GenresNon-fiction
Biography
Someone else's life, argued and evidenced.
Biography is someone else's life, argued from evidence. You are not free to invent the scenes you wish had happened, and you are not obliged to include every fact you found. A good biography has a point of view. It thinks this life tells us something, about a profession, a century, a talent, or a kind of damage, and it arranges the research so a reader can feel that argument without being nudged in every paragraph.
The research will try to take over. Letters, archives, and interviews are wonderful, and they can also produce a book that is only a sequence of documents. Choose scenes you can stand behind, and tell the reader when you are guessing. Be fair to people who cannot answer back. Admiration is fine, and so is criticism, but a biography that is secretly a fan letter or a prosecution will lose the readers who came for the life itself. Start as late as you can, and don't spend fifty pages on ancestors unless the ancestors are genuinely part of the case.
The kinds of book inside it
Literary
The work and the life have to talk to each other, and the criticism should be readable by someone who has not brought a syllabus.
Political
Power is the subject, so the public record matters, and so does the private machinery that never quite made it into the speeches.
Artist / musician
The art should be described well enough that a reader can almost hear or see it, and the gossip should not be asked to do that job alone.
Scientist
The ideas need to be clear to a general reader, and the life should show what the work cost, not only the dates of the discoveries.
Group biography
Several lives share the book, which means you need a reason they belong together and a way to leave each of them before the reader mixes them up.
When you want a first sketch, Storywell can draft a contents list in this vein. You are still the one who writes the book. Compose an idea.