Study tips & tricks
Autobiography vs. Biography vs. Memoir: What’s the Difference?
Author:
Dallas Hardwick
Dec 5, 2024
7 min
Table of contents
What Is the Difference Between Biography and Autobiography and Memoir?
When writing captivating life stories, whether for school, university, or other matters, you may stumble upon a significant dilemma even before you write the first lines: which writing genre to select for your work. The options include a biography, autobiography, and a memoir. And choosing between them can be incredibly confusing.
Unless you’re a seasoned writer, seeing a clear difference between biography vs autobiography or biography vs memoir can be rather challenging. In fact, many people mistake them, though the differentiation between them can be found both in the format of work and the approach to it.
So, what is each of them? And how do you tell the difference in practice? In this article, we are going to answer all common questions to help you find clarity and choose the right format for your storytelling needs.
Life Writing and Its Subgenres
Life writing is an extensive literary genre that deals specifically with recording personal experience, memories, emotions, and opinions for various purposes. This genre is made of multiple subgenres, including:
- Diary
- Letter
- Testimony
- Personal essay
Yet, when it comes to comprehensive, all-encompassing personal stories, there are three primary subgenres that work with them: biography, autobiography, and memoir.
And why would you need to deal with life writing? What’s the goal? Before we delve into the difference between biography and autobiography or autobiography and memoir, you might be wondering why you have to engage in life experiences writing in the first place.
While writing down and reflecting on someone’s life can have plenty of purposes, dealing with these genres in school or college has two primary purposes – to enhance students’ writing skills and to help them learn about different important figures.
Hence, this kind of task can be used in almost all academic areas. So, knowing how to handle them right can be pivotal for your performance in school.
Biography vs Autobiography vs Memoir: Definitions and Distinctive Features
Although the difference between memoir vs biography or between biography vs autobiography might be rather shady for many people, these three genres are completely different. They all deal with writing a life story, but they do it through various mediums and hence require different approaches from the author.
In this part of our guide, let’s take a look at the definitions of each genre to clarify their distinctive features.
What Is a Biography, and How Is It Unique?
Biography is a literary genre used to provide a detailed outlook on a person’s entire life from the third person point. It spans from birth to present times or death and covers various life events, providing an objective account of the subject’s experiences.
However, instead of giving basic, dry facts about someone’s childhood, education, work, or relationships, biographies cover and portray the experiences a person has gone through during each of these stages of life. And most importantly, a biography is always written by someone who’s not the subject of the work.
The key distinctive features of this genre include:
- A piece that presents a person’s complete life story;
- Written by someone else;
- Presented in chronological order;
- Includes basic facts about an individual’s life along with personal, intimate details of a subject’s unique experience.
While in school or college, you might be assigned to write a biography of a famous person from literature, history, politics, or any other field, depending on your subject area. Approaching this task might seem hard, but these expert tips can help:
- Leverage bibliographic tools like Wikipedia to compile a complete chronological timeline with the central facts about a person’s life (such as birth date and place, years in school, etc.).
- Research every stage of a subject’s life separately to explore helpful facts, key events, and interesting details for true stories.
- Complete your rough facts with personal details, such as quotes about how a subject felt at a time, descriptions of people’s looks, main character traits, and so on.
- Remember that you can always get professional aid. Writing bibliographies requires plenty of research, not to mention that it can be incredibly hard to find the needed data sometimes. So, using the help of trusted services like WriterEssay can be a good idea in some cases.
What Is an Autobiography and Its Distinctive Features?
An autobiography is a self-written account of the author’s entire life. Similarly to a regular bio, such pieces take a look at all stages of a person’s life, from the early days to the moment, just written as a first person account.
Unlike a biography, when the author writes while operating on known facts and some personal details they can explore throughout their research, autobiography writing can give you much more space for creativity.
Since you’re writing about your own life and experiences, you can (and should) include unique details from your memory, self-reflection, and personal opinions about different stages of your life.
The key distinctive features of an autobiography include:
- A written work about your own life;
- Presents a complete course of your life, usually in chronological order;
- Provides personal quotes, opinions, self-reflections, and other details for greater individuality.
In terms of education, an autobiography is also a rather common task that might be assigned to help you refine your writing skills or as a tool for personal growth and self-reflection. Of course, the writing process can be rather challenging. But if you want a tip that helps – start by reading other people’s autobiographies to gain inspiration and then recreate it in your work.
What Is a Memoir and How Do You Distinguish It?
The word memoir comes from the ancient Latin word “memoria,” which intuitively translates as memory or remembrance. As you can guess from the name, it’s a literary genre that provides an account of an author’s life from their personal memories and in their own words.
After seeing this definition, you might be wondering what the main difference between memoir vs autobiography is. Since the late 20th century, memoirs have been defined as a subcategory of an autobiography. However, they aren’t the same.
Unlike autobiography, memoirs are much more narrowly focused. Typically, they provide outlooks on a specific period of your time, for example, childhood, or reflect on a specific topic, such as the primary turning points in your life.
The core distinctive features of a memoir include:
- A piece that reflects on the personal life and memories of the author;
- A significantly shorter scope of focus;
- Typically has greater emotional depth and reveals the author’s feelings about a specific period of time or theme and all the details associated with it.
If you were assigned to write a memoir for school (or have to work on it for any other purpose), it should be approached somewhat differently compared to a biography or autobiography:
- Start by looking at the entire course of your life to define an engaging period/topic to focus on.
- Note down the primary life events related to your area of focus.
- Complement the facts that make up your life story with personal reflections and emotions related to the topic.
Conclusion
Writing for school is never an easy task. However, when it comes to such confusing and look-alike types of literary genres as biography, autobiography, and memoir, the situation can get even harder.
Luckily, after reading this guide, you should have a clear idea of what each of these genres stands for, what their distinctive features are, and even how to approach each of these tasks for maximum success. Use the information and tips from writeressay.com experts we shared with you here to master the art of life writing!
FAQ
Although both a biography and autobiography span the entire scope of the life of a subject, a biography is written in the third person about someone else, let’s say, a historical figure. An autobiography, on the contrary, is written about yourself in the first person.
Autobiography and memoir are similar genres that are both written in the first person and capture the author’s own cohesive story. The primary difference is the scope. An autobiography spans your entire life, whereas memoirs focus on a specific event, period in life, or topic.
Biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs are all rather common types of written academic assignments. They are assigned to students of different academic levels and majors. The goals are to help them improve their writing skills while also expanding their knowledge of an important figure’s life (biography) or taking time for self-reflection and growth (autobiography or memoir).
Most professional literary works of these genres fall within the range of 40,000 to 120,000 words. However, if we’re talking about school or college assignments, they are normally much shorter. Carefully read the provided assignment and communicate with your professor to clarify the required word count.
Finding sufficient information for a compelling biography can be hard, especially if it’s covering the life of a figure who lived a long time ago. For historic figures, your sources of information can include:
- Memoirs
- Entries in famous encyclopedias
- Other biographies, etc.
For modern figures, you can also leverage interviews, emails, personal websites, social media, etc.
