Fictional autobiography definition for kids
Biographies and autobiographies
Watch: What are autobiographies and biographies?
Biographies and autobiographies are both types of non-fiction stories about someone’s life.
They are both based in fact but there are some key differences between them.
Watch this video in which teacher Mr McPartlin explains the differences. Listen carefully and join in with the activities.
Similarities and differences
Time for a recap on those similarities and differences!
Both biographies and autobiographies:
tell the story of someone’s life
are written in the past tense
follow chronological order (the order in which things actually happened)
are non-fiction
| Biography | Autobiography |
|---|---|
| Written by a person about someone else’s life. | Written by a person about their own life. |
| Written in third person (//) | Written in first person () |
To see some examples, watch the first minute of each of these clips.
The first clip is written as a biography of activist Rosa Parks and the second clip is written as if it were an autobiography. Can you spot the differences?
Watch: Rosa Parks biography example
We use buses every day to go to school or into town. It's not unusual, but this story is about a bus journey that changed millions of lives.
Let's go to America, in , to Montgomery in the southern state of Alabama.
There, when a woman called Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, a bus journey became very important.
Rosa's refusal was a protest about racism against black people. Racism is when someone thinks you’re not as good as them because the colour of your skin or your race is different to theirs, so they treat you differently.
At that time, southern states in America, had something called ‘segregation’. This meant people of different skin colours had different schools, restaurants, even toilets.
Segregation happened on buses too.
One day, Rosa was in a seat for black peop An autobiography (awe-tow-bye-AWE-gruh-fee) is a self-written biography. The author writes about all or a portion of their own life to share their experience, frame it in a larger cultural or historical context, and/or inform and entertain the reader. Autobiographies have been a popular literary genre for centuries. The first Western autobiography is attributed to Saint Augustine of Hippo for his book work titled Confessions, written between and CE. Some autobiographies are a straightforward narrative that recollects a linear chain of events as they unfolded. The genre has expanded and evolved to include different approaches to the form. The word autobiography comes from the Ancient Greek auto (“self”) + bios (“life”) + graphein (“to write”) = “a self-written life.” It is also known as autography. Scholars regard Augustine’s Confessions as the first Western autobiography. Other autobiographical works from antiquity include Jewish historian Flavius Josephus’s Vita (circa 99 CE) and Greek scholar Libanius’s Oration I ( CE). Works of this kind were called apologias, which essentially means “in my defense.” Writers approached these works not as acts of self-documentation but as self-defense. They represented a way to explain and provide rationale for their life, work, and escapades. There was also less focus on their emotional lives. The Book of Margery Kempe, written in by an English Christian mystic, is the earliest known autobiography in English. (Though it didn’t see full publication until the 20th century.) Other early English-language biographies of note include: Science fiction author Robert A Heinlein once wrote: Autobiography is usually honest but never truthful. An autobiography is the story of a person’s life. It is different to a diary, which is usually a personal account of events but as they happen. And it’s different to a biography, which is the story of someone’s life, but written by somebody else. There are different ways to tell the story of someone’s journey through life. Using a traditional story arc, with a clear beginning, middle and ending, can make an autobiography more interesting and engaging. You can start at the beginning, your birth, and describe the journey from there. Or you can start later in your story, at the point when you made an important decision, took part in a memorable event or tried something for the first time. Wherever you choose to start, it’s important to describe key places and events, the different things you saw and did. As with any story, pick the events, people and places that will capture the reader’s interest and imagination and maybe leave the boring bits out! Don’t just list events or anecdotes, piece together a story. Did an event change the way you think about things? Did it offer you new opportunities? What did you learn from your experience? For example, when Roald Dahl wrote his first autobiography, Boy, he chose to focus on his school years. He tells the story of his local sweet shop and his dreams of being an inventor for a chocolate company. No wonder he wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! So, autobiography can come out in all kinds of ways. Which things in your life will you write about? Etymology is the s Memoir and autobiography are often used synonymously. These two nonfiction genres are very similar, so it’s easy to get them confused. They’re both the story of someone’s life written by that person, and they both use the pronouns “I” and “me” since they’re written in the first person. They’re both true stories from the author’s life. But there are some key differences. A memoir is a nonfiction narrative in which the author shares their memories from a specific time period or reflects upon a string of themed occurrences throughout their life. An autobiography is a factual and historical account of one’s entire life from beginning to end. If you’ve struggled to understand the difference between autobiography and memoir, you’ve come to the right place to learn more. Memoir comes from the French word mémoire, which means memory. A memoir is a nonfiction but subjective collection of narratives in which the author remembers experiences, emotions, and events from a certain period in their life. Memoirs focus on intimately conveying their perception of these memories in a way that is emotionally truthful but isn’t fact-checked. Memoir can seem like a tricky word to pronounce, but it’s actually quite simple. The beginning is “mem” just like “memory.” The end is essentially an elongated pronunciation of “war.” Put together phonetically, it sounds like “MEM-waar.” You can consult an online dictionary to hear an audio recording of this word being pronounced out loud. A memoir is a literary nonfiction genre in which the author recounts their experiences during a significant period of their life. They might focus on their childhood and family, a spiritual journey, their experience with fame, a big adventure, or many different but thematically related events in a collection of personal essays. These days, some memoirs are even graphi autobiography
What Is Autobiography? Definition, Usage, and Literary Examples
Autobiography Definition
The History of Autobiography
Writing autobiography
Introduction to writing autobiography
Key learning points
Video about writing autobiography
Etymology of autobiography
Memoir vs. Autobiography: What’s the Difference?
What is a memoir?
How do you pronounce memoir?
What is memoir as a literary genre?