Biography Essay: From Start to End

1️⃣ Preparation

The first step in writing a biography essay is planning or preparation. In academic writing, one of the demands is that students should write articles that are educative, meaning they should advance ideas that readers find enriching in terms of knowledge acquisition (Miller, 2024). Therefore, finding relevant topics is critical. When writing a biography work, a student should ensure a subject is a person of great fame, and there is an audience that is likely to show interest in this individual. Basically, these two items provide direction on how an author should write a professional biography essay.

Choose a particular subject. Here, people should choose their subject – a specific individual whose life, personality, and other experiences they will address in their writing. Essentially, a standard requirement is that an individual must be a famous person who once lived (Mayer & Dessy, 2021). For research purposes, students need to select a subject for whom scholars have written articles and books. In turn, another part of preparation is to identify a significant event or events that shaped an individual’s living experience.

Choose a target audience. Another issue that a good writer should address during preparation is a target audience – a specific population most likely to show interest in understanding the life, personality, and other experiences of a subject. As already indicated, biographical essays are common in literal arts disciplines, like history and cultural studies (Hamilton, 2021). As such, an author should target scholars in these disciplines and those in the general public who are interested in understanding history. Ideally, a good subject provides authors with an idea of the audience’s target needs in terms of knowledge acquisition.

Prepare ideas. Lastly, students should be prepared by generating ideas about their compositions, such as what to cover and what to ignore. For example, writing about a famous individual’s lifespan is demanding and requires an author to determine what stories are relevant and which ones are not (Ashplant, 2018). In turn, while it is essential to talk about childhood, dwelling on it at the expense of adult time is counterproductive. Therefore, deciding what details to capture, such as significant events, helps people to generate ideas about a professional biography essay.

2️⃣ Set-Up Stage

After preparation, the next phase in writing a biography essay is setting up the stage. Here, authors should focus on academic sources they will use to back up their claims about a subject and an outline that a paper should adopt (Hamilton, 2021). Basically, creating an outline helps students to make notes on different topics they intend to address in a whole text, such as a subject’s childhood, education, and work experience. In turn, people should also make an annotated bibliography to get an idea of what to capture in their compositions.

Researching. The process of finding sources for use in a biographical essay denotes research – the identification of documented information (articles, books, and newspaper articles) about a particular subject. By reading these sources, writers gain a clearer picture of famous individuals, what inspired them, and how their experiences shaped their personalities (Maurois & Roberts, 2014). Ultimately, these sources help students to argue about contributions that a particular subject made, whether positive or negative. Moreover, using different sources helps authors to note various opinions that scholars have about an individual, which is vital to make the writing objective rather than subjective.

Note-making. When researching a topic, students make notes of what they learn. Basically, this aspect supports or strengthens their opinion about a chosen issue. Moreover, when writing a biography document, people should make notes as they read different sources they intend to use to support their thesis statement (Hamilton, 2021). In essence, students must identify themes related to their thesis statements and use them to guide the note-making process. To avoid subjectivity, they must note facts only and not their opinions when narrating specific events in an individual’s lifespan. Besides, mentioning significant events, interests, and persons in a subject’s life helps students to make a biography essay both educative and engaging to read.

Creation of an outline. Before embarking on writing a biography essay, a writer must create an outline to guide their story. Although biographical essays do not necessarily follow a standard format of traditional works (introduction, body, and conclusion), they follow a structure that provides a logical flow of information. In principle, the information, based on research, should provide insight into the life of a subject from childhood to adulthood or their demise (Mayer & Dessy, 2021). As such, ideas in each body paragraph must give a progressive narrative about an individual’s lifespan and other key aspects. In turn, people need to create an outline adopting an introduction-body-conclusion structure.

Creation of an annotated bibliography. To ensure sources that writers select are relevant to a biography essay, they must create an annotated bibliography. Basically, this feature means each source should have a brief descriptive paragraph, and it informs readers of the relevance and accuracy of picked sources (Miller, 2024). Moreover, students must demonstrate a variety of intellectual skills in writing an annotated bibliography, including concise exposition, succinct analysis, and informed and in-depth research. In short, the process involves identifying sources (books, articles, and other documents) that contain useful information and ideas about an assigned subject and a brief examination and review of sources.

3️⃣ Writing Activity

After preparing and setting up the stage, authors should start writing a first version of a paper. In this case, a biography essay for students is a detailed account of a person’s lifespan written to inform and educate young readers about the individual’s significant experiences, achievements, and contributions (Miller, 2024). Here, students should use an outline that they have created to guide their writing with notes taken during the reading of sources. Basically, it plays a pivotal role in shaping a whole narrative. Like a traditional paper, a biography composition should use a thesis statement as a central opinion that people rely on to construct arguments throughout a composition.

Preparation of a first draft. To ensure a quality product, it is essential for a writer of a biography essay to start with a draft paper. Ideally, this composition acts as a reflection of a finished document, meaning it helps students to note mistakes and correct them before presenting a final product. Moreover, an opening chapter of a first draft, like an introduction, should engage readers and make them excited about reading an entire composition (Hamilton, 2021). In essence, a central thesis statement should ‘hook’ readers and make them interested in reading further. Besides, the more substantial part of a paper, which is a body section, should dwell on interesting facts about discussed subjects – their childhood, significant events, achievements, and contributions to the world. Finally, a closing chapter should remind readers about an author’s original intention and provide details about how its content has accomplished it.

Thesis statement. Like a traditional paper, a biography essay should have a thesis statement to provide writers with their direction. Basically, such a direction involves how authors choose to present their ideas about an assigned subject, such as whether to focus on their mistakes, achievements, challenges, or missed opportunities (Miller, 2024). In essence, a central thesis statement gives readers an idea of what authors of a biographical essay focus on when telling a story of a subject’s lifespan and other events. Hence, all aspects that authors talk about in an entire document should revolve around a central thesis statement. On the other hand, a biography essay can be one paragraph if it provides a brief yet comprehensive overview of a person’s life, highlighting key events and achievements concisely.

4️⃣ Wrapping It Up

After completing a biography draft, writers should read it through to identify mistakes and correct them. Basically, the writing activity is mentally involving, which means authors are prone to make several mistakes, such as inconsistencies in arguments, grammatical errors, and irrelevant content. To write a biographical essay, people research their subject thoroughly, create a structured outline, and write a detailed, engaging narrative that covers key living events, achievements, and their impact (Hamilton, 2021). Hence, this is why students need to read through their writing at least twice to make sure such mistakes are corrected. Moreover, the processes of correction involve conducting revisions and editions. As such, subjecting a completed document to vigorous assessment is necessary to ensure every mistake is identified and corrected.

Revisions. To avoid overlooking mistakes, it is essential for writers to give their works to other persons, such as peers, friends, teachers, and mentors, to read it through. Basically, doing so provides them with an opportunity of getting honest feedback about their writing. Moreover, such feedback involves whether a paper is easy to read, makes logical sense, or is interesting to read (Miller, 2024). Then, some of the input will pinpoint mistakes and errors, making it easy for students to revise a first draft appropriately. In turn, authors need to understand that a biography essay should make sense to a target audience, meaning they must remain objective and not subjective when making revisions.

Editions. In academic writing, students learn the importance of proofreading their works, and it helps to make them professional. When doing a biography essay, proofreading a first draft helps people to identify grammatical errors, including spellings and punctuations, and correct them (Miller, 2024). Moreover, a completed composition with these kinds of errors is likely to turn off readers’ interest, which would mean the writing would not command respect among scholars. Hence, such an outcome would mean a biography document is a wasted scholarly work.

Topic sentences. A standard structure of a paragraph in a traditional essay is to have a topic sentence that makes a claim relevant to a thesis statement. Then, the rest of the paragraph involves the information that backs up this claim, which is mostly researched from external sources. Basically, a good biography essay follows the same structure, where paragraphs open with topic sentences (Maurois & Roberts, 2014). Moreover, these sentences make a claim about a subject, which writers go ahead to prove through evidence from selected sources. Ideally, topic sentences serve to provide readers with an issue that authors focus on in a particular paragraph.

Concluding sentences. In every essay, a writer must provide a conclusion, which can be in the form of a paragraph or sentence. For example, a concluding sentence is what an author writes when bringing a paragraph to a closure (Maurois & Roberts, 2014). In this case, standards of academic writing dictate that a concluding sentence must refer back to a single topic sentence and show its relevance to a thesis statement. Then, a concluding sentence captures the thoughts of people about a chosen issue raised in one topic sentence and is backed up by evidence from different sources. Finally, a concluding sentence does not only refer back to topic sentences but also transitions to the next paragraph.

Transitions. When writing any paper, it is very critical for students to ensure the information flows logically throughout a biography paper. For instance, transitions mean the words and phrases that help readers to sense a logical flow of ideas (Miller, 2024). Therefore, one can argue authors of all forms of essays use transitions to arrange their writing expertly. Moreover, readers sense this effectiveness when they notice words that connect a single main idea with supporting ideas, or when they notice the use of a compare and contrast method. In other words, transitions are words that people use within and between paragraphs to create a logical flow of information and ideas. Besides providing students with a clearer picture of what they want to write about, an outline also helps them to get ideas about the kind of transitions they can use.

Formatting. It is the standard protocol that students should follow a particular format – APA, MLA, Harvard, or Chicago/Turabian. As such, authors of a biography essay must always confirm they have used a right format, while every detail follows its requirements (Hamilton, 2021). Basically, these details include an outline, the use of headings and subheadings, and citations of sources. When citing sources, students should take note of their kind – books, journal articles, e-books, newspaper articles, periodicals, and so on.

Peer review. Peer-reviewed articles denote scholarly works that people have been subjected to scrutiny by peers in specific disciplines. In principle, peer review is the process of assessing the validity, quality, and originality of articles for publication (Ashplant, 2018). In turn, concerning biography documents, peer review would indicate subjecting a completed composition to scrutiny by peers and even instructors to ensure it meets the highest standards of academic writing. Moreover, the advantage of subjecting a biography essay to a peer review is that people need to know if what they have written is true or false. Therefore, it is common for famous individuals to have several writers interested in telling their stories, meaning it is easier to note inconsistencies in these stories.

5️⃣ Final Draft

After writers of a biography essay have subjected a first draft to vigorous scrutiny through revisions, editions, and peer review, they should embark on writing a final draft. Basically, this draft denotes a polished document, free of punctuation, grammatical, and spelling mistakes. Further on, it lacks inconsistencies in arguments, irrelevant sentences, and poor transitions. Moreover, final drafts should show an improved paper from first drafts because authors have incorporated feedback from peers, friends, and teachers (Miller, 2024). To achieve this objective, they need to read through a final draft, at least once, to ensure a completed paper is perfect before submission or publication. In turn, any indication of several mistakes should mean another revision. Hence, authors should focus on the content, organization of ideas, style of writing, and format.