Write an Autobiography for School Without Feeling Conceited
From time to time, writing an autobiography may be set as the written assignment. There can be much difficulty in writing this and not feeling somewhat conceited. Here are some pointers for writing about yourself without being conceited in the process.
Steps
- Compile a list of important events in your life. We'll worry about writing and the introduction later on. Try to think of things that helped shape your view of the world and affected who you are as a person. Sort your list chronologically.
- Focus on single events. For each event that you wrote down, write about it as if you are writing only about that topic.
- Draw a thread of events together. After you have completed step 2 for every event, begin to tie the events together, explaining how they relate to one another and how they have influenced your life.
- Add the introduction. After you have written the body of the work, go about writing the introduction. It is suggested that one takes a humble, yet not self defeating stance. Explain why your autobiography is of importance to the reader. Pull them in to the work.
- Create the conclusion. After writing your introduction and body, reread the work and sum everything up in the conclusion. Explain how this has brought you to where you are today, how these events have truly affected your present way of life for better and for worse.
- Proofread. Go through your paper now and eliminate and redundancies, errors, and items that are not accurate. Check for spelling, grammar, and style errors as well.
- Consider what can be done to better the flow of the work, as well as the readability without sacrificing the accuracy of what you are portraying. Remember to add important details, like who was there with you during an important event, but don't add in things that won't affect the story, like the color of the shirt you wore that day.
- Take your paper and have others read, edit, and tell you what they think. Ask this of people who have known you for a while as well as newer acquaintances. This way you get an objective standpoint.
- Rewrite, making the necessary changes to better your work.
- Reread, reedit.
- Rewrite one more time and remain vigilant towards making necessary changes.
Tips
- Ask for help from close friends and family members. They can help you to take an objective view, therefore avoiding being overly subjective or biased.
- It helps to split the events of your life into categories: Good and Bad, or Ethical and Non ethical; there are a myriad of different ways one can consider it.
- Keep handy a print dictionary and a thesaurus.
- Quote those sources. This adds credibility.
- Keep handy whatever is the required (if applicable) style book for reference purposes.
Warnings
- This can take a while. Be sure to begin this long in advance. DO NOT PROCRASTINATE!!
- Do not try to rationalize your past mistakes to make them see what you did as OK. If you have screwed up, be willing to admit it.
- Constantly be checking for grammar, spelling and style errors, as well as errors in context and definitions.
Things You'll Need
- Preferred stylebook as outlined by instructor
- Paper
- Pens in blue, black, red and green
- Computer
- Printer
- Hard copy Dictionary (optional)
- Hard copy Thesaurus (optional)
