Can I write about (insert your favorite celebrity, athlete, musician, etc. here)?

No. I thought we covered this already.

An essential element of the profile is spending time with the person so you can observe them and interview them yourself. Reading interviews that they did with another person does not count. Watching them on TV does not count. If you cannot spend time in the same room with them and observe them, you can’t profile them. If you can’t sit down with them and conduct an interview, you can’t profile them.

Of course, if you know a celebrity, professional athlete, or some other kind of Famous Person and can arrange to observe and interview them, then you can certainly profile them. Understand that if you were not already in this position when you came into the classroom this semester, then it’s probably too late to start becoming BFFs with your favorite celebrity.

I have the perfect profile subject, but they’re really busy. Can I turn everything in later?

No and yes. Let me explain.

There are deadlines for each of the preliminary steps in the profile essay just like there were for the literacy narrative.^[1] Those deadlines are set up to help you make progress and to allow me to check in and confirm that you’re moving in the right direction. If your profile subject cannot meet with you in time for you to complete the preliminary steps, you won’t be able to submit a rough draft in time for you to complete peer reviews, and that’s not something I can delay. So, even though you found the “perfect” profile subject, they are not truly perfect if their schedule doesn’t work with your class deadlines. I’d recommend finding a different person to write about.

On the other hand, there are no late penalties for the final versions of the papers. So, if you are willing to absorb the late penalties on the preliminary drafting submissions, potentially lose the opportunity to give and receive peer reviews, and turn in the final version late^[2] in order to get the perfect profile subject, that’s a choice that you—a Fully Formed Adult—can make for yourself. Just make sure you completely understand what the trade offs are. Feel free to reach out to your professor to discuss the effects of choosing to delay your submissions to make sure you understand all the repercussions.

I already know everything about the person I’m interviewing. Do I still have to do an interview with them?

Yes. Just don’t ask them about the things you already know. Use what you know about them to create better, deeper questions that help you to discover things you didn’t know about them before. For example, if you were there with them when they were performing the lead character in the Big School Play at the end of their junior year, and you saw everything when their pants unexpectedly fell down in the middle of their big scene, don’t ask them to tell the story. Instead, ask them about how that experience affected them, whether others still talk about that time, if that event forced them to change their daily behaviors or choice of underwear in the future, and so on.

But also, keep in mind that the interview is not just a way for you to get to know your profile subject better. It is also an introduction to or practice with an important academic inquiry tool: qualitative research interviews. Setting up, planning for, conducting, transcribing, and analyzing interviews is an important skill to develop in many academic fields, so why not just go for it and try it out now? It’s good for you. You’ve got this.

How do I organize my profile essay?

This is kind of a tough one. With the literacy narrative, you’re focused on a story, and there’s only so many ways to tell a story. With a profile essay, you have an almost infinite variety of people to write about and an infinite variety of experiences and personalities and occupations and hobbies and whatnot to focus on, so the question of organization is trickier. There are, however, two major methods of organizing a profile essay that you should consider.

The first is to organize your profile as a narrative. This should feel familiar to you. Everyone’s life is a story with a beginning, a middle, and a now.^[3] So, you could organize your essay in the same way. Tell their story. Start at the beginning, help us see what they’ve gone through in their life, and explain where they are now.

If you do choose to go this route, keep in mind that you’re not trying to write their entire life story. This is not a biography. This is a profile. You’re trying to help us see this person from one specific angle. In other words, you’re trying to show us that this person is one particular thing.^[4] Consider the “Maine’s First Graffiti Artist” essay we read in class. We know that Rich is a father, but we don’t hear anything about that. We know he builds homes, but the author doesn’t go into detail about that, either. All she focuses on is his street art. You should do the same for your subject. Tell their story, but just tell the story of the particular aspect of their life that you’ve chosen to focus on.

The second way you might choose to organize your profile is as a description. If you take this path, you’ll assemble a large collection of details that build an overall impression of who the subject is. You can select different types of details to present that each focus on different aspects of the angle you’re working on: sensory details, dialogue, anecdotes,^[5] and examples, among others. There’s no need to put things together in chronological order here. Just make sure you have enough to provide us with a clear picture of who your profile subject is.

How much of the interview can I quote in the essay?

Well, the real answer to this question is really hard to provide. Some people do a 10-minute interview,^[6] and some talk for two hours,^[7] so there’s no real percentage that can cover all the possibilities. What remains constant is that you should only use the most important and relevant information from the interview in your essay.

Instead of asking how much you can quote, however, perhaps it would be better to think about how much of your profile essay should be direct quotation. I like to suggest that students follow this general guideline when putting their profile essays together: aim to include one short-ish quote per body paragraph. Please note that I called this a guideline—you could have some paragraphs with two short quotes, or maybe one or two paragraphs with no quotes, but shoot for an average of one short quote per paragraph. Everything else should be paraphrased or written in your own words. You can, and definitely should, use other information that you learned through your interview or research to write the rest of your essay, but try to save the really best stuff for the quotes. What really shows their personality or sums up their feelings the best? Quote that. Paraphrase or summarize everything else.

My profile subject says “uh” and “like” a lot during their interview. Should I include all of those in my quotes?

You are absolutely welcome to edit quotes to make them more useful or interesting in your profile. Let’s check out a couple of examples to see how this might happen.

If they use a lot of filler words,^[8] feel free to edit around them:

If the person misspeaks, you can edit their speech and replace it with what they actually meant to say. When you do this, enclose any words you wrote yourself in square brackets:

If you don’t want to edit their actual speech, you can also use [sic]^[9] to indicate that a mistake was made in the original speech that you are choosing to leave in the quote:^[10]

How much of myself should I include in this essay?

That is entirely up to you. As I mentioned in the introduction to this essay, we’re taking a little step away from the very personal, possibly informal or conversational literacy narrative and towards more formal, academic writing. How big of a step you take is up to you. Some profile writers choose to be very objective in their writing, never referring to themselves or their own experiences with their subjects, while others get very personal in their profiles. One profile I read about Jennifer Lawrence spends several paragraphs discussing how difficult it was to figure out where the two of them were going to meet, the weirdness of undressing together soon after meeting,^[11] what parts of Lawrence’s life and career specifically interested the author, and so on. The author talks a lot about herself and her experiences and feelings throughout the profile. The amount of yourself that you include in this essay is your decision alone.

How should I format my essay?

You should use the same style of formatting that you used for the literacy narrative: MLA style is preferred for English-department writing. You can follow the same sample MLA paper^[12] that you referenced for the literacy narrative. Make sure you have a title and a header. Punctuate your quotes correctly.

I took a really great picture of my profile subject. It’s obviously not writing, but can I still include it in my profile essay?

Yes!

I’m a huge fan of photographs that support your writing in a profile. If you read any professional profiles,^[13] you will see that virtually all of them include pictures of the person they’re writing about.^[14] I don’t require photos of your subject, but you should really consider including some.

I’m profiling someone who wants to be a singer. Can I include a recording of one of their songs in my profile essay?

Yes!

What you’re creating is a digital document, so you have a lot of tools you can use to augment your essay. You can include any audio or video recording that makes sense for your paper. If the subject is a painter, include a picture of one of their paintings. If they are an actor, embed a video of one of their best monologues. Put a song file in if they sing or produce music. However, just make sure you don’t put in things that don’t make sense for the person and angle you’re writing about.

My profile subject has affected a lot of people through their work/hobby/personality/weird choice of fashion. Can I quote some of those other people in my profile essay?

Yes!

While the majority of the quotes and information in your profile should come from your subject, there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t talk to other people who know them in order to get an outside perspective on who they are. You could also check out any information that’s publicly available on the Internet. Just make sure that contributions from outside sources don’t overshadow what your subject says for themselves.

Help! My profile subject wants to read my essay when I’m done. What should I say? How do I handle this?

First, relax. This is not a completely foreign experience. People read your essays all the time and tell you what they think about them.

On another level, though, I get it. You’re writing about this person and their life, and you’re giving your opinions about their choices and experiences and attitudes and behaviors, and it can all feel like you might be getting too judgy. This could certainly make for some awkward conversations afterwards.

So, do you have to let the subject read the profile essay after you finish it? No, you don’t, but you probably should. Not everyone has someone show that kind of interest in their life and put it all down in words. I’m sure they’d like to know how they’re seen and thought of. If you do decide to let the subject read your profile, make sure they understand that they don’t have editing privileges. They can’t request that you change the way you’ve described them or a story you’ve chosen to use to illustrate something about them.

Keep in mind that that doesn’t mean you can’t be kind in your writing, even as you’re being honest and open. This is a real person you’re writing about, someone who gave up a portion of their precious time to help you, so the least you can do is be respectful as you write.