to the present day. Imagine climbing into a time machine where every chapter represents different eras in your life. The goal of an autobiography is to allow readers to explore a factual, chronological telling of the author’s life.

Autobiographies aren’t merely catalogues of events, however; they need soulful introspection too. Think about why certain episodes mattered more than others and how those experiences influenced your perspectives or decisions later on.

You’ll also want to infuse emotional honesty, allowing yourself vulnerability when recalling both triumphant milestones and painful obstacles. Authenticity creates connections between authors and their audience, so let them see real human emotions behind every word written.

Distinguishing Features Of An Autobiography

The unique thing about autobiographies is they are first-person narratives . This allows readers to experience everything through your eyes, as if they’re living vicariously through you. From triumphs to trials, each page unravels another layer of who you are.

While memoirs are also first-person narratives of a person’s life, there are different from autobiographies. In a memoir, the author focuses on a particular time period or theme in their life. If you’d rather skip the details and dates needed for an autobiography and focus more on emotional truths, you might consider writing a memoir.

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Pre-Writing Stage: Planning Your Autobiography

The planning stage is a crucial part of writing your autobiography. It’s where you map out the significant events in your life, establish a timeline, and identify who will be reading your story.

Selecting Key Life Events

To start, you need to pinpoint key moments that have shaped you. While you will include plenty of factual details in your autobiography, you won’t include every single one. Rather, you’ll be spending the majority of your autobiography focusing on the transformative experiences that defined your life journey. After all, an autobiography is not just a catalogue of events; it’s also an exploration into what these experiences meant to you.

Establishing A Timeline

Next up is establishing a timeline for your narrative flow. Since you’re writing an autobiography, it’s important to first map out your story chronologically so that you can keep your events straight in your mind. MasterClass has several suggestions for key elements you might want to include in your timeline.

Identifying Your Audience

Finding out who’ll read your book helps shape its tone and style. Self-Publishing School says understanding whether it’s for close family members or broader public can guide how personal or universal themes should be presented.

While this process might feel overwhelming initially, take time with this stage. Good planning sets solid foundations for creating an engaging autobiography.

Writing Techniques for an Engaging Autobiography

If you’re on the journey to pen down your life story, let’s dive into some techniques that can help transform it from a simple narrative into a riveting read. An engaging autobiography is more than just facts and dates—it’s about weaving your experiences in such a way that they captivate readers.

Incorporating Dialogue

The first technique involves incorporating dialogue. Rather than telling your audience what happened, show them through conversations. It lets the reader experience events as if they were there with you. As renowned author Stephen King suggests , dialogue is crucial in defining a the character of a person (including yourself).

Using Vivid Descriptions

Vivid descriptions are another effective tool in creating an immersive reading experience. But remember: overdoing it might overwhelm or bore the reader, so find balance between being descriptive and concise.

Narrative Techniques

Different narrative techniques can also enhance storytelling in autobiographies. For instance, foreshadowing creates suspense; flashbacks provide deeper context; and stream of consciousness presents thoughts as they occur naturally—a powerful way to share personal reflections.

All these writing tools combined will give you a gripping account of your life journey—one where every turn of page reveals more layers of depth and dimensionality about who you are as both character and narrator.

Structuring Your Autobiography for Maximum Impact

Deciding on the right structure for your autobiography is essential to ensure your book captivates readers and keeps them engaged.

The first step towards structuring your autobiography effectively is deciding whether to organize it chronologically or thematically. A chronological approach takes readers on a journey through time, letting each event unfold as you experienced it. On the other hand, a thematic approach revolves around central themes that have defined your life—think resilience, ambition or transformation—and might jump back and forth in time.

Creating Chapters

An effective way to manage the vast amount of information in an autobiography is by dividing it into chapters. Each chapter should be structured around a specific time frame (if you’re opting for chronological order) or theme (if taking the thematic approach). The key here isn’t necessarily sticking rigidly to these categories but using them as guides to help shape and direct your narrative flow.

Crafting Compelling Beginnings and Endings

A strong beginning pulls people into your world while an impactful ending stays with them long after they’ve closed the book—a little like how memorable speeches often start with something surprising yet relatable and end leaving audiences pondering over what they’ve heard. So consider starting off with something unexpected that gives insight into who you are rather than birthplace/date details right away. For endings, look at wrapping up major themes from throughout the book instead of simply closing out on latest happenings in your life.

Remember, structuring an autobiography is as much about the art of storytelling as it is about chronicling facts. Use structure to draw readers in and take them on a journey through your life’s highs and lows—all the moments that made you who you are today.

Ethical Considerations When Writing an Autobiography

When penning your life story, it’s important to respect privacy and handle sensitive issues well. Because let’s face it, writing about others in our lives can be a slippery slope. We need to tread carefully.

Respecting Privacy: Telling Your Story Without Invading Others’

The first thing we have to consider is the right of privacy for those who cross paths with our narrative journey. While they might play crucial roles in our stories, remember that their experiences are their own too.

A good rule of thumb is to get explicit consent before mentioning anyone extensively or revealing sensitive information about them. In some cases where this isn’t possible, anonymizing details or using pseudonyms could help maintain privacy while keeping the essence of your story intact. Author Tracy Seeley sheds more light on how one should handle such situations responsibly.

Navigating Sensitive Topics With Care

Sensitive topics often make for compelling narratives but dealing with them requires tact and empathy. You’re walking a tightrope, balancing honesty and sensitivity, a fall from which can lead to hurt feelings or even legal troubles.

An excellent way around this dilemma would be by focusing on how these experiences affected you personally rather than detailing the event itself. Remember, your autobiography is an opportunity to share your life experiences, not just a platform for airing grievances or settling scores.

Maintaining Honesty: Your Authentic Self Is the Best Narrator

Above all else, stay truthful when writing your autobiography, both when you’re writing about sensitive topics and even when you’re not. While it can be tempting to bend the facts so that your audience sees you in a more positive light, maintaining honesty is the best thing you can do for yourself.

Editing and Revising Your Autobiography

Your initial draft is finished, but the job isn’t done yet. Editing and revising your autobiography can feel like a daunting task, but it’s essential for creating a polished final product.

The Importance of Self-Editing

You may feel that you have written your autobiography perfectly the first time, but there are always ways to make it better. The beauty of self-editing lies in refining your story to make sure it resonates with readers. You’re not just fixing typos or grammar mistakes; you’re looking at structure, flow, and consistency. Essentially you’re asking yourself: does this piece tell my life story in an engaging way?

Inviting Feedback from Others

No matter how meticulous we are as writers, our own work can sometimes evade us. Inviting feedback from others is invaluable during the revision process. They provide fresh eyes that can spot inconsistencies or confusing parts that may have slipped past us.

Hiring a Professional Editor

If you’re serious about publishing your autobiography and making an impact with your words, hiring a professional editor can be worth its weight in gold. An editor won’t just fix errors—they’ll help streamline sentences and enhance readability while respecting your unique voice.

Remember to approach editing and revising with patience—it’s part of the writing journey. Don’t rush through it; give each word careful consideration before moving onto publication options for your autobiography.

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Publishing Options for Your Autobiography

Once you’ve spent time and energy creating your autobiography, the following challenge is to make it available for others. But don’t fret! There are numerous options available for releasing your work.

Traditional Publishing Houses

A conventional path many authors take is partnering with a traditional publishing house . These industry giants have extensive resources and networks that can help boost the visibility of your book. The process may be competitive, but if accepted, they handle everything from design to distribution—letting you focus on what matters most: telling your story.

Self-Publishing Platforms

If you want more control over every aspect of publication or seek a faster route to market, self-publishing platforms like Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), offer an accessible alternative. With this option, you manage all aspects including cover design and pricing ; however, it also means greater responsibility in promoting your book.

Bear in mind that both options have their own pros and cons, so consider them carefully before making any decisions.

Marketing Your Autobiography

Now that you’ve crafted your autobiography, it’s time to get the word out. You need a plan and strategy.

Leveraging Social Media

To start with, use your social platforms as launching pads for your book. Sites like Facebook , Twitter, and especially LinkedIn can help generate buzz about your work. And don’t underestimate the power of other platforms like Instagram and TikTok when trying to reach younger audiences. Whatever social platform you use, remember to engage with followers by responding to comments and questions about the book.

Organizing Book Signings

A physical event like a book signing not only provides readers with a personal connection but also generates local publicity. Consider partnering up with local independent stores or libraries, which are often open to hosting such events.

Securing Media Coverage

Contacting local newspapers, radio stations or even bloggers and podcasters in your field can provide much-needed visibility for your work. It might seem intimidating at first, but who better than you knows how important this story is?

FAQs on How to Write an Autobiography

How do i start an autobiography about myself.

To kick off your autobiography, jot down significant life events and pick a unique angle that frames your story differently.

What are the 7 steps in writing an autobiography?

The seven steps are: understanding what an autobiography is, planning it out, using engaging writing techniques, structuring it effectively, considering ethics, revising thoroughly, and exploring publishing options.

What are the 3 parts of an autobiography?

An autobiography generally has three parts: introduction (your background), body (major life events), and conclusion (reflections on your journey).

What is the format for writing an autobiography?

The usual format for autobiographies involves chronological or thematic structure with clear chapters marking distinct phases of life.

Writing an autobiography is a journey, a trek exploring the unique narrative of your life. Together, we’ve covered how to plan effectively, select key events, and set timelines.

Once you’re all set to write, you now have the techniques you need for engaging storytelling, including vivid descriptions and dialogues. You also learned about structuring your story for maximum impact and navigating sensitive topics while maintaining honesty.

Last but not least, you learned editing strategies, publishing options, and effective ways of promoting your book.

Now you know more than just how to write an autobiography. You know how to craft a legacy worth reading!

• Last Updated: March 22, 2024

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How To Write an Autobiography 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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How To Write An Autobiography: A Detailed & Comprehensive Guide

• March 28, 2022

When contemplating how to write an autobiography, many people are led to assume that it’s simple. It’s just your own life story, put through the writing process. However, when writing your own autobiography, you may find that the writing process is a little more complicated than just starting with your birth and telling the story of your own life up to the present moment.

A person’s life is more than just the big events, and it’s seldom ever a solitary story. There are life lessons that need to be included. Family members and their impact on you are a part of autobiography writing as well. If you want to write an autobiography, you have to be conscious of your life story, as a tale that built the person you are, not just a string of events.

This article will help you figure out how to write an autobiography so that it’s not just the story of your own life but a personal story that others can relate to, find inspiration in, and learn from.

What is an Autobiography?

An autobiography is more than just the life story of someone. The person’s life being described is your own; therefore, it is far more personal than a novel or work of fiction. It is essential to stay truthful when recalling your own memories. The slightest deviation in honesty is a slippery slope and can quickly take you from autobiography writing to fiction writing.

How An Autobiography is Different from a Biography

A biography is the telling of someone else’s life. You choose someone, such as a family member, a friend, or a famous person, and you tell the story of his or her own life while leaving your own story out of it. A biography takes a large amount of research and expertise regarding the subject’s life story and events that they lived through. An autobiography works in the same fashion, but it’s the story of you. You are the ultimate expert in your own life. Therefore, there’s not much research to be done.

Another significant difference between autobiographical writing and biographical writing is the voice that is used. When you write an autobiography, you want to use first-person writing. You are telling the story of you. Therefore you should tell it from your own point of view.

On the other hand, biographies should always be written from a third-person point of view. Third-person is using “he, she, they, them.” You were not there, you did not witness the events you are writing about, and therefore, you should be telling the story from an outsider’s viewpoint.

How an Autobiography is Different from a Memoir

A memoir tells your own story, but not your entire life story. Often written to convey a specific message, a memoir includes snippets and anecdotes that occur throughout your entire life. Still, it’s not the detailed story of a life in its entirety. Both of these types of writing are done in the first-person point of view. First-person uses pronouns such as “I, we, and us.”

For example, if you were to write a memoir about how 9/11 affected you personally, you might write about your life the year that the attack occurred. You may even give some bits of information about your childhood, your career, or your family life from before the event. Then you would provide details and focus on 9/11 itself and what you did and were doing that day. Later, you might skip ahead and give stories from your life about how it changed you, but you wouldn’t tell the story of your entire life.

Future Tense in an Autobiography

The future tense is tricky when it comes to writing. Most autobiographies recall events that have already occurred in a step-by-step process. This process takes the reader from the beginning to another point in the not-so-distant past or right up to the present.

The end is often written in the present tense, but most of the time, the story stops there. Basic principles of tense apply if you decide to speculate or include your hopes, dreams, or fears for the future.

Tips on How to Write an Autobiography

Your own autobiography should include details that encompass your life from birth to the present. When the writing process begins, you should write in the past tense to let the readers know that the events you are writing about have already occurred.

When you get to the present day, remember to switch your tense to the present tense so that the readers understand that you are discussing where you are in your life now. Mistakes in tense usage can be fixed in the first draft revision, but it’s best to try to get yourself in the habit of switching tenses as you go from the past events to the present day when you write an autobiography.

The following are other important tips about what content to include that will help you learn how to write an engaging and well-executed autobiography.

Autobiography Questions

Below are some autobiography questions that can guide you when writing about your life story:

• What has motivated you to write an autobiography?
• Who made a significant impact or influence in your life?
• Who are the people who surround you?
• What are the remarkable memories you have? 
• Did anyone not support you on your journey and you proved them wrong?
• What inspires you?
• What demotivates you?
• What do you consider the best time in your life?
• What quote best depicts and summarizes your life?
• How would you describe yourself?
• What kind of family relationships do you have?
• What moments in life do you feel like you could be truly proud of yourself?
• What do you think are some of your flaws?
• What do you desire to have in the future/where would you like to be?
• What do you do to upskill, and in which field would you like to focus your energy?
• What are your set of principles and personal values?
• How have your values defined who you are today?
• What is your dream career path?
• Have you advocated for something?
• If there was one thing you wanted everyone to know about you, what would it be?

Your Background

It’s essential to start by telling your readers where you’re from, when you were born, and who your family members are when you write an autobiography. 

This does not mean that you need to include how long your mother was in labor (unless the story of your birth is a particularly interesting one), what the hospital room number was, how much you weighed, how long you were, and what you scored on the Apgar test. Those are details that are nice to include in your baby book, but almost no one is interested in those details but you and your mom.

What you should include is where you were born (city, state, country), a story or two about a family member who meant a lot to you when you were a child or teenager, what your educational background was like, what kind of kid you were, and what your family life was like.

Keeping it general and sticking to just a few personal stories and anecdotes is enough. If you want to know how to write an autobiography that doesn’t bore the reader to tears or sleep within the first few pages, keep the details specific to significant events in your childhood, and keep the more drab and general stories to yourself.

Write About Hardship or Failure

While it may not be the most glamorous of life events you have experienced, writing about hard times, failure, and times of struggle help the reader relate to you, feel empathy and care about the story of your life. 

Making your life seem perfect simply because writing about something that didn’t work out, hurt you, or made you unpopular because you see it as embarrassing will only hurt you in the long run because the reader will not be engaged.

When you go back and read your first draft, ask yourself if what you have written will touch anyone who has struggled similarly to you. If not, go back and rewrite it to include at least a few stories of hard times.

Come Up with a Catchy and Compelling Title

Autobiographical writing doesn’t have to be boring, and neither should your title. Steer clear of titles such as; Jane Doe: An Autobiography. Unless you’re famous, you’re not compelling anyone to pick it up and read it. Equally boring is; Jane Doe: The Story of my Life.

Try to come up with something catchy and engaging when you come up with the title. Readers are more likely to read an autobiography written by someone with a witty or smart title than someone who didn’t have the writing skills or creativity to create something more original.

Instead, try for something like; A Beautiful Disaster: The Story of Jane Doe. This title denotes that you don’t take yourself too seriously, but you respect and love yourself while admitting that your life can sometimes be a mess.

You don’t even need to have your name in your title if you have a catchy title. Take this example into consideration; Hot Mess Express: The Story of One Tired Mom. This sort of title is fun, funny, and will catch the attention of mothers, especially those with young children.

Significant Events

When considering how to write an autobiography, keep in mind that significant events in your life should always be included. When you write an autobiography, you are looking for points in your personal story that impacted you and helped to shape you into the person that you are now.

Maybe that was a move across the country, the death of someone close to you, finding love, or your first kiss. Perhaps it was being the first person in your family to go to college, starting your own business, or the birth of your first child.

Be sure to include the less wonderful but still significant events in your life, as well. Things like your first heartbreak, divorce, the loss of a job, poverty you experienced, or trauma that compelled you to rise above your station and seek help to gain self-improvement or lessons learned from these experiences.

Have a Central Idea

What is the most important thing you want to say to the reader with this story? Is it that you started out with nothing and rose up to success? Is it that you had success and lost it all? Maybe it’s that love and dedication to family are more important than success in a career or climbing a social ladder.

Whatever your central idea, identify it and then figure out how you can put it in autobiography format.

The Steps Involved to Write an Autobiography

When thinking of how to write an autobiography, consider that the writing process begins in much the same way that it does with any sort of writing. You should consider following the following steps if you want to learn how to write an autobiography effectively.

Create an Autobiographical Outline

Just like any literary work, you should have an outline. After you have taken some time to reflect on what you want to include, get it written down in autobiography outline form. Include all of the parts of your life that you think you might want to incorporate, and then separate them into categories, focusing on what you think will be of medium to high interest to a reader.

What is meant by “medium to high interest” is that the events are significant enough to garner enough interest for the reader. That they will feel compelled to continue reading to see what happened to you next or how you got through an event or part of your life that you describe.

Do Your Homework

Just because you know what happened to you, and you have the general information and experiences from things like your childhood, it doesn’t mean that you have the knowledge to write it well.

If you don’t know how to describe the setting, society in the era you’re writing about, and the culture, it will seem that you don’t know how to write an autobiography, and readers will start to lose interest.

Look into things like the area you grew up in and what life was like in that area when you were a child. Get a family history from members of your family, such as where your family originated from, what your parents and grandparents did for a living, and any other significant information you may need that you don’t know about the people from whence you came.

Complete the First Draft

Your first draft may not be very clean, and it will most likely have things in it that need to be cut out. You may get too wordy talking about specific periods of your life and may not supply enough story to others. You won’t know until you get that first draft under your belt.

Once you complete this draft, take some time off and let the work sit. Taking a break before revisiting puts distance between yourself and your story, and you’re far more likely to be able to come at the revision process in an open-minded matter once you have that distance.

Revise and Rewrite

As with any writing that you do, whether it’s an autobiography, novel, personal essay, research paper, or news article, you have to revise your work. Proofread, fix simple and obvious mistakes, and add to the things that need more description while cutting out the unnecessary parts.

Once you have fixed grammar mistakes and taken the story from what looks like a personal diary to a narrative account of your life experiences, you can start writing the next draft. Make sure to determine your desired writing style before you rewrite, and make sure that the content matches that style.

How to Properly Structure an Autobiography

Whether you’re writing a full-length book or an autobiographical essay, you still have to have structure to your writing. While an autobiographical essay is shorter, the structure is much the same. The following are some tips that will help you figure out how to write an autobiography format that works well.

Write in Chronological Order

While it’s perfectly fine for a novel to have a timeline that skips and jumps around, the best way to tell a good story of your own experiences and personal memories is to do so in chronological order or the order in which things happened.

The very beginning of your autobiography should cover your birth, then childhood, then education, then young adulthood, on up to the present moment. This creates a timeline of each significant personal experience that is easy to follow and doesn’t confuse the reader.

Don’t Fictionalize Names or Places

Professional writers of fiction often create characters based on people they know or even themselves. They give these characters fake names and personas and rename towns and businesses so as not to make the writing too personal. All the details of the real people may be present, but when you write fiction, you have the freedom to change things.

An autobiography covers actual events, so the writing needs to be honest. If you grew up in Toledo, Ohio, say that. Don’t make up the name of a town. If you grew up with a mother named Tess, say that. Don’t give her a fake name. Being truthful about your family and your life is essential. You’re not the only character in this story, and it’s unfair and not suitable to misrepresent a setting or person in your life.

Add Family Photos or Other Personal Touches

The most compelling television episodes are the ones in which there is a strong story and a strong visual to accompany it. You can create an effect very close to this by including photos, artwork, letters shared by people close to you, and more. Just be sure that you ask for and are granted permission before you do this, especially if the photos are used to identify weak moments in your life for any reason.

Be Thorough in Describing Pivotal Moments

Significant moments in life that occur, such as academic achievements, turning points, and the things that build up to a story arc for you, need to be built up in a way that creates both interest and intrigue for your reader. Include details like how negative experiences shaped your understanding or outlook on things or how you learned to be completely free of stress because of how stressful and frantic your life used to be.

These things make up the critical elements in what amounts to a full life. And being completely transparent and thorough in the telling of it gives the reader the freshest possible perspective, especially if you acknowledge as the writer that you are reflecting upon the story you’re telling, as you tell it.

The Final Draft When Writing an Autobiography

So you’ve completed all of the steps mentioned above, and you’ve worked out your outline, title, and other details that seem small but are incredibly important. Now it’s time to write the final draft so that your favorite story, the story of you, can become someone else’s favorite story.

The Last Revision

Once you have completed that final draft , you still need to go back and ensure that everything you wanted and needed to include is present and accounted for. Clarity is sometimes an issue when a person is trying to figure out how to write an autobiography. Try reading your story aloud, and if it makes sense to someone else or even to you as you read it with your own voice, then it’s probably thorough enough.

Make Sure the Title Agrees with the Content

The last thing you want is a misleading title. Make sure that the title goes along with your autobiography’s overall tone and message.

For example, if you wrote a sad story about heartache and loss of hope, don’t title your story: Little Miss Sunshine: The Story of One Woman from the Midwest. Be sure that the mood, message, and tone align with the title you have decided on. If they don’t fit, it’s much easier to change the title than the mood and tone of the story.

Autobiography Format

Below we have outlined the format that you can utilize when writing an autobiography:

• Title – It should reflect what your life story conveys or what it is like to be you.
• Dedication – This section states whom you would like to dedicate your autobiography.
• Table of Contents – It helps your readers to locate specific parts of your autobiography.
• Acknowledgments – This is where you express your gratitude to the people who have helped you on your journey.
• Foreword – It highlights the purpose of the autobiography.
• Introduction – This provides a glimpse of who you are as the author, and if this is effective, the reader will continue reading your book.
• Body Section – This is where the events in your life are chronologically narrated, along with all the necessary details. It can contain many headings and subheadings.
• Conclusion – This is where you share all your revelations and successes, while also referencing your own personal experiences.
• Memorabilia – You may include significant pictures or any other objects that have impacted your life.
• Index – It helps the reader browse through your autobiography by using main keywords or concept words.

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How to write an autobiography: 7 key steps

Many people who’ve lived interesting lives want to learn how to write an autobiography. Whether you want to write a memoir or a fictional autobiography, these 7 steps will help you start:

• Post author By Jordan
• 4 Comments on How to write an autobiography: 7 key steps

What is autobiography?

Autobiography means to write about yourself, typically the account of significant events in your life. The word stems from the Greek, αὐτός (autos) meaning self , plus βίος (bios) meaning life and γράφειν ( graphein ) – to write.

Autobiography vs memoir: What’s the difference?

What’s the difference between autobiography and memoir? Are there specific kinds of autobiography? These may be questions you ask as you set out to write your life story.

As Ian Jack writes in The Guardian , there are differences between autobiography vs memoir although the terms are often used interchangeably:

An autobiography is usually a record of accomplishment. All kinds of people, more or less famous, can write them or be helped to write them: footballers, politicians, newsreaders. Deeds, fame and an interesting life are not necessary ingredients of the memoir. The memoir’s ambition is to be interesting in itself, as a novel might be, about intimate, personal experience. It often aspires to be thought of as “literary”, and for that reason borrows many of literature’s tricks – the tricks of the novel, of fiction – because it wants to do more than record the past; it wants to re-create it. If a memoir is to succeed on those terms, on the grounds that all lives are interesting if well-enough realised, the writing has to be good. Ian Jack, in The Guardian , February 2003.

7 steps to write your own life story:

• Brainstorm your autobiography’s focus and scope
• Skim autobiographies for inspiration
• Choose between autobiography and memoir
• Outline key and illustrative life events
• Draft key scenes from your life
• Find strong transitions
• Check details and get beta readers

1. Brainstorm your autobiography’s focus and scope

Deciding what period and events you’ll cover in your life story is a helpful first step in choosing how to write an autobiography.

Squishing the intrigues, heartbreaks, surprises and secrets of your life into narrative form may seem an impossible task. Life of course does not unfold in neat paragraphs, scenes and chapters.

Make it easier and brainstorm your autobiography’s focus and scope. Ask:

• What period of my life do I want to tell readers about?
• Where should the timeline start? (Infancy? Childhood? Adolescence?)
• What are key events of my life readers may find intriguing?

This will help you refine your autobiography’s focus [you can also pinpoint your story’s focus in the Central Idea brainstorming tool in the Now Novel dashboard].

For deciding your story’s scope, ask:

• What essential scenes and events should I include?
• What themes or subjects need mention (for example, if you have experienced a trauma or illness that has greatly impacted your life, exploring personal events and insights that resulted from them would make sense)

Autobiography Exercise: Scenes to show

Write a brief bullet list of events to include in your autobiography or memoir.

Focus on events that show strong emotion, key turning points or changes, or vivid life lessons , because these connect with readers.

For example:

• A first encounter with someone who turned out to be an amazing mentor
• A positive or challenging move to another school, city or country in childhood
• The first time you met a major love interest in your life
• The moment you walked away from a job or other commitment to pursue a new dream

2. Skim autobiographies for inspiration

One of the best ways to learn how to write an autobiography is, of course, to read published examples.

Get hold of copies of autobiographies that interest you . Skim parts such as the beginning and end, chapter beginnings and endings. Read for details that leap out at you, grab your attention.

Take notes on how the author approaches telling their life story. Do they:

• Proceed chronologically from childhood to adulthood or play with time and memories?
• Start with a dramatic, life-changing incident or lead in slowly?
• Tell the reader what they’re going to cover or leave the reader to gradually discover the narrative structure or shape of the story?

Reading autobiography and note-taking in this way helps you see the options for how to structure your narrative.

3. Choose between autobiography and memoir

Reading autobiography examples will help you see how authors use common narrative elements.

For example, the acclaimed author Vladimir Nabokov begins Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited :

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. […] I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. Vladimir Nabokov, Speak Memory : An Autobiography Revisted (1967), 17.

Nabokov, in typically ornate fashion, breaks the ‘rules’ of autobiography. He uses third person to describe a ‘ young chronophobiac’ – one who is afraid of time. We can guess this ‘young chronophobiac’ is Nabokov himself, and that he is using a tone of ironic detachment to imply that the act of dredging through memories – or even the idea of time itself – fills him with ‘something like panic’.

The above seems more like a literary play with form (an attribute Ian Jack ascribes memoir) than a straightforward, chronological autobiography.

Readers might indeed wonder why Nabokov calls Speak, Memory an autobiography.

Nabokov does, however, proceed more or less chronologically, from before his birth, to Chapter 2 which begins:

It was the primordial cave (and not what Freudian mystics might suppose) that lay behind the games I played when I was four. Nabokov, Speak, Memory , p. 20.

Thus Nabokov blends elements of memoir. He blends illustrative snapshots of life (the part illuminating the whole) with key events (birth, childhood) typical of autobiographical narration.

Thinking about how you’ll structure your life story , however, will make it more purposeful and consistent.

Jump to Top

4. Outline key and illustrative life events

In deciding how to write an autobiography, there are two types of events to include:

• Key events – Crucial, formative experiences, for example an early childhood triumph or loss that shaped your view of the world.
• Illustrative events – Individual encounters, lessons, romances, teachers and mentors that provide texture, background, humour, drama or the other vital elements of storytelling .

Examples of key events and illustrative events in autobiography

As an example, Nabokov uses the games he would play as a child at the start of chapter two to illustrate how he came to value imagination and beauty . He describes making a couch tent:

I then had the fantastic pleasure of creeping through that pitch-dark tunnel, where I lingered a little to listen to the singing in my ears – that lonesome vibration so familiar to small boys in dusty hiding places – and then, in a burst of delicious panic, on rapidly thudding hands and knees I would reach the tunnel’s far end…’ Nabokov, Speak, Memory , p. 20.

This is an example of illustrative event: a scene in autobiography that reveals something about the author.

In this case, we see Nabokov’s love of games of imagination and sensory stimulation (something one finds abundant in his fiction).

An example of a key event would be a major relocation, a historical conflict (such as war), or another key turning point. For example, Nabokov describes the effects of the Russo-Japanese War (a key event) in 1905 on the family unit:

The close of Russia’s disastrous campaign in the Far East was accompanied by furious internal disorders. Undaunted by them, my mother, with her three children, returned to St. Petersburg after almost a year of foreign resorts. Nabokov, Speak, Memory , p. 24.

Autobiography exercise: Finding key and illustrative events

Write a bullet list each of key and illustrative events – a sentence describing each. Examples:

• The year my family moved from Country A to Country B
• The first time I held a violin in my hands
• The first close friendship I ever made at school

Illustrative Events

• The experience and emotion of boarding a plane for the first time
• A specific funny or insightful violin lesson or teacher
• A day with a close school friend that left an indelible impression

5. Draft key scenes from your life

Now that you have ideas for key and illustrative events in your life, expand on an example.

Use the techniques of fiction to enrich the scene.

For example, Nabokov describes his sensory impressions behind the family couch.

• Impressions of sound, smell, touch, taste or specific visual details
• Emotions (Nabokov conveys a palpable sense of the child’s simultaneous delight in secrecy and panic in the dark when he describes crawling through the tunnel he made using the family couch)

As you draft, keep this in mind: What do I want to tell, show, teach? How will this help, entertain, surprise, amuse my reader?

6. Find strong transitions

Learning how to write an autobiography is not that different from learning how to write fiction.

For one, autobiographical writing and fiction writing both need engaging introductions, transitions, exposition and development.

An advantage of memoir and autobiography is that transition is a shared, relatable part of life.

For example, most children in countries where school attendance is required by law will leave the family unit and go out into the world at a similar age.

These key life changes are useful places in a memoir or autobiography for chapter breaks or scene transitions . Nabokov, for example, uses the family move to St Petersburg at the start of Chapter 4 to transition into describing his first teacher, a natural early childhood memory to include:

With a sharp and merry blast from the whistle that was part of my first sailor suit, my childhood calls me back into that distant past to have me shake hands again with my delightful teacher. Vasiliy Martinovich Zhernosekov had a fuzzy brown beard, a balding head, and china-blue eyes, one of which bore a fascinating excrescence on the upper lid. Nabokob, Speak, Memory , p. 24.

Note how Nabokov signals the narrative transition – by describing a sound he associates with that period of his life. It’s a vivid, descriptive way to end one section of story and begin another.

7. Check details and get beta readers

As you write an autobiography or memoir, it’s often helpful to speak to family or old friends. Because you never know who may remember a funny, interesting or surprising detail about a time you are remembering and trying to capture.

The people who know you best may be your best beta readers when you write about yourself. It’s also good etiquette, if writing about a family member or friend who is still living, to run sections concerning them past them.

Need someone to read over your autobiography so far? Get help from a skilled editor. Jump to Top

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• Tags autobiographical writing

Jordan is a writer, editor, community manager and product developer. He received his BA Honours in English Literature and his undergraduate in English Literature and Music from the University of Cape Town.

4 replies on “How to write an autobiography: 7 key steps”

Just starting to write a family history beginning with what I know about my immigrant grandparents, then with a follow-up through moves and my childhood.

Hi Peter, that sounds a wonderful use of family history. I hope it is going well.

Very helpful.

Glad you found it helpful, Sally. Thanks for writing in.

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How to Write an Autobiography and Publish it in 7 Easy Steps

Contrary to popular belief, you don't have to be a famous figure to write an autobiography. In fact, if you want to write a novel or some other nonfiction book but just don't know where to start, an autobiography could be an ideal project to tackle. 

There are many different kinds of autobiographies from which to choose, so you don't have to keep a narrow focus or use a cookie-cutter mold for your book or autobiography essay. Read on as we tackle how to write an autobiography. 

• Different kinds of autobiographies.
• Steps to help you write your autobiography.
• Tips to strengthen your storytelling skills while writing.

Table of contents

• Autobiography vs Memoir
• The Benefits of Writing an Autobiography
• Before You Write, Read
• Step 1: Decide on a Type and Scope
• Step 2: Research and Outline
• Step 3: Craft Your Story to Entertain
• Step 4: Write Your First Draft
• Step 5: Pause—Then Edit and Rewrite
• Step 6: Get a Professional Editor
• Step 7: Publish!
• How to Write an Autobiography: Conclusion

The Many Types of Autobiographies

An autobiography in its broadest terms is a book about a person's entire life (or at least the interesting parts), written by that person . If you wanted to write a book about someone else's life, you'd be writing a biography . 

But within the autobiography genre, there are many other subgenres to choose from. These include:

• Intellectual
• Religious/Spiritual

An intellectual autobiography focuses on the author's life in terms of intellectual evolution and fulfillment. Often (but not always) written by people who have had a lot of schooling, the intellectual autobiography aims to analyze how certain experiences affected the author's life in terms of education, intelligence, and thought patterns. 

A religious or spiritual autobiography is one concerning the author's spiritual enlightenment. If you've found God (in any form) or have gravitated to a more spiritual life as you've aged, then this could be a good genre for you.  

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Thematic autobiographies are those that look upon a person's life story through the lens of a certain theme. This could be love, loss, perseverance, family, or even something like mental health, addiction, or mental illness. If you've noticed a theme in your life that has influenced your choices repeatedly, a thematic autobiography could be a good choice for you. 

A fictional autobiography is one that uses events from the author's real life while changing certain other elements freely. There are no hard-and-fast rules about what can and can't be real—or what percentage of each you must include. It could be that you use mostly real events but embellish them, change characters around, or make up certain exchanges. The most important part is that you don't claim it's a true autobiography when it's really a fictional one.  

It can be easy to confuse an autobiography and a memoir—which is in fact a type of autobiographical writing . The big difference is that autobiographies cover the author's whole life. Memoirs, on the other hand, focus on certain aspects of the author's life, usually in service of a theme.  

If you want to focus on your career or your childhood instead of covering your whole life, then a memoir could be a better fit for you. If so, you can check out our memoir writing prompts article . 

There are a ton of benefits to writing an autobiography. There's an old adage that goes “write what you know.” And there's no better genre to do just that! By diving into your personal story and examining life lessons and experiences, you don't have to worry about getting writer's block. You know the plot and the characters, which can help you get into a rhythm. 

This can not only give you confidence as a writer, but it can also make you a better writer as you go. A good autobiography is a lot like a novel in a lot of ways, so you use the same skills you would in a novel by painting a picture for your reader. 

But the benefits don't end with developing as a writer. It can also help you deal with traumatic events and process significant moments in your life. The goal, after all, isn't to dwell on any perceived wrongs or get back at anyone. The goal is to make sense of your personal experience by turning it into a story that readers will enjoy. 

Now that we've covered that introductory ground, let's get into how to write an autobiography, step by step. 

I would be remiss if I didn't say that you must first familiarize yourself with autobiography examples before you can write one. As such, here are some famous autobiographies to read so you can see how it's done. 

• Autobiography of Mark Twain by Mark Twain
• The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
• I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
• Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
• Agatha Christie: An Autobiography by Agatha Christie
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
• Becoming by Michelle Obama
• The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

The Complete Guide to Autobiography Writing

Writing an autobiography can be a rewarding endeavor, but it’s not easy. Even though it’s about your own life, it still requires research, time, effort, and some writing skill to get done. The steps below take you through the writing process, from choosing your focus to choosing your publishing avenue. 

While an autobiography covers the author's whole life, that doesn't mean that every single detail needs to go in. Even if you could remember what you had for breakfast on April 7th when you were ten years old, there would be no reason to include it unless some significant event happened at that time. 

So the first step in the writing process is deciding what type of autobiography it will be . This, in turn, will help you decide on the scope. If it will be an intellectual autobiography, you may want to spend time focusing on your early schooling and how that impacted your ability to learn or your love of knowledge. 

On the other hand, if you're writing an autobiography themed on marriage or romantic love, you probably won't have a lot of ground to cover during your childhood years. 

Pro Tip: Write a short personal statement about why you want to write an autobiography. There's no wrong answer, but putting your “why” into words can help you keep focused through the process. 

Once you have your scope in mind, you can start doing research and outlining in broad strokes the exact events you want to cover. This is when your idea starts to take shape in your mind and on the page. 

Researching will mean delving into your family history, busting out the yearbooks, and opening up the (physical or digital) photo albums. It will mean talking to parents, friends, siblings, and other family members. To get things right, it's important not to rely just on your fallible memory. Get multiple perspectives and sources on any important event you plan to cover.  

This is also a great time to get permission to use people's names in your book. Everyone you include in the story by name should give their permission. While this isn’t legally required, it’s a courtesy. However, it’s unlikely you will be sued for anything you say in a book unless it is blatantly slanderous.

Research is a time-consuming step in the process. But it's essential for forming your autobiography in your mind. You may even learn things about your family that you never knew before!

Just write everything down (or record it) so you can reference what people have said later. Using all your research, start crafting an autobiography outline in a Word document or on paper. 

Pro Tip: If you're not sure you have enough to say to fill a book, you can write an autobiographical essay first. If you still feel like you have a lot to say after writing an essay of a few thousand words, then you may have a book's worth inside your head!

Since you don't have to include every single detail in your memoir, you get to prioritize certain things over others. And while most autobiographies move in chronological order, it doesn't preclude you from using a hook to engage your readers. 

Perhaps you want to open your autobiography with a single event that changed your life . If this means jumping forward in time in your autobiography introduction to hook the reader before jumping back to your childhood, then that's perfectly fine. 

The point is, your autobiography needs to entertain the reader. And to do this, you can craft it like a novel. The one thing your book shouldn't be is full of dry, academic writing.

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You're the protagonist of the autobiography. And being a human, you're flawed. Make this clear to the reader while also giving them a reason to like you and root for you early in the book. Unless you're writing a fictional autobiography, this needs to be a true anecdote. But it shouldn't be hard to find. 

Think about all the other people in your story as characters . Each family member is there as a supporting role to you, the protagonist. Like you, they need to be interesting, if not always likable. It also helps to include conflict early on. Most people experience plenty of conflict in their lives, so this isn't usually hard.

When you think about your autobiography in this way, you can then refine your outline – or write a whole new one—with this in mind.

And once you're confident that you have the structure you want, it's time to start writing!

Since you're writing about your own experiences, you'll probably want to stick to the first person point of view . This is the most common autobiography format—even for those written with the help of a ghostwriter. For many authors, this comes naturally because it's how we tell stories to each other. 

That said, writing “I” over and over again can get a little old. This is normal. Just take it as an opportunity to vary your sentences instead of starting every one of them with “I.”

The writing process is different for every author, but it's important that you commit to a certain word goal per day or week . Make this goal attainable and stick to it. If you go weeks or months without getting words down, you'll just have to work harder to get back into the rhythm of autobiography writing. 

That said, give yourself room to make mistakes during the first draft. When you accept that your first draft won’t be perfect and only focus on getting the words down, things get a lot easier. You can always go back and edit later. But you won’t have anything to edit if you don't write!

When you're done with your first draft, let it sit for a couple of weeks or a month. This will allow you to get some distance from the words, which can help you look at them with a critical eye when it comes time to work on your subsequent drafts. 

Some authors even do this after each consecutive draft. But many find that it's most beneficial after the first one. 

Whether you wait a week or a month or more is up to you. But you can certainly find a sweet spot that works best for your writing schedule. 

Recording your life story is no easy task. And you will, by definition, be close to it. So this distance is imperative to achieve a dispassionate look at it. From there, you can make changes and re-work it until you think it's ready for another pair of eyes. 

Once you've made your autobiography as good as you can make it, it's time to seek help. While you can certainly give a copy of the book to some friends and family to see what they think, keep in mind they're likely biased. Chances are they're also not professional editors, either. 

This is why it's always a good idea to hire an editor —preferably one who's familiar with autobiographies. Of course, there are many different kinds of editors. And taking a critical look at your book in step 5 is important for choosing the right kind. 

If you think there are some structural issues with the book, you may want to hire a developmental editor. If you want someone to find typos and grammar issues, then a line editor may be best. 

For more information, check out our article on different kinds of editing . 

No matter what kind you go with, getting the feedback of an unbiased professional can do wonders for your autobiography . 

Even if you're not looking to make millions with your autobiography, publishing can still be a lot of fun. While it's hard to get a book deal for an autobiography unless you're already a celebrity, self-publishing is always an option. 

With a formatted manuscript and a professional cover, you can have your book up on Amazon and other online retailers in short order. You can even order author copies of your paperback to give to friends and family. 

To learn more about this process, check out our self-publishing hub .  

Whether you want to sell your autobiography to a wide audience or simply have it around for future generations of your family to read, writing about your life experience is a worthwhile endeavor. It can help you become a better writer while reflecting on your life and the lessons learned. 

To cover your life story in a compelling manner means leaving some things out and focusing more on others. Pivotal moments in your life should be the “plot points” of your autobiography. Striving to meet some goal should create a through-line for the reader. And the setbacks on your way to that goal can create the conflict needed to keep things interesting. 

Of course, all this should be true—unless you're writing a fictional autobiography!

Dave Chesson

When I’m not sipping tea with princesses or lightsaber dueling with little Jedi, I’m a book marketing nut. Having consulted multiple publishing companies and NYT best-selling authors, I created Kindlepreneur to help authors sell more books. I’ve even been called “The Kindlepreneur” by Amazon publicly, and I’m here to help you with your author journey.

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How to Write an Autobiography in 9 Steps

You might not have figured it out yet, but people love to know about the “behind the scenes” of other people’s lives, especially of the rich and famous.

Generally, people want to know everything there’s to know about everyone.

So it comes as no surprise to me that many autobiographies (by famous actors, musicians, politicians, and sports stars) have made it on the bestsellers list.

And for the writer, an autobiography offers a chance to share the happenings in their life with the world.

Do you want to pen your own biography and don’t know how to go about it? You don’t know how to start telling your life story? Don’t know what should be part of that story and what shouldn’t?

If you’re worried about these things, then this article has been made for you!

I’ll cover everything you need to know about writing an autobiography—the differences between an autobiography and other biographies, the main elements of an autobiography, how to go about writing an autobiography, and other things.

What is an Autobiography?

It is a non-fiction story of a person’s life, written by the person whose life is told in that biography.

So, an autobiography is a biography written by the subject himself, which is not the case with other subgenres of the broader genre of biographies.

Standard biographies are written by someone other than the subject, making autobiographies more appealing because the story is being told firsthand.

Since the subject is telling his own life story in an autobiography, the story usually covers the most meaningful moments, people, and events in the subject’s life from birth up until the time of writing or publishing.

Biography vs. Autobiography vs. Memoir

Well, let’s get the broader biography out of the way first. Since an autobiography is a subgenre of biographies, they are one and the same. The only difference—as I have already briefly explained— is that other biographies are written about the subject but by someone other than the subject, while autobiographies are a person’s life history written by that person.

Biographers are good at learning and researching their subject; on the other hand, an autobiographer already knows the subject.

Now, you ought to know that an Autobiography and a Memoir are a bit identical, but a Memoir is different from an Autobiography in this way:

A memoir is used to elaborate a larger theme or idea and—instead of telling the writer’s life story in a chronological narrative—a focus on personal experience and emotional truth to tell a good story with a theme behind it.

The Main Elements of an Autobiography

Now that you have a good idea of what an autobiography is, let me introduce you to its main features.

As a genre, an autobiography has some technical elements. Let’s take a look at some of them:

Every author has a purpose for writing a book. You don’t just wake up one day and say, “I’m going to write a book for the sake of writing, with no purpose or message.”

Obviously, the purpose of an autobiography is to give an account of the writer’s life up to that point.

Well, it is nonfiction and the events have already happened, so—usually—it’s written in the past tense.

However, most biographies end in the present tense, and—in certain cases—the tense changes into the future tense toward the end of the book.

This feature of an autobiography isn’t always the same with every book, but most of the books in this genre have a similar structure.

One of the features under “structure” is chronology order. Since the book chronicles major events in the writer’s life, it’s usually written in chronological order. And, to show this chronology, the author uses time connectives like “after that,” “before,” “then,” “finally,” and among others.

An autobiography—just like all biographies—tells a true story, so the author usually uses the names of real people, places, and events. In addition to that, the book is—more often than not—specific about times, dates, places, and other similar details.

Includes personal memories and specific details and descriptions.

A well-written autobiography doesn’t just unload stories on the reader, the author also offers some observations and analytical reflections on how the events mentioned in the book shaped them. The author also uses the autobiography to share his feelings, thoughts, and plans for the future.

Some autobiographies include important photographs that give the readers a visual representation of the story.

Writing an Autobiography isn’t that complicated, but you need to know how to go about it, so this is the most important section of this article, especially if you’re clueless about the autobiography writing process.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to writing an autobiography:

1. Brainstorm

This is the stage where you sit down and try to pick the most relevant events in your life—you compile all life experiences that you think might be worth a read. First, you list all the exciting or life-changing experiences from childhood up to that very moment (from playing in your background as a little child, to high school memories, up to your first day at your first workplace), then select the cream out of that list.

Although most of the initial events won’t make the final list, write them down anyway—it’s better to have too many to choose from than to have less.

These are some of the things you can include in your initial list are:

• The most substantial events and experiences in your life.
• Significant individuals or entities that have made an important impact in your life.
• Things you have achieved, the challenges you have overcome to achieve the listed achievements, and the most significant failures.
• The lessons all your life experiences have taught you (life-changing or not).

2. Organize Your Lists

You have written down all those important events, places, and people, what do you do next?

Put your lists in order.

The things in your lists have to be organized into subsets of the biography and items in the same subset have to be similar or in the same category—create subsets for significant events, significant people, life lessons, challenges, successes, et cetera.

This order helps you with the next chapter: creating the outline.

3. Conduct Some Research

The thing about brainstorming on your own is that you only write down the things you can remember.

But… Some forgotten memories could make your autobiography a lot more exciting or engrossing.

That calls for research! You need third parties to help you recall some useful information (whether completely new or additional information).

It’s your life story, so you don’t really have to go any farther than your friends and family. Ask the people close to you about all the details from the moments you’ve listed and others that you might’ve forgotten.

Just like you, the people you ask won’t have all the details or your full life story, but if you piece together the bits from their narratives, you’ll have a better story.

4. Decide on Themes, Message, the Questions your Autobiography Will Answer

After getting all the bits and pieces in one place, comes the unenviable task of laying down the purpose of your autobiography and the content that is going to help you achieve that.

Decisions, Decisions!

An autobiography is not mere personal history written reeking of subjectivity and with no substance, so you have to choose and write down the questions your autobiography is going to answer.

Autobiography readers are interested in getting to know the person behind the curtains and for an autobiography to be good, you need to fuse the raw stories with a little bit of mature perspective on your experiences (with an edifying touch if you think your life story can have that much of an impact on a reader’s life).

Use the dominant themes of your life to unify the stories together, connecting different stages of your life. Past and present always have some thematic consistencies, so try to analyze themes that have been consistent throughout your life. It might be a place that you traveled to over and over, your childhood sweetheart who eventually became the love of your life, an ever-present crush, your spiritual journey life, etc.

Whatever theme connects different stories or stages in your life is useful as long as you are creative with your storytelling, they’ll work.

5. Create an Outline

The next step involves organizing the pieces from your brainstorming stage. You’re telling your life story, and it still is just that: a story.

Therefore, crafting an outline has to consider things like logical flow and pace—a good pace through your life’s most interesting or significant events using logical flow is likely going to keep your readers interested from beginning to end.

You might want to tell the story in chronological order, but you can also spice it up by going back and forth or interrupting the chronological narrative with some important/interesting events that may or may not relate to the part of that chronological narrative.

6. Telling the Story

You have sorted everything out, you have your autobiography outlined, and it’s time to tell the story.

Underline story, because after all, it’s just a story.

The story needs to have some sort of structure, your autobiography needs a great plot. It has to have all the points that make a great story, things like conflict, goals, tension, a climax, and ultimately a resolution or—at least—a hint of a resolution.

I’ve already talked about the need for the story to flow logically, this is not something you brush aside—it’s a must.

While sorting out such important elements of the autobiography, you also have to remember that you’ll have to use your voice in writing the book—readers are interested in your life story, told by you!

If you’ve never written anything as large as a book, you can hire a ghostwriter to work with; otherwise, it takes time and lots of writing practice to discover an authentic writing voice.

7. Write Your First Draft

Now you are ready for the most important part of the autobiography crafting process: writing it!

Anybody who’s ever written a book will tell you that it’s almost impossible to write a perfect finished book on your first go.

Remember you’re just trying to attempt a first draft.

You don’t have to be perfect, but make sure you write a good one—it doesn’t really matter if your first draft looks like a chicken footprint in the mud, as long as it has content, you are going in the right direction.

8. Take a Break, Then Proofread

You have finished your first draft, your mind is exhausted (your body too, probably), you need to take a few days off.

Or you might not be tired at all, you might even be full of energy, you still need a break.

Apart from reenergizing your mind and body, a break gives you a fresh perspective, and you can easily spot some imperceptible mistakes from your first draft.

After the respite, begin proofreading. You can hire a professional proofreader or do it yourself. A professional proofreader is likely going to look for grammar mistakes , typos, etc.

They are also going to look at mistakes in the narrative and offer constructive tips.

If you decide to go it alone (which, I think, is the right way to go about proofreading your first draft), you might want to use tools like Grammarly or ProwritingAid to help you with grammar and other errors in your draft.

9. Write the Second Draft, and then Another

When proofreading the first draft, take some notes. Those notes will prove useful and particularly directional when you start writing the second draft.

I’m sorry to break your heart, but your second draft won’t be perfect either.

What I’m saying is: you’ll have to repeat steps 7 and 8, in most cases the cycle you’ll have to be repeated more than once.

When you feel like the drafts are becoming riper, you can show your writing to others and request feedback.

This feedback will help you perfect the autobiography and your writing skills in general. Just remember that in all these rewrites, the most important thing is giving the reader bits of your life and revealing your truth.

Things you can’t leave Out of your Autobiography

Well, you could leave out some of these things, it’s your story after all, but what’s an autobiography without the most important details of your life?

I’m not saying that it should contain every significant detail in your life; certain moments in your life pick themselves and others are what your readers are looking for.

• Significant experiences : Not all of them, just the experiences that shaped your worldview and changed your life in some way.
• Your background story : Sort of describe your personal history, which has things like your family history, hometown, siblings, parents, other key family members and friends, and moments in your career and education.
• Conflict and Drama : Your readers are looking for honesty and a bit of fun, and who’s ever lived a life without conflict and drama? No one? They want your life story told as it happened and if there were some conflicts and dramatic events along the way, they’re hungry for that too!
• Failure and Success in your professional life : You have to give recollections of your professional life, and it has to have some richness in detail. If you’ve achieved something in your professional life, there will be one or two people looking for inspiring moments in your story. When you serve them these moments, it will be good for both you and them.

Three Best Autobiographies of all Time

1. long walk to freedom by nelson mandela.

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By telling the full life story of this legend, Nelson Mandela’s autobiography tells the world how great a man and a leader he was. The book narrates his story from his childhood , young adult, dealing with apartheid and becoming a freedom fighter, his 27-year incarceration, and the pivotal role he played in building a new and democratic South Africa.

This is the book you read if you think you have some purpose to fulfill in life.

2. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

After reading this autobiography, you realize that this is the greatest teenager that ever lived.

Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl, who, along with millions of other Jewish people, died at the hands of a moronic Nazi regime, gave us this beautiful piece.

In 1942, a thirteen-year-old Anne and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding during the Nazi occupation of Holland.

She narrated her experiences during this period in a thoughtful, moving, and humorous manner. The book gave the world her views on human courage, frailty, friendships, and loneliness.

The Nazis might have taken such a beautiful soul sooner than every good person would have wished, but her legacy lives on through this autobiography.

3. Agatha Christie: An Autobiography by Agatha Christie

Who wouldn’t want to demystify the story behind the Queen of mystery?

Different from Mandela and Anne Frank, Christie is actually one of the world’s most influential and fascinating novelists and you already know that the story is going to be ingeniously told.

In this book, readers get to know Agatha Christie’s life story, told in her own words—from her childhood, her relationship with her mother and her mother’s death, the tragic events that had an impact on her, her two marriages, her first husband’s adultery, and most especially, about her writing.

You can write an autobiography whichever way you like, but you have to remember that an autobiography is a story.

A lot of focus has to be on the narrative. The book will be as good as the writer’s storytelling skills.

Your autobiography has to have all the necessary elements of a story, i.e., a plot (which is easier to come up with since you already know the whole story), a cast of characters, conflict, resolution, et cetera.

With all these things involved, the secret ingredient is still honesty. After all, people want to read a real-life story.

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Non-fiction/Poetry ,

Writing an autobiography: a how-to guide with key tips.

By Anusha M Shashidhar

I’ve always felt that writing is an intimate activity; neither the writer nor the reader misses the inner workings of the writer’s mind. More so is the case with writing an autobiography. You’ll not only delve into the nitty-gritty of your thoughts but also critique your own life in the process of penning it down.  

Sounds a tad uncomfortable, doesn’t it? And yet, it is this very genre of non-fiction that has one of the strongest readerships. Besides, no matter the discomfort you put yourself through whilst writing it, the minute your autobiography reaches the reader, it takes on the task of inspiring others. 

There’s a tendency to believe that a biography, and more so an autobiography, is meant to be written by only a subject who’s a stellar performer in their career and highly popular for it. This is far from true. Sure, such a person could have a great ability to inspire their fans and readers, but even an ordinary person is capable of it.  

You see, it’s in how you tell your life’s story that the inspiration lies, not necessarily in the popularity of it. Famous or not, every one of us deals with hardships in life and does one thing or another to overcome them. And therein, lies the narrative for every gripping autobiography… 

In this article, I’ll help you understand what an autobiography is; go through the differences between biography, autobiography and memoir; provide some autobiography examples; tell you what to include in an autobiography; highlight the things that make for a compelling autobiography; and tell you how you can research your own life (yes, you read that right) to make your autobiography as authentic and balanced as possible. 

What Is An Autobiography?  

When thinking about the meaning of the word autobiography, it can be helpful to compare the subgenre with others which it’s confused for (biography and memoir). So, in this section, I’ll highlight the nuances of each genre/subgenre.

Autobiography Definition

An autobiography is a  non-fictitious story by a person about their own life. It’s a subgenre of the larger genre of biography.  

Let’s look at biographies in more detail.

Biography 

A biography is typically written by a writer who’s highly knowledgeable about an individual and their life. They might be written post-humously (sometimes, the individual could still be alive), and may or may not be authorised (given express permission by the individual or their family).  

Take, for instance, the award-winning Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch by author Sally Bedel Smith. This book does the behemoth task of showing the reader what it meant for a young woman – Queen Elizabeth II – to take on the monumental task of being a monarch and do so successfully for decades. This book is certainly a magisterial biography. Though it doesn’t explicitly mention whether or not it is authorised, it certainly seems like it was, because the writer met the Queen on various occasions during the course of her research. So, if watching The Crown on Netflix has left you thirsting for more, you need only read this biography. 

Another highly compelling biography is Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs . Openly authorised, this book is a testament to not only its visionary of a subject, Steve Jobs, but also life in the digital era that we live in. In over forty interviews with Jobs himself, and more than a hundred interviews with his friends, family, colleagues and competitors, Isaacson chronicles Jobs’ rollercoaster life as a creative entrepreneur. Jobs was known to irk his friends and foes alike with his brutal honesty and this is reflected in his biography too. He holds nothing back and neither does anyone that talks about him, making this book one of the sincerest biographies ever written. 

Autobiography 

An autobiography, however, is written by the subject themselves. The writer looks back on their life, putting all major events from their birth up until the time they complete the book under the microscope. They explore their past with the wisdom-filled lenses of their present. Needless to say, the authenticity of such a story is arguably higher than in a biography. I mean, who better to write your life’s story than you! Here are some great examples of autobiographies. 

One of the most-read autobiographies of all time is perhaps Nelson Mandela’s A Long Walk To Freedom . The book details the story of the man who spent twenty-seven years in prison for marching against South African apartheid and then went on to become the president of a free country. It’s not only the narration of a revolutionary man (which in and of itself is significant), but also a story of triumph over racism and colonialism.  

Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar’s Playing It My Way was a stellar record breaker with a pre-order of 1,500,000 copies of the autobiography, easily overtaking even Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs ! The man was a legend on the cricket pitch and it’s no wonder fans want to read about what his life is really like, directly from the horse’s mouth. Suffice to say, Tendulkar’s penmanship matched pace with his batsmanship; his innings began even before the match did! 

I’m one of those people who’s rather reluctant to watch a movie unless they’re certain it’s an inspiring, or at the very least a positive, one. One such movie that’s an all-time favourite of mine is The Pursuit Of Happyness starring Will Smith (who incidentally happened to publish his own autobiography Will earlier this year). The movie is an adaptation of Chris Gardner’s own autobiography by the same name. We’ve read many a story of single mothers struggling to make ends meet. But Gardner’s is that of a single father’s rags-to-riches story, which also shows him doing his best to be a good father to his son. For someone who grew up without a father, Chris’ own parenting is both heart-warming and inspiring, even keeping his overnight rags-to-riches story aside. 

Where there’s a woman of colour who runs a Fortune 50 company, there shall be an autobiography of her. Ex-CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi’s My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future isn’t simply a story of her life but also a critique of the lack of work-life balance that society so readily accepts. Somewhat cut-and-dry, this autobiography makes the reader picture a rather ditch-feelings – be-formidable Indra Nooyi. But, perhaps, that’s exactly what it took her to get where she did.  

What’s common amongst all these autobiographies is that they are highly inspirational, some with a big message for society in general. Where there’s talk of autobiographies, Anne Frank’s Diary Of A Young Girl is never far behind. The epistolary by the teenager lays bare her experiences as a Jew during World War II. The progression of her diary shows the maturing girl’s growing difficulty in maintaining self-awareness, a direct reflection of the impact of the Nazi regime. However, though the book falls under the umbrella genre of biographies, it’s more accurately a memoir. 

Memoir 

A memoir is another subgenre that’s all about a real person’s story written by the subject themselves, making them autobiographical. It is a long non-fiction narrative of the writer’s memory of their own life. Memoirs are often known – and read – for their exquisite literary quality. 

We had a memoir as part of the curriculum for my bachelor’s degree in English Literature. I recall a week during that semester when our whole class was really glum. When one of our professors asked us what was wrong, we all sighed collectively and told her we were reading Elie Weisel’s Night .  

Imagine that. A whole class of students were deeply saddened by the subject of a memoir, some even on the verge of tears, as we explained to the professor why we were all low. Elie Wiesel sure knows how to translate his pain into poignancy for the pages.  

The memoir (it also falls under another subgenre called faction) is heartbreaking to readers as it details the harrowing experiences that the writer lived through and perhaps relived as he wrote it. Night is a haunting rendition of Elie Wiesel’s experience of the Holocaust as a teenager. This event in history marks the failure of humanity, and to intimately feel a survivor’s account of this horror is a grieving experience. This, right here, is what memoirs are capable of.  

A memoir and an autobiography are similar on these counts – they’re both about real people and the real lives they lead. One way in which they differ is in their goal – memoirs are written to move the reader, to connect with them by way of emotive storytelling, while autobiographies are generally meant to inspire the reader, through a detailed exploration of who the writer really is. This is how they function primarily, even though both memoir and autobiography could potentially move and inspire just the same.  

Sometimes, autobiographies might be marketed as memoirs and this can be quite confusing. Even experts make the mistake of using ‘autobiography’ and ‘memoir’ as synonyms. A key difference is that autobiographies record the subject’s life from birth to present time, chronologically, whilst memoirs may go back and forth in time and often cover smaller time spans. Autobiographies place importance on facts and history, whilst memoirs lean heavily on emotional experience. This also means that autobiographies are more general in terms of the topics they cover, even though certain events may be highlighted more than others. On the other hand, Memoirs can be thematic with a singular event or experience or emotion taking the forefront.  

How To Write An Autobiography 

If you’re excited to write your life’s story, then you’re in the right place. Here are the steps to writing an autobiography: 

Do Your Research 

Yes, it’s your own story. You might even assume that you’re the foremost expert on the topic of you. But think again. You might be surprised by how much you don’t know about your past, by simply going through family photos, and talking to your family and relatives about your childhood. They could give you several anecdotes that could brighten up your autobiography. Even talking to your ex-employers and bosses about the great and not-so-great things about your time in their company could give you a whole new perspective about yourself that you can then share with your readers. 

Create An Outline 

Writing an autobiography might seem like a mammoth task, especially if you’re not clear on what your narrative is. Are you telling your rags-to-riches story? Are you looking at the work-life balance battle you lead throughout? Or are you depicting your struggle against the societal restrictions placed upon you? If you have the narrative clear in your mind, then the outline is simply about listing all the various events of your life and seeing what aspects of them fit your narrative. Jot these aspects down; they’ll be the key points in your chapter breaks. Voila! You have your narrative, outline, and key points per chapter. 

Write The Draft 

Once you start writing your autobiography, try to get through it as quickly as possible. Aim for progress, not perfection, at this stage. The thing is, you’re bound to second-guess your own perspective the more you dwell on it, simply because everything seems important. After all, it is your life you’re writing about. However, this is exactly what could keep you stuck. Instead, move through it at a good pace, and later, when you edit it, you can slow down and decide what works and what doesn’t.  

Give It Time Before Editing It 

I never edit my writing soon after I’m done. To have a fresh outlook on my own writing, I need some time and distance from it. So, I give it at least two days, when it’s a small piece. But for an autobiography, I’d suggest giving it much longer; perhaps a month or two. Completing the manuscript in itself could take you months, if not years, and tire you out at the end of it. Take a long break, maybe even a vacation, where you work on something else completely. That way, when you return to edit your autobiography, you’ll have a renewed eye for error and detail. After this, maybe give it another two weeks before you fact-check and proofread. Once this is done, you’re ready to send it off to an agent. 

Write A Book Proposal 

Another thing to consider is that most agents will want a book proposal from you when you query them. Of course, before you do that you need to know which non-fiction agents to reach out to and what they are looking for. Be prepared for rejections; you knew this was never going to be easy. Do not take the rejection to be a personal critique of your life. Just keep pitching your book to agents until the right one picks it up.  

Tips For Writing An Autobiography  

Apart from the obvious – write in the first person – if you’re considering giving autobiography writing a go, then, you’ll need to bear in mind the following: 

What Gives The Full Picture ?

An autobiography compulsorily covers the subject’s whole life until the point they are done writing it. This means you’ll need to cover your childhood, upbringing, education (or lack of it), adolescence, career, relationships, lifestyle and more. So, knowing what to include in your autobiography can be tricky. Of course, you can’t place equal importance on each of these. If you’re a fitness expert, then it makes sense to spend more time on your lifestyle section than any other. Still, it’s important to let your readers know everything that shaped you into who you are today. So, whilst the emphasis might be on you as a fitness expert, the reader will also want to know how you handled life as a parent, child, employee, friend and more. They’ll want the full picture, the complete you. 

How Much Is Too Much?  

The best autobiographies provide as much information as a reader might crave about the subject, yet know when to stop. Keeping the reader – who doesn’t know you – in mind is crucial at every turn. The things you think are very important to you, might not be very interesting for the reader. Yes, this is your story, but once your story reaches the reader, it’s their review that decides how impactful it really is. 

What Ties It All Together?  

Life is messy; it’s hard to sort through the clutter and find the thread that ties it all together. But this, you must do, for your autobiography. Even though it will contain various aspects of your life, they need to have a common narrative. At the end of the day, it’s a book. It is a story . So, you’re going to have to write it like one. Here are some examples of narratives: transformations throughout life, lessons you learnt from every stage or area of life, you versus your public persona, you versus the society. These narratives don’t have to be combative, just problematic enough for any human to relate with. 

How Balanced Is It?  

By its very nature, an autobiography is revealing. It can unfurl the good, the bad, and even the ugly. How elegantly each of these is handled can make or break the autobiography. Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs does this with a flair unmatched by most other books of the biography genre; the extensive research he did makes for a balanced view. Despite the candid voices, none of it reads like a smear campaign. You can take a leaf out of his book and apply it to your own autobiographical writing. If you can research your own life, by way of getting varied perspectives from friends, family, and even foes, then, you might have a nuanced approach to the storytelling of your own life. 

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you write an autobiographical story.

There are lots of things to include when you’re writing an autobiography. Autobiographical stories cover an entire lifetime, pay close attention to detail, are often written in chronological order, and have a clear narrative. They also have balanced characters and are well researched and fact checked.

What Is The Purpose Of Autobiographical Writing?

Autobiographical writing is generally written with the aim of depicting an important experience, topic, or challenge in the writer’s life. Beyond this, the aim tends to be much more personal, and dependent upon the subject of the book. Writers may hope to entertain, educate, or inspire their readers, or showcase a different perspective.

How Long Is An Autobiography?

There aren’t any specific rules when it comes to the length, or word count, of an autobiography, but they tend to be between 250-450 pages long. Autobiographies written by people who are well known and already have an audience tend to be longer, as their readers are more likely to commit to the text and take the time to read a lengthier tome.

Autobiographical Writing  

Writing an autobiography is a highly intimate affair; it’s bound to bring back certain uncomfortable memories, perhaps even trauma. If at any point, you feel it’s getting too heavy to handle, put the project on hold, seek out a therapist and come back to your book once you feel it’s safe to do so. Let your therapist know that this is in fact the reason you’re there – to be able to write your book from a safe space. 

You may want to consider not talking about your book with loved ones until you’ve completed the first draft. Then, let them know that your book might include them and not all of it might be easy to digest. They might not like it, but in the end, this is your story and you get to tell it from your point of view. If you ensure to focus on your own journey in the book, rather than blame others, then this shouldn’t be an issue. If someone still feels uncomfortable with the contents of your book, know that there isn’t much you can do about it. It’s their job to deal with their own feelings. Don’t let them guilt trip you. 

Try not to worry too much about the repercussions of writing your life’s story before you even begin. Remember why you’re writing this in the first place – your life is inspirational and there are readers who’d love to read about you. With that in sight, just get started and complete your autobiography. 

About the author

Anusha M Shashidhar has been a features writer for various publications for 10 years, but she is very passionate about writing fiction and creative non-fiction in her own time. When she’s not reading or meditating or dancing, or simply finds herself blankly staring into space, she realises she’s supposed to be writing. You can find her actually writing on Medium.

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50 Eye-Catching Autobiography Titles (+ How to Write Your Own)

You’ve written your life story. 

You’ve laid your heart bare before the world

So, what’s the best title for your one-of-a-kind masterpiece?

“____________: An Autobiography”?

Seriously, unless you’re a household name, using “autobiography” as part of your title might not work in your favor, but not to worry. You don’t have to be famous to write an autobiography , but you do need a title that will grab a buyer’s attention, so they know your book is worth a second look.

Book Title Generator

Don't like it?

The purpose of this article is to break down what makes a standout autobiography title and the process for creating your own. 

Need autobiography titles? Let’s dive in!

The secret sauce for writing an amazing book title.

The process of creating an autobiography book title that gets noticed starts with a marketer’s mindset.

Yes, it all boils down to strategic book positioning in the marketplace. Creativity is a big part of it, but that’s a small part of the bigger picture. After all, if your book doesn’t get in front of the people who would be most likely to read it, you can’t change lives with the content inside!

Unlike fiction books or other types of nonfiction books (e.g. business books or textbooks) where there’s a specific category or genre expectation, autobiographies play by their own set of rules—the more creative the better. 

How to think like a marketer when creating your title

If you are self-publishing your book, then you’re probably already aware that marketing is a key component of your book’s success, but what is marketing exactly? 

The American Marketing Association defines marketing as

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. 

When marketing your book, knowing how to write a good book title matters, because, along with your cover, it’s the first thing a potential buyer sees (reads) before making a buying decision. A casual search for “autobiography” on Amazon pulled up over 700,000 results. This doesn’t mean that every book belongs in the category, but it’s still a lot of books.

You might be asking how you get your book to rise to the top of search results.

Start with a great title. 

Here are some best practices:

• Make your title relevant – You can never go wrong with a title that reflects the theme of your book . This will clue buyers into what to expect. You can also go with a significant statement or quote drawn directly from your story. Clever titles also work, but try to stay away from the cheesy ones that confuse buyers.
• Appeal to your ideal audience’s needs – Every book is not for everyone. Target a specific reader type when creating your title. For example, meteorologist and television personality Ginger Zee titled her book Natural Disasters. This title works well for her because her book’s content is about the unpredictable “storms” of life she has faced and she also covers storms in her reporting. 
• Stay away from clickbait – Or anything that leads readers to believe your book is about one thing but it’s something else. This only frustrates readers and could potentially lead to bad reviews. 
• Use a primary keyword in your title if it fits – First Gen by Alejandra Campoverdi and Cooked by Jeff Henderson include keyword(s) that are relevant to buyer searches. 
• Invite the reader into your story – This can be done by asking a question like the autobiography title What Are You Doing Here? by Baroness Floella Benjamin. Or, create an image in their mind like The Ugly Cry by Danielle Henderson or The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish. 

Hint: Keep it short. According to Amazon, “Customers are more likely to skim past long titles (over 60 characters). There are exceptions to the rules. You’ll see some in the list that follows.

Don’t forget about writing a subtitle for your book . They are optional but a great way to add a splash of flavor. 

50 eye-catching autobiography titles that inspire

After an exhaustive search in the autobiography categories of the top online book retailers, I selected 50 incredible autobiography titles as a starting point for creating an amazing title for your autobiography. Note: Memoir titles listed under the autobiography category are included in the list.

Autobiography titles about celebrities

• What Are You Doing Here? – Baronness Floella Benjamin
• Tis Herself – Maureen O’Hara
• F inding Me by Viola Davis
• Not That Fancy: Simple Lessons on Living, Loving, Eating, and Dusting Off Your Boots By Reba McEntire
• Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories by Kelly Ripa
• Thicker than Water by Kerry Washington
• We Were Dreamers by Simu Liu
• Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I Am Today by Valerie Bertinelli
• Just as I am by Cicely Tyson
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama
• Making It So by Patrick Stewart
• Inside Out by Demi Moore
• In Pieces by Sally Field
• The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish
• Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder by William Shatner
• Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology by Leah Remini
• Look Out for the Little Guy! By Scott Lang
• I Can’t Make This Up: Life Lessons by Kevin Hart, Neil Strauss
• No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality by Michael J. Fox
• Scenes from My Life by Michael K. Williams
• The Way I Heard It by Mike Rowe
• I Came as a Shadow – John Thompson

Autobiography titles about authors

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings  by Maya Angelou
• Lit by Mary Karr

Autobiography titles about family

• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
• Mott Street by Ava Chin
• The Girl in the Middle by Anais Granofsky
• All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
• The Ugly Cry by Danielle Henderson

Autobiography titles about immigration, culture, and race

• Good Morning, Hope: A True Story of Refugee Twin Sisters and Their Triumph over War, Poverty, and Heartbreak by Argita Zalli, and Detina Zalli 
• Negroland by Margo Jefferson
• First Gen by Alejandra Campoverdi
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
• Heart of Fire: An Immigrant Daughter’s Story – Mazie K. Hirono
• The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clementine Wamariya, Elizabeth Weil

Autobiography titles about beating the odds

• Cooked by Jeff Henderson
• The Pale-Faced Lie by David Crow
• Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind Mann, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust by Michael Hingson and Susy Flory
• When the Tears Dry by Meredith Hawkins
• Reaching for the Moon by Katherine Johnson
• 80 Percent Luck, 20 Percent Skill: My Life as a WWII Navy Ferry Pilot by Ralph T. Alshouse

Autobiography titles about faith

• Like a River: Finding the Faith and Strength to Move Forward After Loss and Heartache by Granger Smith
• The Barn by David Hill
• All My Knotted-Up Life by Beth Moore

Autobiography titles about journalists, reporters, and media

• Natural Disaster: I Cover Them. I am One by Ginger Zee
• Going There by Katie Couric
• Rough Draft by Kati Tur
• The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day

Use a free tool to generate your own autobiography title

You obviously can’t use these published autobiography titles for your own book – but you can use our free book title generator to come up with suggestions that you could use.

It’s really easy to use, and instantly gives you an unlimited amount of working titles – or even final titles – to use for your book!

1. Select nonfiction for the book’s genre in the drop-down menu

2. Fill in the details

For the next question, if you have a book description, type “yes” and add your description in the text box.

If you don’t have a description yet, answer “no” and fill out the questions. Eventually, you will need to write a book description , but this is often something our authors do after they complete their manuscript .

3. Click “generate”

That’s it! Get ready for some unique autobiography book title suggestions. Remember, if you don’t like the one that you see, you can continue to generate as many as you’d like.

Final thoughts

Your autobiography title can be the difference between someone scrolling past your book on Amazon or stopping to read a sample. Whatever title you choose, remember that it’s just as much about you as your reader. Make them want to read your story by giving them something unique that piques their interest. 

You can also look for inspiration in other genres. For example, some memoir book titles could also lend well to an autobiography – like What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo. Intriguing, isn’t it? Don’t limit yourself!

Are you ready to take the next steps with your autobiography? We have a professional publishing team ready to guide you through the book development process. 

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How to Write an Autobiography: An Essential Guide to Writing About Yourself in a Memoir or Autobiography Paperback – May 5, 2015

• Print length 44 pages
• Language English
• Publication date May 5, 2015
• Dimensions 6 x 0.1 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 1533114501
• ISBN-13 978-1533114501
• See all details

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (May 5, 2015)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 44 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1533114501
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1533114501
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.2 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.1 x 9 inches
• #89,778 in Memoirs (Books)

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