Pre-writing a Biography

By Laura DeFazio, graduate assistant

Writing a biography—or any other large journalistic work that involves extensive interviewing—can be particularly daunting because of all the extra organizational steps required before the actual writing begins. Not doing things properly can create a lot of redundant (and frustrating) work down the line. 

I spent the last couple months assisting a forthcoming UNO Press author with a biography of an important local political figure. She’d already conducted a lengthy and comprehensive series of interviews with the subject but—faced with over 350 pages of transcriptions and a busy schedule—was stalled at the next step. I helped with some of the intermediate tasks, to get her set up to write.

The following list, based on that experience, is designed to make the pre-writing process more manageable and to help biographers avoid losing track of information they might need later. It’s based specifically on the project I was working on—a biography of a living subject told in first-person from the subject’s point of view, based on interviews conducted by the author—but many of the principles would apply to other projects as well. And it’s certainly not the only way to do things, just what works for me.

Step #1: Conduct interviews. (The author I was working with, as an example, conducted seventeen interviews over a couple of months.) Record everything. Record everything on a back-up device, too, if possible. Make sure all the audio files are labeled clearly and stored in the same folder. Obviously—since there’s a reason you decided to write about this person—you’ll already have some ideas of what to ask them about: incidents they’re famous for, career milestones, etc. But let the conversations be open-ended, too, and stay out of the way as much as you can, at least early in the interview process. A lot of times the best stories are the ones you’re not expecting.

Step #2: Get the interviews transcribed. Once you’re satisfied that you’ve covered as much interview ground as you can (at least for now; you’ll probably have to double back later), get the audio files transcribed. You can do it yourself, too, but personally I find transcribing so tedious, time-consuming, and generally daunting that it grinds my entire process to a halt. I recommend using transcription software or sending the files off to one of the human-powered services you can find online. The quality is very variable, and if the recording quality was poor or the transcriber was lazy or the conversation included a lot of proper nouns or niche jargon, what you get back might be full of errors. But even the worst ones provide a solid roadmap for the conversation, and editing them is still faster than transcribing by hand. 

• Label each interview transcription according to a clear and consistent system, and save them all in a file titled “Original Transcripts” or something to that effect. 

Step #3 (Optional): Correct all the transcriptions against the audio files. That is, play the audio recording while you clean up the transcription and correct errors. The benefit of doing this is that you probably won’t ever have to go back to the audio files again. It’s the most efficient approach for certain projects. (For instance, if you know you’re going to be using the majority of the interview, and it’s very important it all be verbatim, and maybe a lot of time has elapsed since the interview and you don’t remember whether the person the interviewee was talking about, say, was named “Mary Ann” or “Miriam.”) 

• I didn’t do this step for the biography because I didn’t know which passages the author would end up using. I didn’t want to waste a lot of time doing finicky copy-edits until we’d eliminated some swaths of raw interview material.
• If you do do this step, save the corrected transcripts in a new folder. Don’t delete the original versions. If you don’t, and as you proceed through the following steps, make sure you leave anything in place (like the timestamps transcription services will include) that will help you navigate to specific moments you need to check later.

Step #4: Create a chapter outline. Think about the material covered in the interviews and how to organize it into a somewhat logical narrative flow by chapter. (For example, the book I was helping with was mostly organized chronologically, from childhood to retirement, but in the meat of the subject’s career, when a lot was happening, it made more sense to divide some chapters by theme.) Decide upon the general topic for each chapter and—while the interviews are fresh in your mind—make a list of any specific anecdotes, reflections, etc. you remember that you see as belonging under that umbrella.

Step #5: Set up the chapters to write, using text from the interview transcripts. Make a new folder called “Chapter Set-ups,” or something to that effect, containing a blank document for each chapter listed in the chapter outline. Then, search through the transcripts for relevant material and copy/paste it into the appropriate set-up document. (Leave the original transcriptions unchanged in their folder in case you need to reference them later.) You can paste things in according to a logical flow if one readily presents itself, but at this stage, just focus on getting all the material for each chapter into the same document so you’re not constantly flipping and searching later. Add frequent, bolded subheadings so it’s easy to track topic changes and move pieces around later.

• I color-coded the text according to the original transcript it came from, so that the original context would always be easy to find. This was especially important working on someone else’s project, because I wasn’t in the author’s head or as familiar with her material. I placed things as best I could, but there were probably instances where she would have done it differently.
• I cleaned up the transcription formatting a bit as I copied text into the new documents—deleting interviewer’s questions, deleting speaker tags, etc.—but I left in time stamps in places I could tell we’d need to check the original audio.
• I initially set up one chapter at a time before moving onto the next one, so that the author could begin writing Chapter 1 as soon as possible. Once I got a little ahead of her, though, I found it was more efficient to work on all the set-ups at once, going through one transcript at a time, placing all of its text where it belonged, and then moving on.

Step #6: Organize and tidy up the chapter set-ups. Start moving pieces around to get a sense of narrative flow. Add more sub-headings to see things more clearly. Synthesize and/or delete redundant stories and passages. Move segments to different chapter set-ups as needed. Maybe start a fresh document to temporarily house sections you’re not yet sure where to place. Delete anything you decide is irrelevant to the book. (You can always retrieve it from the original transcripts later.) 

• Once you have approximately all the raw material you’re going to use for a particular chapter—and if you skipped step #4—return to the audio files to resolve any lingering questions about transcription accuracy. (Ex.: “Was he talking about Jack or Jeff here?” “Was it the interviewer or interviewee saying that?”) 
• Once that’s done, and you’re pretty sure you won’t have to return to the audio files or original transcripts, you can change all the text back to black and delete any speaker tags/interviewer questions/timestamps, start copy-editing on a smaller scale, and generally start formatting everything like a manuscript rather than an interview. (Depending on how finalized your structure feels, it may be a good idea to save an intermediary copy of your set-ups before you start doing this.)
• Keep moving pieces around and fine-tuning the order. This should be easier now that everything’s pared down and easier on the eye.

Step #7: Start drafting. By this point, you pretty much already have. (But it doesn’t hurt to start a new folder for “Chapter Drafts”. . . .) As you write, note places where you need to follow up with the subject for more information. Depending on how easy they are to reach and how much more info is needed, you might be able to do this via phone as you go along, or it might make more sense to wait til the end and conduct a comprehensive follow-up interview. 

• You will probably have to loop back to various of these steps as the writing progresses. Even if it’s frustrating, be willing to rework things to better serve the story.

Post image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.