What makes a good profile essay

Instead, the answers of the questions should be examined closely for an emerging image of the subject. The responses can then be incorporated into a more complex picture of the subject. A quality profile essay should incorporate a vivid word picture of the subject.

Include specific details, such as how the subject looks, talks, dresses, smells and is motivated. Information from others in the essay should serve to describe the subject and not take on its own life. Carefully select and arrange details so that they communicate your attitude. This interpretive element is what categorizes the profile essay as a genre and separates it from other forms of narrative and descriptive writing, such as the biography.

Since Jake has always been an admirer of the weather, severe storms always brought him a thrill. His interest in weather peaked after an F-4 tornado struck a city near his home in November of His family drove through Van Wert, Ohio, to see the damage.

A profile essay is a literary work that focuses on description of a person people, event, or place and its goal is, first and foremost, being informative. This type of essay should function as a work of journalism — be factual and descriptive, while retaining traits of a literary work: presenting your perspective on the subject and providing an interesting, immersive experience for the reader.

Writing a profile essay is difficult work — in just a few pages you have to establish a character, their environment, what makes them tick and your opinion on it all. But this work can be fulfilling, and, for many, a welcome chance to flex their writing muscles. So, how do you write a profile essay? The first step of writing a successful profile essay is reading other profile essays.

Pick up a magazine that frequently publishes them The New Yorker, Esquire, et al. Even though the ones you're reading are likely to be about celebrities, try and see what makes reading these essays interesting other than that. Note how the subject of the essay is established early — in a ten-paragraph essay, by the second paragraph, you already kind of feel like you know the person it's about.

Next, pick the subject of your essay. It will be easier to write if the subject in the case that it is a person immediately seems to have had remarkable experiences celebrity, veteran, casino robber , but essays where the subject is not immediately intriguing can be very interesting to read, and the opposite is true as well — it's all in the hands of the writer. If you are writing a simple college essay, it is better to write about a subject you know personally.

Not about a president or a movie start. When writing a profile, you need to avoid short explanations. For example, the street was full of people. Instead try to make your story interesting and engaging, making readers a part of the story. Every paragraph of your story must follow the same style and must be based on the questions, asked during an interview. Remain logical and interlink paragraphs, using statements from your introductory section and transition words.

Such simple instruments will help readers to keep track of the story and to understand your general ideas. Your essay should be a thorough picture of a person, event, or place.

It should both present accurate information on the topic and introduce the reader to a world with bright colors and interesting plot twists. Apart from maintaining such a balance, you need to be sure that your text is readable and clear. Give enough explanation for every question in the main paragraphs of your essay. Your main goal is to make the audience understand your ideas by the end of an essay without any questions left.

If you have never completed such an assignment before, here is a common profile essay outline. All you need is to personalize it and adjust to your topic!

Make sure you provide interesting details about a person, place, or event you are going to discuss. Start with a quote, joke, or statistics to grab the attention of the reader.

Consider introduction as a preview to what will be discussed later in work. Never neglect transition words, because they help to connect your introduction to body paragraphs. Start every paragraph with the main idea and then support it with answers from an interview. The quantity of such paragraphs depends on the number of arguments you want to discuss. You can finish every paragraph with a summary or with transition words that will connect parts of the story together.

Think of newspaper reports or magazine style writing where authors turn to expert views by talking briefly of a person's profile. Even though writing must be kept well-structured, profile essay still has more flexibility, which allows freedom for careful wording. Always think of a good title and hook sentence before you start! Choose your topic: Essay examples.

Cannot find an essay? Try advanced search. A typical profile essay example is a creative description of a personality, an event, or an object that relates to a particular person. In some cases, you can choose topics or ideas that describe a celebrity or a scientist. It must deal with the facts and provide descriptions.

The other profile essay topics may talk about a career, a defining moment with a teacher, or a profile on social media. How to write profile essays?