A biography is the true story of a person's life. An autobiography is the true story of a person's life when it is written by that person. The author writes about him- or herself in an autobiography. Autobiographies are typically written in the first person because of this.

Like a biography, an autobiography usually tells about the important events in a person's life in chronological order. Important details can include places where the author has lived, important people in the author's life, and life-changing events that the author experienced. When an autobiography is told in chronological order, the author usually writes about the circumstances of their birth, childhood experiences, and educational background. Anecdotes about these life stages and experiences are common.  

Autobiographies are often about people who have achieved some level of fame. In this case, parts of the autobiography would explain the author's rise or journey to fame. The author's career is usually discussed, as is if they married or had children. Some autobiographies are written by young adults, while others are written later in life. For example, Helen Keller wrote her autobiography, The Story of My Life, when she was a student in college. She went on to live for over fifty years after her autobiography was published.

An autobiography is an account of one's life written by oneself. This means that if you wrote an autobiography, the person who is the topic of the paper would be you! As far as characteristics of an autobiography, it would contain many of the same topics as a biography. An autobiography often includes the date and place of birth, stories from childhood or a young age, and may include a difficult time in one's life or great accomplishments. While it is not necessary, most autobiographies are written in first-person. The first-person point of view is when an author uses words like "me" and "I" and makes it obvious that the author is also the character in the story. Autobiographies do not have any length specifications. They can be the length of a novel, or they can be much shorter. It all depends on what part of his or her life the author intends to write about. 

What are the characteristics, or features, of the autobiographical novel?

The most primary characteristic of an autobiographical novel is the use of the literary fiction techniques relating to autobiographical fiction, or the combination of the elements of autobiography and fiction. These may seem at first glance like fundamentally incompatible genres, but the elements that differentiate the autobiographical novel from strict nonfiction are largely symbolic, if a bit exaggerated. The autobiographical novel by its nature need only include the author as a protagonist, even if the settings and characters are allusions to real places and people or even complete fabrications.

Autobiographical novels usually have plots that concern profound events in the authors life and almost always revolve around some cognitive or spiritual change within the protagonist. Relationships, war, or family tragedy are common topics, and by definition, the subject matter of the novel would have to revolve around experiences with which the author is familiar.

What are the characteristics, or features, of the autobiographical novel?

While some have said that all novels are autobiographical, an autobiographical novel is a distinct form in which the author writes about his or her own life but in a fictive guise. In an autobiographical novel, the writer hews closely to the events of his life, but characteristically adopts a fictive name and persona, and may change events, places or chronology to highlight a thematic point. Often autobiographical novels are written in the third person rather than the first person, allowing the writer to put distance between herself and the autobiographical events being described.

A good example of an autobiographical novel is You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe. Although Wolfe is talking about himself and events in his own life, he casts himself as a character called George Webber, who like him, is a writer, who like him, is rejected in his hometown, and who, like Wolfe, travels to New York and Berlin. In Berlin, Webber, like Wolfe, is celebrated as a writer and grows increasingly disenchanted with Nazism. 

What are the characteristics, or features, of the autobiographical novel?

The autobiographical novel is a hybrid genre in which authors take elements from their actual lives but present them in fictionalized form. Autobiographical novels can be closely related to a slightly different genre called the "roman à clef" (novel with a key) in which fictional characters correspond to actual people. The main difference between the two genres is that while a roman à clef does not necessarily include the author as a character, the autobiographical novel usually has the author as a protagonist. 

There are significant differences between an autobiographical novel and a nonfictional autobiography. The first is that the former may blend fact with fiction, recasting events to make a more satisfying story, while works that claim to be nonfictional are often castigated for lying if they depart from actual historical events, although this line may become blurred in New Journalism (e.g. the work of Hunter Thompson). 

Autobiographical novels vary as much as their authors do but one very common pattern is that of the bildungsroman, the novel of coming of age. Many autobiographical novels incorporate coming of age narratives including The Bell Jar, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Look Homeward, Angel, and Charlotte Brontë's The Professor and Villette.

What are the characteristics, or features, of the autobiographical novel?

An autobiographical novel is a work of fiction that is based on the life of the author. It is different from an autobiography because it does not claim to be entirely true, but is instead mostly fiction with connections to the author's life. The author has written a book based on his/her life, but distanced the novel from reality in some way by incorporating fictional events and characters. Autobiographical novels often include intense themes such as sex, war, and family troubles which an author may not be comfortable exposing in a true autobiography. Some examples of autobiographical novels include: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, and the Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.