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Episode 45 : A Biography is not a Book
Your Life Story can be anything you want.
Your auto/biography is only relevant if it’s captured and if it’s consumed by others. So the best system is the one that people are most comfortable with using to create and share your Life Story.
A biography is an account of someones life written by someone else.
People think of a biography as a book?
We’re conditioned to think that a biography has to be a book, simply because up until the last few years there hasn’t been any other reasonable way of capturing a persons story if it wasn’t written down. Sure there are a few film, radio and television documentary biographies but you had to be either famous or wealthy to have your story in one of those systems and even so, most people still preferred a written book anyway because it was easy to consume.
Really a biography is just a fancy term for telling a Life Story and if it’s as simple as telling a story there are multiple systems for telling anyone’s life story.
* Written text
* Audio biography
* Private storytelling
* Video biography
* Digital Photographical storytelling
* Oral history recording
* Photo montage
* Various art projects
With these systems available using all the senses to add so much more of a persons personality, it’s such a shame that they aren’t being used in whatever combination suits the individual. Why not blend all these systems and make the most of them?
Why written text is preferred
Not only is text our first consideration for producing a Life Story but it’s also often the only one. At it’s most basic we can all pick up a pencil and start writing now! So why aren’t we deluged in personal accounts of people’s lives? Because even though we can all write, few of us can write well!
Good quality written storytelling, that is interesting and engaging for others to read, is a skill that takes many authors decades to refine. Sure we can all put a few ideas on paper but few can we actually create an engaging interesting Life Story that others will want to read. This is the reason many people have their biography written by ghost writers.
Writing needs dedication.
As an overview, consider what you need to do to write and publish a biography.
* Gather all the information
* Write the component stories – Many, many hours or work needed here
* Assemble all the stories
* Weave a Life Story from all the different individual stories
* Edit and re-edit the manuscript until it’s an enjoyable read
* Design and style the book content
* Publish
It’s easy to understand why many biographies are started but very few are published when you consider the herculean task of all of these aspects.
Although publishing a Life Story as a book is far easier today using print on demand with the much lower overall cost, the per book price is still high and once published there is no opportunity to add or change any of the story without another print run and associated issues and costs.
Lost Life Stories
For all of human history all but the fortunate few’s Life Stories have been lost to time.
It was the few famous who were written about in antiquity with many more being captured with the advent of popular printing in the 19th and 20th centuries but now in the 21st century we have mechanisms to help capture a Life Story in quick and easy ways.
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By Ian KathYour Life Story can be anything you want.
Your auto/biography is only relevant if it’s captured and if it’s consumed by others. So the best system is the one that people are most comfortable with using to create and share your Life Story.
A biography is an account of someones life written by someone else.
People think of a biography as a book?
We’re conditioned to think that a biography has to be a book, simply because up until the last few years there hasn’t been any other reasonable way of capturing a persons story if it wasn’t written down. Sure there are a few film, radio and television documentary biographies but you had to be either famous or wealthy to have your story in one of those systems and even so, most people still preferred a written book anyway because it was easy to consume.
Really a biography is just a fancy term for telling a Life Story and if it’s as simple as telling a story there are multiple systems for telling anyone’s life story.
* Written text
* Audio biography
* Private storytelling
* Video biography
* Digital Photographical storytelling
* Oral history recording
* Photo montage
* Various art projects
With these systems available using all the senses to add so much more of a persons personality, it’s such a shame that they aren’t being used in whatever combination suits the individual. Why not blend all these systems and make the most of them?
Why written text is preferred
Not only is text our first consideration for producing a Life Story but it’s also often the only one. At it’s most basic we can all pick up a pencil and start writing now! So why aren’t we deluged in personal accounts of people’s lives? Because even though we can all write, few of us can write well!
Good quality written storytelling, that is interesting and engaging for others to read, is a skill that takes many authors decades to refine. Sure we can all put a few ideas on paper but few can we actually create an engaging interesting Life Story that others will want to read. This is the reason many people have their biography written by ghost writers.
Writing needs dedication.
As an overview, consider what you need to do to write and publish a biography.
* Gather all the information
* Write the component stories – Many, many hours or work needed here
* Assemble all the stories
* Weave a Life Story from all the different individual stories
* Edit and re-edit the manuscript until it’s an enjoyable read
* Design and style the book content
* Publish
It’s easy to understand why many biographies are started but very few are published when you consider the herculean task of all of these aspects.
Although publishing a Life Story as a book is far easier today using print on demand with the much lower overall cost, the per book price is still high and once published there is no opportunity to add or change any of the story without another print run and associated issues and costs.
Lost Life Stories
For all of human history all but the fortunate few’s Life Stories have been lost to time.
It was the few famous who were written about in antiquity with many more being captured with the advent of popular printing in the 19th and 20th centuries but now in the 21st century we have mechanisms to help capture a Life Story in quick and easy ways.