An autobiography ends at page 316. It sums up the author as generous, funny, brave, and successful. The book explains how childhood shaped the adult, how the failure they faced as a teenager became a lesson, and how the mistakes they made in their twenties eventually became what taught them to become successful people.
But beneath the published manuscript, there are another 316 pages. Same life, childhood, marriages, scandals, ambitions, and failures. But this version has no redemption arc or lesson.
The thing is, Autobiographers have the same thing every other writer has: editing privileges.
In Colleen Hoover’s Verity, writer Lowen Ashleigh is hired to finish bestselling author Verity Crawford’s book series after a serious accident leaves her unable to write. While going through Verity’s home, Lowen discovers something she was not supposed to find… an unfinished autobiography containing extremely disturbing accounts of Verity’s thoughts, marriage, and family. However, (SPOILER ALERT) we later discover that Verity was doing an exercise where she writes the autobiography as exactly the opposite of what she is actually thinking.
What if we did the Verity exercise to actual famous autobiographies?
- Benjamin Franklin: The Version Without Self-Improvement
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Benjamin Franklin writes about his famous system of thirteen virtues, explaining that knowing what was right wasn’t enough: “I concluded at length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping.”
Franklin’s autobiography constantly repeats the theme of self-improvement and the goal to reach a “better self.” Now reverse it…
The Verity version of Franklin wouldn’t be interested in telling us which goals he wanted to develop. It would document every moment when his ambition was also useful because it made Franklin look like a good leader. It would acknowledge that as his primary motivation. His Verity manuscript would have to ask: How much of “becoming Benjamin Franklin” was becoming the person Benjamin Franklin wanted other people to see? Additionally, Ben Franklin was known as a significant “womanizer” but didn’t want to include that fact in his autobiography as it did not portray him in a positive light. His Verity autobiography may involve quotes from letters he wrote that reflect his womanizing nature and somewhat creepy attraction to older women: “Older women possess a charm that youth can only aspire to understand.”
- Tina Fey: The Version Without The Joke
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Tina Fey is a master at controlling the punchline. Because, well, that is her job as a comedy writer. Fey takes relationships, beauty standards, motherhood, and her career in comedy and turns them into stories funny enough to make stressful subjects feel manageable. Discussing the pressure surrounding women’s appearances in her autobiography Bossypants, Fey writes, “I think the first real change in women’s body image came when JLo turned it butt-style. That was the first time that having a large-scale situation in the back was part of mainstream American beauty. Girls wanted butts now.”
The published version gets the joke; the Verity version wouldn’t.
Imagine Fey having to write Bossypants without being allowed to make herself the funniest person in the room. Every awkward moment stays awkward, every insecurity stays uncomfortable, and every failure stays without a punchline. Because, let’s admit it, humor is a form of editing, too. But this also raises the question: is editing a curated version of someone’s identity always a bad thing? After all, Fey’s comedy appealed widely to audiences because it brought levity to heavy subjects.
- Malcolm X: The Version Before He Knew How The Story Ended
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Malcolm X’s autobiography almost seems designed for this experiment. It contains multiple versions of one person: Malcolm Little, “Detroit Red,” Malcolm X, and finally El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. The entire book is, in one way or another, about becoming someone else.
Describing the transformation that began with reading while he was incarcerated, Malcolm writes, “I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life.” The issue is, Malcolm knows what the transformation eventually becomes because he has already seen it play out.
But now, the Verity version takes away the ending. Malcolm has to write about himself before he knows which Malcolm will survive. He would have to admit that the person history remembers was once a person who had no idea who he would become. We tend to read autobiographies backwards. The kid who liked books was obviously destined to become a writer. The rebel teenager was obviously destined to become a revolutionary who fights injustice. The ambitious student who everyone called “nerdy” and a “try-hard” was obviously destined to become a president. But people don’t experience their lives that way. They experience them one confusing, terrifying, daunting decision at a time.
- Maya Angelou: The Version Without The Lesson
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Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings turns everything into a lesson.
Angelou writes, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
That line sounds like it belongs in Verity. What happens when an author has already told the truth, but we still expect that truth to arrive as a story with a beginning, middle, and end?
The hidden manuscript might contain memories that don’t fit or the moments that never actually became meaningful.
That version would probably be less satisfying to read and would definitely sell worse. We like autobiographies because they bring comfort by making lives feel comprehensible and inspiring. The Verity version would threaten that comfort.
- Barack Obama: The Version Without Political Results
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In Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father, he writes, “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
In a way, autobiographies are projection screens. The reader sees the politician, comedian, revolutionary, or celebrity the author has decided to introduce.
But imagine the opposite…
Obama writes Dreams from My Father as a young person trying to figure out where he belongs, without knowing he will eventually become the President of the U.S.
The autobiography is already a version. Franklin can choose the lesson, Fey can choose the joke, Malcolm X can choose the transformation, Angelou can choose the memory, Obama can choose the identity found.
None of that makes those books dishonest, but it does make them very specific versions of a far more complex person. Verity gets interesting beyond the thriller, because the horror isn’t the secret or a plot twist; it’s discovering that there might always be another version of a person behind the one they choose to publish.
Every autobiography has a messier manuscript underneath it, and after Verity, that might be the creepiest thing about reading someone’s life story.
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