WRIT 372: October 9th Post

Here’s some great information I found regarding writing science profiles, I think the information below is invaluable to anyone who is a little lost in this assignment!

•  When choosing your subject, don't overlook the person who may seem ordinary on the surface but who is quietly remarkable in some ways.

•  Use straight description sparingly. You don't want the effect of simply cataloging the things about the person that meet the eye. What you're after when you use description is the sense that outward appearance reveals or belie inward traits. For instance, habitual tossing of a head of long, luxurious hair or fingernail tapping may be worth mentioning as significant indicators of character.

•  In the descriptions you do use, try to appeal to different senses, if possible.

•  Use narrative liberally. Through narration, the individual may be shown in action. And as a part of telling the story of some of his or her experiences, it will be perfectly natural to have him or her speak in his or her own voice, through dialogue. You'll have "instant concreteness" and the most lively and convincing form of evidence for the dominant impression you are trying to create. Dialogue contributes to the narrative illusion of reality, and matters like a person's vocabulary and his/her grammar can be revealing.

•  Consider using the opinions of others in your profile. For example, the reaction of a person's children to his or her homecoming or of employees to his/her arrival at work can tell us a lot about him/her.

•  Control your tone carefully, as it is  very important in creating an effective character sketch. Consider early on in the writing process whether you want to write from a middle distance to your subject, from "up close," or with detachment. In the final stages of revision, be alert to the subtleties of word choice which largely create tone.

•  Avoid the temptation to moralize tediously about the character's vices and virtues and to over-sentimentalize, especially with beloved characters. This is particularly important when writing about everyday heroes.  Moralizing and over-sentimentalizing your subject will make your essay difficult to endure, and cause your audience to turn against your subject.

•  Don't describe the subject through only one incident, but instead, through a combination of incidents. If you focus too heavily on one incident, you run the risk of writing an essay that's a narrative about a particular event rather than a profile of an individual subject.

•  Since your profile is based on at least one interview with the subject, you'll be tempted to organize your essay in the order you asked the questions. Resist this temptation as it will make for a very boring essay. Instead, examine the answers you receive to those questions and see what sort of image of the subject emerges, then weave those responses into a more complex picture of this person. Return to your subject and ask follow up questions if you need to. And certainly never, ever organize your profile essay in question and answer format. This format is generally very disorganized and difficult for the reader to navigate.

•  Do not be an authorial presence in your profile. Do not frequently visibly ask your subject questions to which s/he has answers. For example, your essay shouldn't contain many statements such as "And then I asked Mr. Jones if he felt self conscious about going through other people's trash in order to find discarded shoes." Instead, you should make yourself as writer of the essay disappear. Mr. Jones, for example, should merely state that he never really feels self conscious when people see him going through the trash extracting discarded shoes as he disdains the opinions of others. See the difference? A good way to check and see if your authorial presence is intrusive is to go through the essay and circle all sentences that begin with the pronoun "I." If you have more than three, then your presence is becoming intrusive.