Stick to your task by leading them through a brief enactment of your subject or scene.
Letters, diaries, papers, interview transcripts will often reveal defining and intimate details of your subject.
When mixed in the right balance, their light can match the color tone of your subject (moonlight, streetlights, fluorescents, whatever).
Writing biography is always a juggling of perspectives, an attempt to show the daily random life of your subject while imposing the logic of history and argument.
You set your pencil on the paper and keep your eye firmly locked on the face of your subject, and then you let the pencil begin to move.
The standard rules of portraiture say that there should be a "key" (brighter) light to one side of your subject and "fill in" light on the other.
Spend one or two weeks taking photos (at least two dozen) of your subject, then consult a photography or art instructor for help choosing your best work.
You'll find new areas of your subject which make you tick, and they'll take you off in new directions you hadn't even considered before.
It's one thing to travel the routes of your subject, another to contract his near-fatal diseases, as Norman Sherry did for Graham Greene.
It would be a mistake, however, to underestimate the examiners' knowledge of your subject.
Have you developed a strong interest in a particular aspect of your subject as an undergraduate?
