by Suzanne Lieurance
Most writer bios are technically accurate and completely forgettable. They list credentials in the safest possible order, use language that could belong to anyone, and leave the reader with a vague sense of a writer rather than a specific one. If you’ve ever written a bio and then felt vaguely embarrassed reading it back, you know exactly what this feels like.
The problem isn’t that you haven’t accomplished enough. The problem is that most bio-writing advice tells you to lead with credentials when what you should actually be leading with is voice.
A Bio That Sounds Like You
A bio that sounds like you does three things. It tells the reader what you write and why — not just what your publishing history is. It includes at least one specific, true detail that makes you a person rather than a resume. And it uses the same voice your writing uses, so someone who reads your bio and then reads your work feels like they’re encountering the same mind.
Start by reading your current bio out loud. Does it sound like something you would actually say? Or does it sound like something you wrote because you thought that’s what a bio was supposed to sound like? That gap is where the rewrite lives.
Then try this: write your bio in first person first, as if you were telling a reader about yourself directly. Don’t worry about the third-person version yet — just write what you’d want someone to know. What you write. What drives you toward it. One thing about you that a reader would find genuinely interesting.
When you convert it to third person, keep the honesty. Keep the specific detail. Keep the line that felt slightly too real to include — because that line is almost certainly the best one.
Your Bio Is a Tool
Your bio is a visibility tool that works for you even when you’re not in the room. It’s how editors decide whether to look at your work, how readers decide whether to follow you, how the writing world begins to form an impression of who you are.
Make it sound like you. That’s the only version worth having.
This month at Write by the Sea, we’re focused on Visibility as a Writer. Read the June Writing Challenge here and find out what we’re practicing all month.
Suzanne Lieurance is the author of over 40 published books and a transformational Law of Attraction coach for writers who are ready to stop waiting to feel like the real thing. At Write by the Sea, she guides writers through the identity shift that changes everything — not just the writing, but the whole life built around it. She is the publisher of Manifesting Monthly magazine and the host of Monday Morning Manifestors.
