Your Profile Ideas

I'm impressed. Your ideas are really great. There was no guarantee your ideas would be so interesting. In fact, sometimes students have awful ideas and I dread having to read their stories. (Don't tell them I said that.) But your ideas are truly interesting. So that's a good start. But it's only a start.

Below are your ideas. I've thrown out some things to think about with each story. You should read them all because some of the questions are common to all the stories. Plus, I think you can learn from what your classmates are doing. (And please don't feel confined by my thoughts. You are encouraged to ignore and push beyond and ask better questions and seek better answers. I just want to get you thinking.)

For next week -- I want you to have made contact with your profile person. To that end, I want their name. Full name, age and what town they live in. You should try to do some reporting with them this week. Even if it's just spending 15 minutes getting a feel for their back story. You might want to do lots of reporting with them because I'm tentatively planning to have rough drafts of your 1,000-2,000 word profiles due in two weeks. A little deadline panic is good for the soul.

Shout if you run into trouble this week... And a word of advice: These profiles take time! Do not wait until the last moment to do them. It takes time to report the SHOWING details rather than just have someone give you 10 minutes of an interview.

The hot dog vendor guy in the Loop
Who is this guy? How did he end up selling hot dogs on the Loop? Does he like the job? Why? Why hot dogs? Does he love hot dogs? Does he eat hot dogs in his off-hours? What does he see on the Loop at night? He must witness so much.

The anti-abortion protester 
What makes them do this? How strongly must they feel to inject themselves so publicly into such a touchy subject. This a story in some ways about vision -- how they see the world, how  the world sees them standing their with their signs, how they see the women going to the clinics (pity? hate? love?), how the women see them. Do they ever feel guilty? Have they ever had doubts about the certitude expressed by their signs? Or do they wish they could do even more? You really want to PUT the reader outside the clinic with the protester, letting everything unfold, describing the scene.

Mom loses one child, now adopting another
This is a story about many things, on many levels. And it's heavy, emotional. So to avoid writing maudlin, purple prose, try to stick to descriptions. Don't say the mom is sad, SHOW how she is sad: How she puts away her dead child's clothes, how she buried her daughter and then came home to eat a cold turkey sandwich. This is very much an internal story, inside the mother's head, but you want to try to look for ways to show how those internal thoughts played out in actions and deeds. This recalls that famous six-word story that is attributed to Hemingway: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

The crossing guard
A joyful scene. A story about the old protecting the young. An old man with a purpose. Do the kids lend him a daily dose of youth? Does he impart wisdom? What is the relationship between the old ma and the kids he sees just for a few minutes every day? Ask him to talk to you about close calls with cars, or if he has favorite kids or what was the best moment on the job? The worst? You're searching for anecdotes from the past. "Oh that one time he noticed that Mary wasn't wearing a coat on a cold, cold day, and he knew that her mom was struggling with drink, and he lent her his coat for the day." Something like that. And these anecdotes can be weaved into the crossing scene that you witness.

Bad neighbor and his art
You need to try to get this guy to talk. We talked about this. But even if he doesn't want to talk, then you could do a story about what it's like to be this guy's neighbor. He is trying to communicate with the world via his front yard. And those closest to his message, who must see if every day, how do they feel about it? Let the reader see this through their eyes. You have one ready moment --- the house for sale that sits and sits.

Cheery checkout lady
Why is she so cheery? What's that about? Does she actually like the students? How does she view the students? Does she have favorites? Hard to get into this, but if you spend some time with her, try to get a sense if she's aware at all about the class issues at play. She's working a $8/hour job. She's lower middle class. Her customers are mostly from the top economic tier. (I'm guessing.) How does she bridge that gap? Does she have kids? What does she like about her job? What does she not like?

Librarian
What's it like to be a librarian in this digital age? Are you a guardian and guide to information, or to books? Does it matter? Is there a need for librarians? How is the job changing, especially at the university library?

Campus police officer
The balancing act between being a cop and being a friend, policing kids but not policing them too hard. Again, this is about seeing him in action, so you can show this rather than just tell.

Stan Musial's waitress
This is a story about a woman's memories. But you want to ground it in the action the present. So you have her doing her job now, today, and using that as a vehicle for her recollections about her most famous customer. Dig for great anecdotes that highlight Stan the Man -- but also highlight her.

A monk and nun fall in love
Again, this story is built upon something that is in the past: How two folks left their religious orders for love. And what does that mean to them now? So you need to capture, in scenes, showing not telling, how deep and powerful their love is that it -- in some ways, and it's a stretch but worth thinking about -- was stronger than God's love. They went with mortal love rather than eternal love. Not that they gave up religion, but still. So we need to really see and feel these two people.