\u201c\u2026 the voluminous \u2026 biography \u2026 is a dreary slog of a read.<\/p>\n
Words of fear and dread for anyone writing a biography. Words such as these penned recently by a New York Times book reviewer poison the reader\u2019s mind before the book is ever opened.<\/p>\n
As I write Return to the Land of My Forefathers<\/em>, a biography of a deceased journalist and former Vietnam correspondent for the Associated Press, one of my greatest concerns is not just avoiding boring the reader, but compelling readers to turn page after page\u2014and to enjoy doing it .<\/p>\n How does a biographer not just avoid readers falling asleep mid-page but even worse, closing the book and dropping it in a donation box? I\u2019ve given this a great deal of thought, and here\u2019s what I\u2019m doing.<\/p>\n It must be a good story. I recognized the story in Bill Barton\u2019s life while I was studying journalism in college. The validity of that story was confirmed and magnified as I began researching it years later.<\/p>\n While the chronology of a biography must provide structure and make sense, a strict chronological format is not the most important presentation. The better approach is defining the person\u2019s qualities of character and revealing how they influence conscious and unconscious decisions that person makes throughout life.<\/p>\n Unique details add flavor to straight information. I have had numerous people tell me they don\u2019t know anything much about my subject. As the writer, it is my\u2014exciting\u2014task to ask questions that help them remember what they do know. My subject had been called \u201ca farm boy\u201d in articles written 40 years ago. But, when I asked his brothers to talk about those days, they, with much laughter, told me three wonderful stories, all of which proved that while he had lived on a farm, my subject was not a \u201cfarm boy.\u201d Not only do these stories provide insight into the person and lighten what could be a somber story, they negate part of the popular myth surrounding him.<\/p>\n His family has been one of numerous primary resources. Although my subject would be in his late 70\u2019s if he were alive today, many of his contemporaries are still here, and they have been most generous with their eyewitness accounts of how he interacted with them and their perception of him. Great stories, told in their words, things only they would know.<\/p>\n Researching below the surface is key. With today\u2019s technology, research is easier than ever. I call it the electronic \u201cstream of consciousness\u201d where one thing leads to another and often leads to information that enhances the story.<\/p>\n Of course, as with any book of any kind, the writer\u2019s word choice, tone, pacing and point of view\u2014one\u2019s ability to tell a good story\u2014affect the outcome.<\/p>\n I tell myself these things, hoping I’m on the right track to doing justice for my subject and keeping reader boredom at bay.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201c\u2026 the voluminous \u2026 biography \u2026 is a dreary slog of a read. Words of fear and dread for anyone writing a biography. Words such as these penned recently by a New York Times book reviewer poison the reader\u2019s mind before the book is ever opened. As I write Return to the Land of My… Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions\/69"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}