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7 November
As a guide to revising and editing your Profile, check out the
grade sheet for
this assignment. When you submit your profile on Wednesday,
be sure to identify (at the end of the essay, alongside your self-evaluation) the name of
the magazine you have targeted for publication.
4 November
Through this weekend, continue to check Profiles page for
grading checklist as well as updates on revision strategies and submission guidelines.
29 October
Responses to Profile Drafts
are now online at this link.
22 October
Responses to Interview Transcripts
are now online at this link.
 Visit NOTES for
previews & postscripts.
UPDATE 20 October
 Visit Profiles Online for new additions.
First draft of profile is due Wednesday, 27 October.
Final revision is due Monday, 8 November Wednesday, 10
November (new extended deadline).
UPDATE 17 October
For Wednesday, 20 October 1999: As you work on
fashioning the transcript of your initial interview for today's class (see Profiles
assignment), please also turn to Profiles
Online and read the sample (online) interviews and profiles that are linked
to this page. The various Q&A interviews represent more polished versions of the
transcripts that we're working on. Make sure that by this date you've read
the profile "The Inner
Bezos," by Chip Bayers.
UPDATE 7 October
Visit PROFILES
ONLINE for links to sample interviews and profiles. This new page will
be frequently updated over the next few weeks.
UPDATE
6 October
Below you will find references to a chapter by
William Zinsser titled "Writing about People: The Interview." Copies of
this handout are in the envelope propped up by a can of Spring Linen Air Freshener on the
chair outside my office (Victor 1-10). Please pick up a copy next
time you're on campus.
(Btw, don't forget to visit the Reading Walden page
for the discussion questions for our online class meetings [October 6 and 11]).
Profile Due Dates
Send me an e-mail message by Monday, October 11, suggesting at
least one possible topic for this assignment and briefly explaining your choice.
Let me know if you're struggling to find a suitable subject, and I'll do what I can
to help locate someone willing to work with you.
Length:
1,300-1,500 words (approximately five to seven double-spaced word-processed pages)
The Profile Assignment
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 politician, a
media figure, the owner of a car dealership) or relatively anonymous (a waitress, a
junkie, a 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.
Send me an e-mail message by Monday, October 11, suggesting at least
one possible topic for this assignment and briefly explaining your choice. Let me
know if you're struggling to find a suitable subject, and I'll do what I can to help
locate someone willing to work with you.
Guidelines
Be guided by the suggestions contained in Chapter 12 of On Writing Well,
"Writing about People: The Interview" (handout, available outside my office in
Victor Hall). 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. (100)
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. (104)
The basic tools for an interview are paper and some
well-sharpened pencils. (104)
Make a list of likely questions. (105)
Just say, "Hold it a minute, please," and
write until you catch up. (107)
[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." (109)
Remember that you can call [or revisit] the person
you interviewed. (109-10)
What's wrong . . . is to fabricate quotes or to
surmise what someone might have said. (115)
Some additional things to keep in mind:
1. Prepare for this assignment by reading some good profiles (assigned readings and
handouts). .
2. Give a lot of thought to your choice of a subject--and feel free to solicit advice from
family, friends, and co-workers. Don't feel 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. In the past, students have written some excellent profiles on a wide array
of subjects: school teachers, waitresses, librarians, store
detectives, medical professionals, card sharks, musicians, barbers, pimps, ministers,
thieves, pilots, shrimpers–even one Amway distributor. 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 or event in the
past. Students have written superior profiles of the first African-American who
applied (in the early 1960s) to be a student at Armstrong; of a man who (as a teenager)
sold vegetables door to door during the Depression; of a woman who marched with Dr. Martin
Luther King; of a woman whose family operated a successful moonshine operation; of a
musician who performed with some of the big bands of the 1930s and ‘40s. The truth
is, wonderful subjects are all around us: the challenge is to get them talking and then to
find a focus. By this Monday (October 11), let me know whom you've chosen–or if
you've hit a wall in your quest for the right
subject (if necessary, I'll arrange an introduction for you).
3. Examine the following sites: Conducting Effective
Interviews, Conducting
Interviews, and Creating
Profiles: After the Interview.
4. In moving from transcripts to profile, we'll face the major task of focusing our
approach to the subject. Don't attempt to provide a life story in 1,500 words: attend to
key details, incidents, experiences. And be prepared to let us know exactly what your
subject looks like and sounds like. The essay should be built primarily on direct
quotations from your subject as well as factual observations and informative details.
5. Although your primary concern in the profile is, of course, with the person you have
interviewed, the circumstances surrounding your encounter with the subject may be
incorporated into the essay–if such details serve a purpose. Notice that Bob Greene
provides this information in different ways, employing the first person in "Lines
from the Heart" and the third person (the "visitor" who "sat nursing a
drink by the bar") in "Song of the Powder Room."
6. Review the strategies recommended in class and on the previous assignment
sheet–particularly strategies related to targeting an audience as well as revising
and editing.
Format
Transcripts simply need to be word processed in a question-and-answer format. For
peer review, please also
have on hand two photocopies of the transcript. Following the transcript, please write me
a brief note explaining (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.
The final version of the essay should be word processed, following the format below.
Submit the essay in a pocket folder (no
clasps, staples, or plastic spines): most recent version on top, rough(er) versions below.
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.
Manuscript format
On November 10 (extended deadline), bring to class the finished profile
(word processed, normal 12-point font, clearly and sharply printed) as well as all
transcripts and drafts. Double space all text. Set one-inch margins: top, bottom,
left, and right.
Your Name
Profile
Your e-mail address
Draft (1 or 2)
Date draft is due
approx.# of words
Tentative Title of Your Essay
Begin essay here . . . |
