Vibrant Nation

So you think you want to write a biography

Alice Schroeder's avatar Posted on Saturday, February 06, 2010 by Alice Schroeder Finance professional and author Alice Schroeder spent a couple thousand hours with the subject of her biography The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life. Here's how she prepared to write the bestselling book.

Writing Warren Buffett's biography was really quite a journey. My agent later told me that he gave it 1,000 to 1 odds that I would pull this off. Writing narrative non-fiction requires a very different skill than writing technical research, which is what I had done before. I had to learn how to:

  1. Research a biography.

  2. Do interviews.

  3. Become a journalist.

  4. Write a story -- because it’s not a book about investing at all. It’s really a saga about a family that was obsessed with money, that had a child prodigy who grew up into a man who thought life revolved around money, and, through a series of tragedies and misadventures, learned that life is really about love. I had to learn how to tell that story.
So I spent five years and had to organize this gigantic mass of material. I built a file room in my house!
  • I interviewed 250 people.
  • I spent a couple of thousand hours with Warren, traveling to Omaha and just sitting in his office as a fly on the wall and talking to him.
  • I have about 300 hours of that time recorded in digital interviews. The rest was just me hanging around, watching him. Some of it never got recorded.
You know, I do think this is another place where being a woman was tremendously advantageous, because it was all about people. It was understanding people and what motivated them, and why they behaved the way that they did. There have been a lot of comments on the book about how it really does explain why this man thinks the way he does, and that it takes you inside his head. Nobody had ever gone there.


responses (8)

Elin Danien's avatar Elin Dani…
Elin Danien said to Alice Schroeder
undefined method `created_at' for nil:NilClass
 new!

Alice I loved reading your post.  I'm doing two biographies with opposite problems.  One of Robert Burkitt, an archaeologist who lived in Guatemala from 1895 to his death in 1945, has very few documents, other than his professional field notes and letters to the museum director.  This is enough for some of the book, but the rest has to be fleshed out, I think, with the state of Maya archaeology at the time of his work, and some information I've gotten from his collateral descendants.  

The other, of an archaeological artist, M. Louise Baker, has an embarrassment of riches: 50 volumes of biography, her unpublished memoir, letters and photos from her family.

At the moment I'm clearing out my office (30 years of archaeology, museum administration, university papers, etc., etc. ad infinitum) and getting the notes in shape.  

You've inspired me -- now I think I'll do some more tossing! 

Elin

Elin Danien's avatar Elin Dani…
Elin Danien said to Elin Danien
undefined method `created_at' for nil:NilClass
 new!

of course I meant 50 volumes of diaries, not biography!

Elin Danien's avatar Elin Dani…
Elin Danien said to Alice Schroeder
undefined method `created_at' for nil:NilClass
 new!

Well, one of these g=days I'll figure out the vicissitudes of computers....of course I meant 50 volumes of diaries, not biography!

 

Elin

Alice Schroeder's avatar Alice Sch…
Alice Schroeder said to Elin Danien
undefined method `created_at' for nil:NilClass
 new!

50 volumes of anything is daunting! congratulations on your ambitious task(s)... I totally get where you are coming from on both accounts. the blank piece of paper think is hard. there were spots in my book for which i found relatively little documentation and the quality of interviews was weaker than the rest. these were *by far* the hardest sections of the book to write. i would rather work with too much material than too little despite having 50 diaries to read! you'll get there. coming up with a good organizing system for retrieving information is key. keep me posted!

AK60's avatar AK60
AK60 said to Alice Schroeder
undefined method `created_at' for nil:NilClass
 new!

I admire all you ladies for your profession!I love to read books with peoples biographies. It is so interesting and inspiring.

 

Grandma Carol's avatar Grandma C…
Grandma Carol said to Alice Schroeder
undefined method `created_at' for nil:NilClass
 new!

I really respect Warren Buffett's biographer and understand what she had to do. I just spent 7 years researching for a  local poet/ storyteller's book. Each person I contacted had to trust my motives for the book I had in mind. I planned for the book to benefit a local schoolhouse being turned into a museum/family history center. Many of my writers had ties to that school. I wrote a bio for each writer in the book, over 100. Some of them were long gone and that required a more intensive search for living relatives etc. It was a wonderful project knowing that everyone handed their writing to me because they trusted me. I wanted the book to shed a favorable light on our county which is the smallest in the state. I think it is so very interesting to interview people and then put your insights into words. It must have been that way to monitor Mr. Buffett's everyday life. I think to do that with a well-known person, her book will be a best seller. I really admire Alice Schroeder for showing what women can do to know another person inside out then share it with her fans.

Beth Sanders's avatar Beth Sand…
Beth Sanders said to Alice Schroeder
undefined method `created_at' for nil:NilClass
 new!

The beauty is that every person has a biography in them. You don't have to be rich or famous to write a book. Some of the best biographies are of people who seemed to be everyday, ordinary people. Beth Sanders, www.lifebio.com

1 member loves this!
Susan Who's avatar Susan Who
Susan Who said to Beth Sanders
undefined method `created_at' for nil:NilClass
 new!

Oh, Beth - I completely agree with you.  For thirty years I have been a person that others just seem to want to tell their story to.  When I volunteered at Ground Zero two months after the attack, I was there to evaluate the recovery needs of the people who lived in the perimeters of the collapse.  Many of them had to leave their homes at the onslaught of the attack and, at the time of my encounter with them, some had just been allowed to return to their home hours before.  Instead of just listing their valid physical needs, I soon learned that just LISTENING to them meant more than any other service I could have offered.  Each of them had a 'story' to tell, each person had a different perspective, a different reaction, and a truly interesting (to me) approach as to how they would go on with their lives.  

Pure and Natural