Writing a Life Story: Vulnerability, Boundaries, and Knowing Your Audience
Have you ever wanted to write an autobiography or a biography? What’s the difference between the two? Who would be interested in your story? If you have any of these questions, I would like to give you some ideas to think about while you are planning out your autobiography or biography.
First, what is an autobiography: An autobiography is someone writing the story of their own life, and a biography is someone writing another person’s life story. Now we got the definitions down. What about memoirs? A memoir usually focuses on a particular period, relationship, experience, or theme rather than attempting to cover the writer’s entire life. For this blog I will give pointers about writing an autobiography or a biography.
Now, the next step is: who is your audience? Who is writing this for, exactly? You always need a target audience unless you are looking for general readers, but in autobiographies or biographies the reason that people read them is that the experience may be similar to their own. Are you writing about a professional? Fans who already know you? Or do you intend that your audience can change the way you tell your story from your experience?
Next, how vulnerable do you want to be? Being vulnerable means being emotionally truthful, but not everyone is entitled to every single detail of your life. Set boundaries on what you want to share. You can tell a traumatic story and say, “This is how it affected me in my 20s and it still affects me now, but I am getting therapy for it.” Or, “I won’t bore you with the painstaking details, but it was a difficult time in my life, and I continue to grow from it daily.” It doesn’t have to be detailed if you don’t want to bring up the past, but establishing this information in the beginning of the autobiography may be helpful to set the tone of the book. Or, if you are writing a biography you may not know what everyday life looked like for this person if it wasn’t documented. Don’t embellish, tell the truth and also add resources, because some people love to “fact check” or are just curious to learn more information.
Lastly, why are you sharing this story? Is this particular story close to your experiences that you can relate to? or do you think you can motivate someone to change their perspective? Whatever reason you are writing your biography or autobiography, make sure that you know your audience, know how vulnerable you want to be, set boundaries on what you want to share, and share your experience on why you are sharing the story. It is important that you continue to write, research, and also leave helpful sources like 988 or suicide prevention if your story includes these elements. Also, the domestic violence hotline or talking to a trained professional like a licensed clinician would be helpful as well. I think I am far from ever writing my autobiography, but I will encourage you to continue to write, create, and live through experiences that may one day become chapters worth telling.
