How To Write An Author Bio That Isn't Boring AF
Make it interesting, funny, weird, whatever — but make it sound like YOU
Okay, look, so no one really likes writing an author bio. Partly because it feels agonisingly weird to write about yourself, and partly because most bios are generally pretty meh.
Either you have very little to put in terms of fancy and illustrious places you’ve been published — or if you do, your bio ends up looking like a nonsensical list of random words: “so-and-so’s stories have appeared in Nutwanger Monthly, The Grapefruit Review, and Binoncular Friday.”
And yeah, sure, there’s some basic info that’s useful to put in a bio (more on that in a minute), but after a while they all start to look like LinkedIn posts…
That is, until you come across a bio that says something genuinely interesting about the writer, or makes you laugh, or adds an extra layer to the whole reading experience. Those bios are the ones you remember — and might even prompt you to go find out more about the author. (Which is what a bio is really for.)
So, since this month’s Forever Workshop is all about How to Make Your Writing Funny, I thought we could also try making our author bios a bit more entertaining, too.
Follow the steps below to build your brand new bio, then share yours in the comments for feedback from your fellow friendly neighbourhood Community Corner writers!
Let’s go:
The Main Ingredients of an Author Bio:
Before we mess about with our bios, let’s first pin down what info we definitely need to include:
STEP 1:
Your name (or pen name)
Where people can find more of your work, or get in touch with you online (website, socials)
Easy so far. Just a few points to remember here:
Author bios are always in third person 🙄 eg: Your Name is a poet from the Sargasso Sea.
Keep the contact info simple (keep everything simple if you can — word count is a commodity here)
And that’s kinda it — arguably the bare minimum you need to put in any bio.
The rest is fair game to play with…
But since we usually only have between 50-100 words, we might as well make it memorable!
So let’s think about what else we can add to it.