Not telling us who you’re writing about

This might seem like a silly thing to put in the list of most common mistakes, but it’s one that comes up far too frequently. The way this usually happens is that a student decides to write about a close family member. Then, in their introduction, they say that they’re writing about, for example, “my dad.” Then, for the rest of the paper, they refer to “my father,” “my dad,” “Dad,” “Daddy,” and so on. Notice what we, the reader, don’t know here? We don’t know who their father is! All we know is their relationship. You should absolutely write the name of the person you’re profiling in your introduction. Even if you mention the name in the title, you should have it in the introduction, too.

The only time that this rule doesn’t hold is if you are protecting the identity of your profile subject. This might come up if you’re writing about a minor^[1] or if the person you’re writing about prefers not to be identified and connected to the stories or experiences they share with you. Imagine someone from a very conservative area who identifies as queer or transgender and doesn’t want their family or neighbors to know because their safety or sanity could be threatened. In this situation, you absolutely can change the person’s name to protect their identity, but you should tell the reader in the introduction that you are doing that. You can add a simple comment like this:

There are a few different ways you can express that you’ve changed their name, so don’t feel like this is the only way.

Even if you change their name, though, you should still tell us in the very first paragraph who you’re writing about. That part doesn’t change.

Writing your profile like a Q&A

This is a really big mistake and a really common one, and it’s kind of easy to see how it happens. I require you to do an interview, and then I require you to transcribe the interview, writing down every word of every question and every answer. So then, when you sit down to write the profile, it can be tempting to just copy and paste large sections of their responses into the paper and call it done. That is not, however, what a profile is.

If you find yourself talking about what question you asked, stop, check yourself, and delete it. You will rarely if ever need to mention or quote the question that you asked the subject. Instead, focus on what you want us to know about your subject, and show us that that’s true with the information you learned and the quotes you decided to include. The focus shouldn’t be on you and what you did.^[2] The focus should be on the subject and how you want us to see them.

Quoting your subject too much (or not quoting them enough)

Balancing the amount of quoted material in your paper versus how much of your own writing is there is a tough act to get right, and I don’t think there’s a perfect amount—like 10% or whatever—that I could tell you to include.

My general guideline^[3] is to have one short quote^[4] per paragraph of your essay. If you take a look at the professionally written profiles I’ve assigned you to read, you’ll see that this tends to hold true. There is some variation, yes. Some paragraphs have two short quotes; some paragraphs have none. But overall, it leans towards one quote per paragraph. Aim for that and you should be good.

Giving your essay a terrible title

Since we talked about this pretty extensively with the literacy narrative, I don’t want to beat a dead horse. However, I will risk slapping the corpse lightly a few times just to make sure you understand. A profile essay titled “Profile Essay” is terrible. Along the same lines, if you give your essay the same name as your subject,^[5] it doesn’t really get your reader’s attention because they have no idea who those people are, and their names don’t really communicate anything other than their identity.

Instead, try to add a title that combines the person’s name with something related to how you want your reader to see them. Consider some of the titles of the professionally written profiles I’ve assigned you to read:

See how they all combine the name of the person or musical group that they’re profiling with some significant description or fact or statement? That helps the reader know who they’re going to read about and something about what they’re going to encounter as they do. I don’t require you to include the subject’s name in the title, though, so feel free to be creative with the title if something else works better.

Just don’t be boring with your title.

Not making it clear how you want your reader to see your subject

Just like in the literacy narrative, you want to make sure that your reader has some sense of your main idea by the time they get to the end of the introduction. This main idea, your thesis statement, should make it really clear how you want the reader to see your profile subject. Your main idea should not tell the reader who you’re going to talk about. For example, don’t say, “In my profile, I’m going to talk about my great-grandfather.” Instead, tell the reader who you think your profile subject is or how you want us to see them. Again, you could say something like, “My great-grandfather, Bill Richards, is a humble man who would prefer not to tell people he’s a decorated war pilot.”

Not getting enough information from your subject during the interview

This essay’s word count is longer than the literacy narrative. You need to put 1500 words together to get full credit for this paper instead of just 1000, so you need to make sure you get enough information from your interview so that you can boil it down and write a decently long paper. Too many times, I see students turn in transcripts of their interviews that have five questions in it, and the profile subject responds in one sentence or less to each one. That’s not enough information to write a good profile with!

You really need to plan out your interview well so that you have good, probing questions that explore the angle you want to write about. If your profile subject only provides brief answers to deep, probing questions, figure out how to get them to give you more. For example, if you ask them, “What experience from your childhood impacted you the most?” and they answer with, “The day I learned that my grandmother died,” don’t let them stop there! Ask a follow-up question: “Tell me more about that,” or “Where were you when you found out? How did you feel? How did that affect you?” or “Would you mind telling me the story of how that happened?” or anything else that gets them to tell the story in detail.

It’s also possible that you don’t know your angle before your interview. If that’s the case, then you will need to plan questions that can help you explore the person’s life and help you find one, and then you need to focus on that angle and ask good probing questions.

Good interviews don’t just happen—they require planning and work before you ever get there—and knowing when you have enough good material is also a skill that journalists develop throughout their careers. You shouldn’t feel like you’re an expert going into this, but you do need to put some effort into it beforehand. Also, keep in mind that, if you start working on your essay early enough, you will figure out pretty quickly if you have the information you need to write a profile that’s sufficiently long. When you realize that you don’t have enough information, you can reach back out to your subject and ask more questions. These follow-up questions can be done over email, if needed, so don’t hesitate to send them and use the answers.

Focusing too much on yourself in your writing

One big mistake that students can make in their profiles is trying to make the essay about themselves instead of about their subjects. After a full paper of talking about what they learned about their mother, for example, a student might spend the last couple of paragraphs going on and on about what this means to the student, how they appreciate their mom, what they want to do differently with their own life because of their mother, and so on. That’s not really the point of a profile, right? Talking about yourself does not help the reader understand who your profile subject is, so try to avoid it.

You can certainly talk about your experiences or actions or decisions in your profile, but it should all be done in the service of helping us understand who your profile subject is. The minute you stop trying to show us who your subject is is the minute when your profile goes off the rails.