Pebblepup's Writing Den

What do you do for a living? Most people have careers or jobs that they do every day. They get paid. The best fiction has characters that earn a living in some manner. Take some time and think about that. What do your characters do for a living?

Most people have something they work at. Writers write, store clerks help people find things in stores. This is what I’m talking about. People earn their living in some manner.

This is part of character development. It may not even come up in the story. Your reader may not know, but you should.

A lot of occupations will depend on the story’s setting and time. Is your story a fantasy? Suppose your character is an alchemist or wizard of some kind. If it’s science fiction, your character might be a star pilot, or rocket scientist. Or your character drives a bus. Whatever they do for a living you need to know what they do. They need some form of support.

The advantage to knowing what your character does for a living is that you can create conflict from it. Your character might have money problems. I don’t know what a city bus driver makes where you are, but in Detroit, they make between 14 and 26 dollars an hour. I had to look it up. If you can, do that when you pick an occupation for your character. It can help you get a handle on their finances.

You might not think it’s important to your story’s plot, but it can help when you are stuck. You can play what if game with different scenarios, such as, what if my bus driver is always late to work? Or lives in fear of losing its job. Or your bus driver has a conflict, the character needs to do something, but also needs to go to work. That can add more conflict to the story and drive it forward.

The bus driver may dream of a more exciting life. It feels stuckt driving around the city, fighting traffic. Then this driver gets the excitement, only to wish for the mundane again. Life is like that.

So when you are developing your characters, take a few minutes and consider what they will do for a living. Then note it down in their sketches or charts. That way, if you are stuck, you can look at what your character do for a living. Then you can try writing a scene where a conflict arises. It could be a conflict between what a character wants to do and what that charshould be doing. That scene may fix an issue and makes it into your story. It might not. Either way, it’s practice. Practice is never a waste of time.

So give your characters an occupation. It might save your story from catastrophe.