Writing Project 1 has two components. First, you will interview a person of your choosing and compose a written profile of the person based on your interviews and supporting research. Second, you will craft a multimodal "trailer" or advertisement for your profile, and reflect on your rhetorical decisions across the project cycle.

The Profile:
In this assignment, you will choose an individual on whom you will compose a profile or a biographical sketch. Your profile subject should be someone you don’t know well about whom you are interested in learning more. Perhaps your subject works in the same industry you hope to join someday. Perhaps your subject survived a plane crash. Perhaps they spent time as a POW. Use this assignment as an opportunity to learn more about the specific experiences of the subject you select. You will need to select a subject who is willing and available to be interviewed likely 2-3 times. The profile will not be a life story but rather will focus on a particular significant moment in time in the person’s life.

Your profile should target an audience of external readers who will likely never meet the subject you’ve interviewed. How can you make your readers care about the specific experience of a complete stranger?

In your profile, you must employ evidence of primary and secondary research. The interviews you conduct with your profile subject are primary research. The secondary research (found primarily through searching the resources of ASU’s libraries) should include social, historical, and/or cultural material that contextualizes the particular experience you are profiling for readers. You will also need to clearly specify the significance of the life event to the person you are profiling in relation to the contextual support you provide. Your project requires evidence, primarily in the form of details, to support your ideas about the significance of the interview material. It is important to choose your details carefully, appealing to the senses, and providing details that are not widely known.

This is a great opportunity for you to get to know someone on a deeper level, so choose your subject carefully. Avoid selecting someone you already know well. Instead, see this as a chance to strengthen your writing skills and grow a personal and/or professional connection.

Your final written profile should be between four and Five pages in length (double-spaced, 12-pt. font) and include proper APA citations as well as an APA-style References page (which does not count toward the expected length). The Reference page should include at least two secondary sources; your interview material should be correctly cited within the profile as a personal communication.

If you opt to make a static advertisement, construct it as a digital version of a one-page advertisement, poster, or flyer.

If you opt to make a trailer, it should be no longer than 2 minutes and no shorter than 30 seconds.

Major Project Steps

Step 1: Select an Interview Subject
Decide who would be the best subject for this project according to the suggestions made above in the Project Description. You may want to spend time listening to the interviews on NPR's StoryCorps Recording America Project for ideas, or read profiles in magazines such as People and Rolling Stone.

Step 2: Conduct Primary Research: Hold an Information Session
Once you have located an interviewee, you will need to gather initial information so your interview is a collaborative conversation. Contact your interviewee for a pre-interview information session.

In this pre-interview information-gathering session, start by asking close-ended questions. For example, ask the interviewee to provide you with his or her date of birth, hometown, military service, name of schools attended, jobs worked, etc.) Having some of this factual data will help you later in the project, when you need to do secondary research to help provide cultural/historical contextual info related to the subject of the profile. As a rule, people want to tell their stories, so in this pre-interview information session, listen for any information that will guide you to creating a context for the specific moment or experience in this person’s life that will be the subject of the profile. Remember: this information-gathering sessions is not the actual interview, but it is important to create an environment where the individual feels comfortable providing information. At the end of your information session, set up a time and date for your next interview meeting. If you can, audio record all interview meetings with your profile subject. If you can’t, you need to be prepared to take extensive and detailed notes.

Step 4: Conduct More Primary Research: The Interview
Develop open-ended questions based on your research that will guide your collaborative conversation with your subject. Conduct primary research through the interview; this should be a conversation (not a short question/answer session) since you have already gathered pre-interview information. Engage your interview subject about the historical and social events of his/her life. Remember: you’re looking for a specific moment or experience in their life to build the profile around.

Again, if possible, audio (or audio-video) record your interview; it is important that you gain permission from your subject to record and use the content of your interview for your project. You are strongly encouraged to use a digital recorder that will allow you to embed audio into digital documents. Once you have completed your interview, you will want to go through your notes, research, and recording to decide what material you want to use and/or omit. Keep in mind all of this information constitutes your data for this project.

Step 5: Compose a Draft of your Profile
Remember, you need to keep your focus narrow to a specific moment in this person’s life since you cannot cover every year of his/her life. Your job is to write a biographical profile about this person that is interesting, compelling, and targeted to external readers who have never met the person you profiled. Your job is make your readers care about the person and the moment in that person’s life you’re focusing on.

Writing Project 1 has two components. First, you will interview a...