is the profile for which you will select a subject (the
person you will be interviewing), and conduct an interview either in person (considering the
circumstances, only if you and your subject are comfortable meeting in person while socially distancing),
or by Skype or Zoom. No phone interviews since you need to see your subject as they respond to your
questions. You may not interview anyone with whom you are on a social basis. For example, you may
not interview friends, roommates, significant others or relatives. That familiarity changes the interview
process by preventing you from asking certain questions and allowing you to ask others you would not
ask a stranger. Your subject does not have to be a complete stranger. You may interview teachers,
coaches and other individuals you know on a professional basis. And of course, you may interview
complete strangers you find interesting. All choices will need to be cleared with me. You will need to
include your subject’s contact information on the last page of your essay once you have finished writing
it.
Choose your subject carefully. Your goal is to find something unique in the individual you have decided
to introduce to your audience. You will need to develop a controlling theme, the main point around
which all your information will revolve. Without this controlling theme, you will end up including
unnecessary information, and when an interview is done well, you end up with more information than the
audience needs to have. For instance, Cable’s controlling theme in “The Last Stop” is that this is a
business like any other. He may not have necessarily known this prior to conducting the interview and he
likely gathered much more information than we got to see. Yet based on what he observed, what his
subjects told him, how they responded to his questions, and what he could see around him, he arrived at
the theme and worked the narrative around it, leaving out anything that was not relevant.
We don’t have to look far to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. There are people around us
performing everyday tasks, individuals we rarely consider, and they often have interesting stories to tell.
Find someone in whom you are genuinely interested, and consider the message you would like to convey
through the controlling theme. Profiles can also be used as means by which to make a statement, as in
Coyne’s profile, “The Last Good-Bye: Mother’s Day in Federal Prison.” She is using her subject to make
a social commentary, in her case indirectly criticizing the justice system. So does the student essay,
“Home,” in which the writer is drawing our attention to the way our society regards the homeless.
Profilers also generally have a Vantage Point, the physical location from which a writer describes a
scene. Vantage points can be stationary or moving, or a combination of both. Since our current
circumstances may prevent you from meeting your subject face to face, most of you will be using a
stationary vantage point, one in which you remain fixed in one location rather than moving about. You
can still observe a great deal from a fixed location – in addition to observing your subject’s reaction to
your questions, what can you see behind them? Hanging on their walls? Placed on their shelves? If
someone walks in during your interview and interacts with your subject, pay close attention to the
interaction in case it is relevant to your theme. Remember, your focus however, is on one subject only.
You will need to prepare questions in advance to “meeting” your subject. Profiles involve quite a bit of
research. The more you know about your subject, the more interesting your questions will be. Don’t ask
questions you could have answered yourself by looking them up. For example, avoid asking a subject
how long they have been working at their job (if the job is the reason you have selected them). Find this
out in advance and base your question on your findings. The more you know about your subject prior to
interviewing them, the more meaningful your questions and controlling theme.
Your interview will be presented in the form of a narrative, just like the examples I have assigned for your
readings. Be sure to offer a good balance of paraphrased and quoted information you gather from your
subject, and allow your audience to see them by offering physical descriptions throughout the narrative.
And don’t forget to enjoy this opportunity to have a conversation with an interesting subject.
