LN - Project #3

English 5760
LITERARY NONFICTION
Dr. Richard Nordquist
Armstrong Atlantic State University
________________________________

Project #3

Profile

Interview Notes/Transcript Due for Discussion in Class: October 27, 2008
Draft Due for Peer Review in Class: November 3, 2008 (Please bring two hard copies to class for the peer review.)
Final Revision Due: November 10, 2008
Optional Feedback on Topics: In an e-mail, feel free to send me your topic ideas up to and including the evening of October 24, 2008.
Length: Approximately 1,300 words (roughly four or five double-spaced word-processed pages)

In this assignment, we will write a profile of an individual whom we have interviewed and closely observed. The person may be either well-known in the community (a minister, a local media figure, the owner of a popular night spot) or relatively anonymous (a Red Cross volunteer, a server in a restaurant, a school teacher or college professor). In any case, the focus of your essay should not be primarily personal (avoid interviews with mom or a boy- or girlfriend, for instance). Rather, through close observation and factual investigation, you should attempt to convey the distinct qualities of this individual as an individual or as a participant in some notable social, cultural, or historical event. Attend to the guidelines, suggestions, and requirements that follow.

For readings that accompany the assigned revisions of this project, see READINGS. Also, be sure to keep up with the previews and postscripts at NOTES and the weekly writing assignments at WRITING PROJECTS. Below are the readings due by our class meeting on October 27.

Required Readings in Zinsser's On Writing Well:
Read carefully Chapter 12 ("Writing About People: The Interview")
Review all of Part I ("Principles") and Part II ("Methods")

Required Online Readings: Interviewing Strategies & Skills
- "Conducting Effective Interviews" (for oral historians in particular, but advice is useful for all researchers)
- "Conducting Effective Oral Interviews" (for genealogists in particular, but advice is useful for all researchers)
- "General Guidelines for Conducting Effective Interviews," by Carter McNamara (1999).

Handouts:
Read carefully the three handouts "Conducting Interviews," the student essay "Nukes," and "Creating Profiles: After the Interview."

Online Reading: Interviews & Profiles
-"The American Man at Age Ten," by Susan Orlean

Composing Strategies

Be guided by the suggestions contained in Chapter 12 of On Writing Well, "Writing about People: The Interview." Let me highlight a few of Zinsser's precepts and observations:

Get people talking. Learn to ask questions that will elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid in their lives.

Choose as your subject someone whose job [or experience] is so important or so interesting or so unusual that the average reader would want to read about that person. . . . Choose, in short, someone who touches some corner of the reader's life.

The basic tools for an interview are paper and some well-sharpened pencils.

Make a list of likely questions.

Just say, "Hold it a minute, please," and write until you catch up.

[I]f the speaker's conversation is ragged–if his sentences trail off, if his thoughts are disorderly, if his language is so tangled that it would embarrass him–the writer has no choice but to clean up the English and provide the missing links."

Remember that you can call [or revisit] the person you interviewed.

What's wrong . . . is to fabricate quotes or to surmise what someone might have said.

Some additional things to keep in mind:

Getting Started. One way to prepare for this assignment is to read some engaging character sketches. In addition to the suggested readings listed above, you might want to look at recent issues of any magazine that regularly publishes interviews and profiles. One magazine that is particularly well known for its profiles is The New Yorker. In the online archive of The New Yorker, you'll find a recent profile of comedian Sarah Silverman ("Quiet Depravity," by Dana Goodyear).

Choosing a Subject. Give some serious thought to your choice of a subject--and feel free to solicit advice from family, friends, and co-workers. Remember that you're not at all obliged to choose a person who's socially prominent or who has had an obviously exciting life. Your task is to bring out what is interesting about your subject--no matter how ordinary this individual may at first appear.

Students in the past have written excellent profiles on a wide array of subjects, ranging from librarians and store detectives to card sharks and shrimpers. Keep in mind, however, that the present occupation of your subject may be inconsequential; the focus of the profile may instead be on your subject's involvement in some notable experience in the past: for example, a man who (as a teenager) sold vegetables door to door during the Depression, a woman who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, a woman whose family operated a successful moonshine operation, a school teacher who performed with a popular rock band in the 1970s. The truth is, wonderful subjects are all around us: the challenge is to get them talking.

Interviewing a Subject. Stephanie J. Coopman of San Jose State University has prepared an excellent online tutorial on "Conducting the Information Interview." For this assignment, two of the seven modules should be especially helpful: Module 4: Structuring the Interview and Module 5: Conducting the Interview.

Drafting & Revising. As you work on converting your transcripts into a coherent draft, feel free to e-mail any portion of your work to me for quick feedback. In moving from transcripts to profile, you face the task of how to focus your approach to the subject. Don't try to provide a life story in 1,300 words: attend to key details, incidents, experiences. But be prepared to let your readers know what your subject looks like and sounds like. The essay should be built on direct quotations from your subject as well as factual observations and other informative details. Be sure to review the strategies recommended on the previous assignment sheets–particularly strategies related to targeting an audience as well as revising and editing.

Editing. In addition to the usual strategies that you follow when editing, examine all of the direct quotations in your profile to see if any could be shortened without sacrificing significant information. By eliminating one sentence from a three-sentence quotation, for instance, your readers may find it easier to recognize the key point that you want to get across.

Format
Notes/transcripts due on October 27 should be word processed in a question-and-answer format. Be prepared to discuss in class (a) what parts of the interview are most likely to make their way into your final essay, and (b) what angle(s) or point(s) of focus you intend to follow in the essay.

Your draft (due on November 3) and the final version of the essay (due on November 10) should be word processed, following the standard format (see previous assignments). Following your essay, provide a brief self-evaluation by responding to these questions:

        1. What part of this profile do you like most, and why?
        2. What part gave you the most difficulty? Explain.
        3. What is your overall evaluation of the profile--its particular strengths and possible weaknesses?

Please be as specific as you can in your answers.

Your Name
e-mail address

Date

Title of Essay

Begin essay here...
Name of Assignment
Status (e.g., Draft #1)

approx. length: (in words)

English 5760 is taught by Dr. Richard Nordquist.
Armstrong Atlantic State University
Solms Hall 211C
11935 Abercorn Street
Savannah, Georgia 31419
912/344 2613

e-mail: literarynonfiction@mail.com

11 November 2008