Divide your life into periods, such as by age, where you lived or what you were doing, and make lists of all the things you remember. For example, if you played baseball from fifth to eighth grade, write down all your memories specifically related to that, such as hitting an important home run, the time you broke your arm and how you met your best friend, who was also on the team. You may not use all of this in your autobiography, but making a list stirs up memories you may have forgotten about.
Write down several questions that you want to answer in your autobiography. Why do you have the name you have? Where are your parents from? What people have had an impact on you? What hobbies have you had in your life? You may know the answers to some of these questions and not others. Do research. Interview your family, friends and others to give you more insight into things to put in your autobiography.
An outline helps you organize and plan your autobiography before writing it. An outline can be a detailed document or just a bulleted list. The more specific your outline is, the easier the writing process will be. List the areas you want to cover. Divide them up by periods, such as childhood, adolescence, college and adulthood.
It’s impossible to put every single event of your life into your autobiography. Instead, focus on things that had an impact on you, and that would also be of interest to others. The fact that you enjoyed cooking as a child may not too be interesting to readers, unless that interest, for example, blossomed into your career or a hobby that played an important part in your life. Another important event might be how you met your best friend or significant other.
The beginning of any book has to win a reader’s attention or she will close the book and move on to something else. While your autobiography will likely be written chronologically, the first chapter could be about a later event, anecdote or theme that had an important impact on your life. If you’re a performer writing about your life and career, open your autobiography with an important performance or your debut on stage, recalling what that event meant to you and how it shaped the rest of your life.