The 3 keys to writing 3-dimensional profiles

One of the chief criticisms of badly written novels and newspaper profiles is poor character development.

Undeveloped characters are one-dimensional and lie flat on the page. Well-developed characters are rendered in three dimensions and leap off the page fully formed.

But how do we create 3-D characters that really work?

There is a formula. As the name implies, the human animal is constituted of three components: physiological, sociological and psychological. So, while profiling an individual, we need to bring each of these dimensions into full relief.

Let’s consider them individually. When rendering a person’s physiological (or physical) characteristics we might include features such as:

• Height
• Weight
• Race
• Health
• Style of dress
• Overall appearance

Sociological characteristics might cover these areas:

• Social class
• Parents
• Neighborhood
• Schools attended
• Politics embraced
• Religious affiliation
• Values

When writing about the subject’s psychological makeup we might turn our attention toward issues such as:

• Management style
• Passions
• Phobias
• Complexes
• Behavior patterns
• Goals
• Friendships

Here’s a good example of three-dimension profiling by Boston Globe reporter Charles Stein, writing about Jack Meyer, who at the time was head of Harvard Management Co., the investment arm responsible for managing Harvard University’s whopping $12 billion endowment. Stein’s first two sentences alone give us immediate insight into Meyer.

Harvard University’s $12 billion man doesn’t wear a tie, takes the subway to work, and eats his lunch in the cafeteria on the fourth floor of the Federal Reserve Building. Jack Meyer is a person of few pretensions, but strong beliefs.

In the first paragraph Stein brings all three dimensions of his subject into play. We already have a sense of who Jack Meyer is and we’re just two sentences into this profile. Not bad.

Another good example is the first graph of this Fortune magazine profile of Nike founder Phil Knight, written by reporter Daniel Roth.

I had been warned that the interview would be a crapshoot. On some days Phil Knight opens up; on others he barely says a word. I got lucky. On this gray January morning the founder of Nike was willing to talk. Perhaps Knight felt nostalgic: He had just finished his last official day as CEO of the company he had built from scratch some 40 years earlier, and this was his first—and so far only—extensive interview. Or perhaps he just wanted to talk. No one ever really knows with Knight; they just take what they can get. Tinker Hatfield, a 24-year Nike veteran, told me that when he goes to Knight with a question, sometimes Knight doesn’t even answer. (Tinker says he simply treats that as a yes.) Whatever the reason, Knight happily ruminated on the highs and lows of his career; he reminisced about the joys of building his company, about the hunt for a successor, about the athletes he had signed—good and bad—and about the people he had managed—well and not so well. He talked, haltingly, about the death of his son last May. Knight, famous for wearing his sunglasses just about everywhere—even inside the buildings on Nike’s 176-acre campus in Beaverton, Ore.—kept the Nike shades off, though they were always within his reach on the table in the small conference room.

A long opening paragraph rich with three-dimensional material that promises many more interesting insights to come about this captain of the athletic apparel industry.

In both examples you see reporters who expertly rendered their subjects three-dimensionally by speaking to their subjects’ physical, sociological and psychological makeup.

It isn’t easy, but we can do the same.

(Next week we’ll discuss the difference between the general profile and the microcosm profile.)

 

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