How to Write a Biography

A good biography is not the longest possible recitation of what someone did with their life. It is a quiet, well-edited portrait that helps a reader understand who the person is, what they've done, and why it matters. Whether you are writing a 75-word professional bio for LinkedIn or a 5,000-word family history for your grandmother, the same principles apply.

Step 1 — Decide what kind of biography you are writing

The single most useful early decision is to name the kind of biography you're writing. A professional bio is not a memorial biography. A founder bio is not a family history. Each has its own conventions, its own appropriate length, and its own tone.

The most common categories you will encounter:

• Professional bio — for LinkedIn, team pages, resumes, podcast appearances.
• Founder bio — for company About pages, investor decks, press kits.
• Speaker bio — for conference programs, host scripts, event pages.
• Author or artist bio — for book jackets, gallery pages, residency applications.
• Memorial biography — for funeral programs, celebrations of life, obituaries.
• Family history — for preserving a parent's or grandparent's life story.

Name the category first and you'll spare yourself an enormous amount of rewriting later.

Step 2 — Collect more than you'll use

Good biographies are written from a surplus. Before you start drafting, collect everything you can: dates, places, employers, education, awards, the names of people who mattered, the texture of the work, the values, the personality. You will use a fraction of it, but the surplus is what lets you write specifically.

Don't worry about the order or the polish. A page of notes that includes "loved the Tuesday market in Carmel" is more useful than a polished paragraph about "her love of fresh produce."

Step 3 — Pick the audience and the venue

A biography for LinkedIn is read in 8 seconds by a stranger considering a meeting. A biography for a funeral program is read slowly by people who already loved the person. A founder bio for an investor deck is read by someone deciding whether to wire money.

These are very different rooms. The same set of facts should produce three very different biographies depending on which room you are writing for.

Ask yourself:

1. Who will read this?
2. What do they need to know in the first ten seconds?
3. What do they need to know in the next minute?
4. What's the action you want them to take, if any?

Step 4 — Choose the right structure

There are a handful of biography structures that work. Pick one and stick with it; don't invent a new shape.

For professional, founder, speaker, and author bios, the strongest structure is:

1. One sentence identifying who the person is and what they do.
2. Two or three sentences of specific credibility — what they've built, who they've worked with, what's been published.
3. One or two sentences of personal texture — values, location, a small specific detail.
4. A closing line that grounds them or invites the reader to do something next.

For memorial and family biographies, the strongest structure is:

1. The opening line — a single sentence that says who they were in the world.
2. Origins — where they were born, who their family was, where they grew up.
3. Life and work — what they did, how they spent their time, who they loved.
4. Character — the personality, the values, the texture.
5. Legacy — what they left behind, in people and in work.

Step 5 — Draft in third person, even when you'll publish it in first

Most biographies read better in third person. Even if you ultimately publish in first person (a personal website About page, for example), drafting in third person forces you to be honest. It is much harder to write "I am one of the most respected designers in the industry" than "Jane is one of the most respected designers in the industry." The third-person draft will quickly reveal the lines that sound inflated.

Once the third-person draft is honest and specific, you can flip it to first person if the venue requires it.

Step 6 — Cut hype, cut clichés, cut generic phrasing

Replace any sentence that contains the words "passionate about," "results-driven," "visionary," or "thought leader." These phrases used to be useful and are now invisible — they tell the reader nothing. Every time you find one, ask: "What's the specific thing this is trying to say?" Then say the specific thing.

For example:

• ❌ "Jane is passionate about helping teams succeed."
• ✅ "Jane has spent the last decade helping forty-plus SaaS teams reduce churn."

The second sentence is harder to write but does the actual work.

Step 7 — Verify every fact

Before you publish, check every name, date, employer, credential, family relationship, military detail, and death detail. AI-generated drafts (including ours) explicitly avoid inventing this information, but your draft may still have a typo or a misremembered date. The biography you are about to publish will live somewhere for years.

If you are writing about another person — especially a deceased relative, a memorial subject, or a minor — have at least one other person who knew them review the draft.

Step 8 — Pick your final length

The standard pattern that covers most use cases is the 50/100/200 split: a 50-word version for printed programs, a 100-word version for LinkedIn or company pages, and a 200-word version for speaker or About pages.

For long-form memorial and family biographies, aim for 400–1,000 words. Beyond 1,000 words you're no longer writing a biography; you're writing a memoir or a profile, which is a different craft.

Step 9 — Read it out loud

The single best edit you can do is to read your biography out loud. Most awkward, inflated, or jargon-heavy sentences become obvious the moment you hear them. If a sentence is hard to say without taking a breath, it's too long. If it sounds like a press release, it is one.

What to leave out

A short list of things almost no biography needs:

• Adjectives describing how the person feels about their own work.
• Long lists of skills, technologies, or tools.
• Every job they've ever had.
• "Strategic," "innovative," "transformational" — these are filler.
• Anything they don't have permission to share about another person.

Use the generator to produce a first draft

Biography.co's Biography Generator will take a few notes and produce five drafts at once — a one-sentence bio, a short bio, a medium bio, a long-form biography, and a headline — using exactly the structure above. You can adjust the tone, length, audience, and point of view until it sounds like you.

Frequently asked

Should I write my own biography? Often, yes — you know the facts best. But ask one other person to read the draft before you publish it. Self-bios tend to under-claim or over-claim; an outside reader will tell you which way you've gone.

Should it be in past tense or present tense? Present tense for professional, founder, speaker, author, and artist bios ("Jane is the founder of…"). Past tense for memorial biographies ("Margaret was a schoolteacher in Queens for thirty-two years…"). Family histories typically mix the two depending on whether the person is living.

Can a biography be too short? Yes. Two sentences is a tagline, not a biography. Three to five sentences is the floor for a usable professional bio. Memorial and family biographies should be at least two paragraphs.