Questions to Ask Before Writing a Biography

Most rewrites are caused by skipping the briefing. Before you draft any biography — yours or someone else's — work through this list.

Questions about the venue

1. Where will this biography appear?
2. What is the maximum word count?
3. What is the audience reading it?
4. Will they read it for 8 seconds or 8 minutes?
5. What action, if any, do you want them to take after reading?

Questions about the subject

1. What is the single sentence that best identifies who they are and what they do?
2. What are the three most credible facts about their work? (Named companies, specific outcomes, published work, named press.)
3. What did they do immediately before this? Why is that relevant?
4. What is something true and specific that makes them recognizable on the page?
5. What is their point of view — what do they care about, argue for, or return to?
6. Where do they live or work?
7. What is the closing action — a URL, a project, an invitation?

Questions about tone and structure

1. First person or third person?
2. What tone fits the venue — credible, warm, confident, humble, literary, memorial-respectful?
3. Past tense or present tense?
4. Is this a single bio or a versioned set (50/100/200)?

Questions about safety and accuracy

1. Are any facts in this biography unverified? Which ones?
2. Does the biography mention other living people? Do you have their consent?
3. Does the biography mention a deceased person? Have family members reviewed?
4. Are there sensitive topics — medical, legal, family — that should be left out?
5. Is anything in the biography that the subject might be uncomfortable with?

If you can answer these before you draft, the draft itself takes a quarter of the time it would otherwise.

Use the generator

Biography.co's Biography Generator asks for the answers to most of these questions as form fields — biography type, tone, length, audience, must include, must avoid — and uses them to shape the draft. Think of the form as a structured pre-brief.