Your profile. It looks like a resumé: it really isn't. It's a story. It's a story, specifically, about you. Keeping this in mind while you write it can yield some great results.

For one thing it'll make you seem a lot less boring. I know you're not boring, but does your profile really reflect that? Really?

For another it'll set you apart from everyone else. It's a common complaint on OKCupid that men only go by photos, never bothering to read the profiles. I take issue with that, but nonetheless if it is true it might be not because all men are shallow, but because all profiles are effectively the same damn thing, blurring into a hazy mass, and the photos are the only way to distinguish between them.

So read on, for some of my thoughts on how to make the profile-as-story philosophy effective.

(Disclaimer: all thoughts in this post are entirely subjective. If you disagree with something I say, and can successfully articulate why you disagree with it, then I wholeheartedly encourage you to ignore it completely. Furthermore, my profile is probably not a good example of this philosophy in practice. Do as I say, not as I do.)

Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. So with your profile. With that in mind, let us begin at...

The Beginning

The first sentence of your self-summary is crucial for people who bother to read profiles, just as it is in a book. You need to have a good opening hook. What makes a good opening hook? A good opening hook is anything that makes the reader want to read further. Depending on your personality, this could be to raise some questions in the reader's head that they must read further to find the answers to, or it could just be a really good line or a joke which puts the reader in the mindset that this profile is going to be a good read.

Don't say "I hate filling these things in" or "I never know what to put here" or "how can I sum myself up in a little box". While there is a certain universality to that that which can, handled properly, engage the reader into identifying with the statement, what that really means is it's true of everyone, which in turn means that from the first line you're setting the scene that this is not a profile about you, but could be about anyone.

Don't say "Hi, my name's X and..." This isn't actually that bad a line, but not bad is not necessarily good. At best it's passable, workaday. The literary equivalent, as opening lines go, would be "It was a dark and stormy night". All that's going to do is make the reader think "Hang on, have I read this before?" and then wonder whether it's worth reading further. It's passable, but no matter how badly you failed creative writing at school, you can do so much better, and you really don't want to be putting doubts into your reader's head as to whether it's worth reading.

Your opening hook is a good time to consider what kind of person you're looking for, and therefore who your target audience is. If you're after quick thrills (which doesn't necessarily mean just sex), you might like to take the in media res approach, which in a story would be getting into the action without introduction or exposition. On the other hand, if you're ideally looking for a more stable, committed relationship, it's better to build things up a little more slowly (though this doesn't excuse you from getting your hook in as soon as possible. First sentence - no excuses).

Here are a couple of examples of good opening hooks (from non-profile sources). Note that not all of these were the actual opening line, but they should have been.

"It was the day my grandmother exploded." - Crow Road, Iain Banks

"The disappearance of the Church of the Resurrection, some 300 km (186 miles) north-east of Moscow, was not immediately noticed." - BBC News Story

[ADD MORE]

The Middle

How long is too long? The simple answer is that nothing, if well-written and engaging enough, is too long. When I did Standard Grade English I was supposed to submit an 800 word piece of writing to the exam board. My piece was 1200 words. I asked my teacher how I was going to cut a third off the story, and I was advised to just submit it as it was, because it was that well-written and flowed that well. I appear to digress and brag, but there is a point to it: despite the provenance of the abbreviation, 'tl;dr' usually isn't too long - it's too badly-written. People are quite prepared to read a longer piece if it's well-written and interesting. Ask yourself: "would I read this for its own sake?" If the answer is yes, then it's not too long. If the answer is no, think about either trimming it or making it more interesting.

Remember that you're writing a story, and that in a story, lists are EVIL! Long lists are even worse. Some of the questions you're asked appear to invite writing lists ("the six things I could never live without" springs to mind). Don't fall into that trap. It's not interesting to read a list of every band you've ever heard of that you thought weren't bad. Or a list of things you're really good at. Or a list of things you spend a lot of time thinking about. Try to trim the list down to a few things, and then say something about each thing beyond just mentioning it. Say why you like it, or tell a story about how you became good at it, or say something about what you think about it, or something along those lines.

"The most private thing I'm willing to admit here" is your climactic plot twist! Don't waste it by saying "I don't know what to say here... just ask" (what an anticlimax!) or "I'm not telling." (Way to leave your readers hanging - it's "the most private thing I'm willing to admit here", not "the most private thing I'm not willing to admit here"!) Note that the most private thing you're willing to admit there doesn't necessarily have to be private: in the context of profile-as-story, it could be anything that someone wouldn't have guessed from the rest of your profile. If you've painted yourself as a hardcore metaller, then saying "I listen to Country and Western AND LIKE IT!" is an acceptable kind of thing for this box. Only, y'know, be less boring than that.

On the subject of being less boring, note that it doesn't even necessarily need to be true. I'm not suggesting that you should misrepresent yourself, but it's okay to plant falsehoods if they're obviously false and you're doing so for humorous effect: believe it or not, I don't actually insist on being called Alice in real life.

The End

"You should message me if" is actually a pretty good place to end your profile-as-story. Outside of tragedy (which I hope your profile is not), a good dénouement to a story should carry some hint about the future. And "you should message me if" is a statement about the future. You can hint about what you want from the site in your self-summary, but this is the place you really spell out what the happy ending would be. Remember here that you should skew the balance in favour of why they would want to message you rather than why you would want to be messaged.

And try to keep the reasons not to message you to a minimum. This is the happy ending of your story: don't sour it unnecessarily. One person's (who shall remain anonymous, but seemed otherwise lovely) profile I looked at said quite strongly that you shouldn't message her if you're not a vegetarian. I am a vegetarian, but that just put me off, and I ended up not sending a message after all. My point with this is that by being negative, you exclude more than just the people you want to exclude.

And as profiles and stories must have an ending, so must journal posts. These are my initial thoughts. I may come up with some more. But I hope they gave you something to think about. Good luck.