Whats is a biography a novel
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Megan Mayhew Bergman, Almost Famous Women
Almost Famous Women is not a biography in the strictest sense of the word; it is a fictional interpretation of real-life women. They are a way to introduce readers to the work’s subject—the historical details, the subject’s motivations and psychological underpinnings, and their environment and the impact they had, both in the short and long term.
Because the author is somewhat removed from their subject, they can offer a more omniscient, third-person narrative account.
Kitty Kelley’s infamous His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra so angered Sinatra, he tried to prevent its publication.
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Historical Biography
The wild success of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is proof that our interest in historical biography is as strong as ever.
However, in the second act of this biography, the author shows that the hero was badly assaulted and ridiculed by a rowdy mob called critics, who are expelled from the conventional theater. A biography of Anne Frank, on the other hand, would be written by someone else, drawing on her diary, letters, and other sources.
Memoir
A memoir focuses on a specific period, theme, or event in a person’s life, rather than attempting a comprehensive account.
While the ebb and flow of life is a normal day-to-day rhythm, it doesn’t necessarily make for entertaining reading. Boswell was a personal acquaintance of Johnson, so he was able to draw on voluminous amounts of personal conversations the two shared.
What also sets this biography apart is, because Boswell was a contemporary of Johnson, readers see Johnson in the context of his own time.
It is further divided into five categories:
- Popular biography
- Historical biography
- Literary biography
- Reference biography
- Fictional biography
Memoir
This is a more focused writing than an autobiography or a biography.
What Is a Biography?
Learning from the experiences of others is what makes us human.
At the core of every biography is the story of someone’s humanity.
Most biographers want to entertain as well as inform, so they typically use a traditional plot structure—an introduction, conflict, rising of tension, a climax, a resolution, and an ending—to give the life story a narrative shape. Einhard clearly fawns over Charlemagne’s accomplishments throughout, yet it doesn’t diminish the value this biography has brought to centuries of historians since its writing.
Considered the earliest modern biography, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) by James Boswell looks like the biographies we know today.
He wasn’t some fabled figure that a biographer was writing about centuries later; he was someone to whom the author had access, and Boswell could see the real-world influence his subject had on life in the here and now.
2. The key is to create a narrative that is both engaging and informative.
Developing a Voice
A biographer must find a voice that is appropriate for their subject and their audience.
Unauthorized biographies of living people run the risk of being controversial. These imagined biographies, while often whimsical, still respect the form in that they depend heavily on facts when creating setting, plot, and characters.
Definition of Biography
A biography is simply an account or detailed description about the life of a person.
This fascination fuels the literary form known as Biography. Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind
Nasar’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize-nominated biography of mathematician John Nash introduced legions of readers to Nash’s remarkable life and genius. The earliest example of this is Captain Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Pirates (1724), which catalogs the lives of notorious pirates and establishes the popular culture images we still associate with them.
Did their world change them?