The beginner writer adage has been mentioned before, I know, but newbies are urged to “Write what you know.” And that’s a great way to begin because knowing the places or the jobs or what it’s like to be a mom etc. makes it a lot easier to write believable fiction. But after the first couple books things change. Unless you’re writing a series with the same nucleus of main characters, eventually, you have to start looking outside of the box you’re familiar with. Hallmark seems to get away with having the same small-town scene, usually snowy and close to the holidays and the characters always seem to be in bookstores, bakeries or bed and breakfasts. But the rest of us need to get a little more inventive.
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Which leads to finding the right job for your characters. All your characters need some kind of career, unless they are old enough to be retired or still in school, but the ones you need to be most concerned about are the main ones. So, how do we choose?
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Sometimes it depends on the genre. If you’re writing suspense, police procedural, PI or international espionage, then the career is pretty much set and your next job will be making yourself familiar with what those jobs are like. Sometimes the genre doesn’t determine the career. I have a wonderful book titled: The Occupational Thesaurus – A Writer’s Guide to Jobs, Vocations and Careers, by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. This truly awesome reference not only outlines the career/job options, but it includes information like required training/education, useful skills and talents, helpful character traits, sources of friction, how this occupation might impact the characters and their needs, how to twist the stereotype and reasons why a character might choose this occupation. With a guide like this, if you already have a plot, and you have some ideas on occupations, you can look them up to see which best fits your plot or other characters and conflicts.
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Choosing the right career or job is critical to whether you plot works. If you have a long-distance trucker or a soldier trying to strike up a romance with a woman who hates to be left alone or left out – there will be serious conflict. Now the question is, will this conflict support or sink your plot? Sometimes it might be good to have two characters who have careers that create this kind of conflict which, in itself, becomes the plot or the story. Other times it might add pressure to the main plot. But there might also be times when the career choice is all wrong for the story you are writing. If your story is about someone who wants to be an entrepreneur, then turning them into an airline steward or a cop probably won’t work. Neither would someone who has zero fashion sense be much good at interior design or modeling, nor would a character who is shy do well as a real estate agent or a concierge in a classy hotel.
Once you’ve decided what kind of characters you need to people your story and support your plot, how do you break out of that box of writing what you know? Ask questions, visit job fairs, talk to friends and neighbors in the appropriate industry, shadow people in those careers, ask questions of perfect strangers if they are busy doing the job you need info about.
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When I started my mystery series, my main character was a female detective on the major crimes squad with the sheriff’s office. I’ve never been in law enforcement, nor been related or married to anyone who is. So, I started with taking the Citizen’s Law Enforcement Academy which turned out to be so comprehensive I learned how the whole department operated and could have included key characters who worked in dispatch, accounting, with the K-9s or on any of the special squads. But my heroine was to be a detective. So, I sat 
down for a very, VERY lengthy lunch with the only female on my local sheriff’s department’s major crimes squad. Not only did she give me a clear vision of what her job was like, but she gave me ideas I might never have had on my own. She even made herself available to answer any questions that came up while I was writing the book and kept that promise. I followed this up with two ride-alongs which put me right in the car with them, experiencing a patrol deputy’s typical day. If I’d chosen to make my heroine a spy or an undercover deputy getting this kind of first-hand information might have been a whole lot harder, but there are always retirement homes full of people who would love to share old stories of their careers and you never know where that might lead.
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Not every career would have a course like the Citizen’s Law Enforcement Academy that I attended to fill that void in my personal experience, but shadowing someone in a career or just visiting their spaces and people watching is a start. If you want to set a story in an ER, then spend a day in one. If you share the reason for hanging around that doesn’t involve a medical emergency with the people who work there, you might be 
amazed at how much they would be willing to share. In fact, almost everyone likes to talk about their jobs, both the good and rewarding parts and the awful stuff that just needs putting up with. Need your character to be a teacher? Ask one if you can follow them through a day or a week. Ask a commercial pilot what it’s like to sleep in a different city every other night, or a car salesman how it feels to get shot down more often than they watch the new car drive off the lot. There are lots of jobs you can learn about just by watching, but never just settle for the watching. Ask questions, and better yet, tell them you are a writer and your hero is whatever they are and ask if they would be willing to answer questions that might come up later. I have never been turned down when I’ve asked this of people.
While Job Fairs are mostly aimed at showcasing careers to youngsters about to graduate from high school (or even college) this one place you’d get to visit booths representing a vast and varied array of careers. Some fairs, to be honest, are PR gigs, or political in nature, but people everywhere love to talk about their jobs, so, it might be a good place to find out what the education and training requirements would be as well as the expected pay scale and what kind of 
companies hire etc. And any man or woman at a booth that’s not being swarmed with kids would be happy to share information with you. They might not have details like the book I mentioned above about personality traits and talents, but they could definitely fill you in on the good, bad and ugly about their careers, where the best colleges or training schools are for this job, what their day-to-day life is like and especially, given why they are there, the rewards of pursuing their career. There might also be military recruiters available, but they aren’t likely to tell you the really ugly part about a military career. For that, talk to a veteran.
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If you are writing historical novels, the whole career hunt will be different. Unless your book is set since the middle of the last century, your search will mean reading up on the history of the era, pinpointing jobs that fit your plot, and then researching what it was like in that particular era. There are still a few folks around who lived through WWII, but prior to that, it’s going to be reading research. Here I’d suggest journals when available or biographies. I’ve only written one historical prior to any living memory. My book was set during the American Revolutionary War. My absolute best resource was a book titled: The Spirit of Seventy-Six – The Story of the American Revolution as told by Participants. This book introduced each chapter with a summary of the events and ramifications, then proceeded to “show” the story through the eyes of those who lived them, via journals, diaries, letters, and official reports. While I learned a lot of details about the war I’d never learned in school, I also got a peek at what their lives and jobs were like. Be curious – read about the lives of people in your era, especially as it’s told by those who lived them.
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Whatever your reason for choosing the careers you do, whether it’s one you already know, or one you want to live vicariously, do the research, and turn your writing into a book your readers can’t put down. And be sure to check out what my fellow blog-hoppers have to say about this month’s topic.
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Helena Fairfax
Anne Stenhouse
Victoria Chatham
Connie Vines
Dr. Bob Rich
Diane Bator
Marci Baun
The beginner writer adage has been mentioned before, I know, but newbies are urged to “Write what you know.” And that’s a great way to begin because knowing the places or the jobs or what it’s like to be a mom etc. makes it a lot easier to write believable fiction. But after the first couple books things change. Unless you’re writing a series with the same nucleus of main characters, eventually, you have to start looking outside of the box you’re familiar with. Hallmark seems to get away with having the same small-town scene, usually snowy and close to the holidays and the characters always seem to be in bookstores, bakeries or bed and breakfasts. But the rest of us need to get a little more inventive. 
Which leads to finding the right job for your characters. All your characters need some kind of career, unless they are old enough to be retired or still in school, but the ones you need to be most concerned about are the main ones. So, how do we choose? 
Sometimes it depends on the genre. If you’re writing suspense, police procedural, PI or international espionage, then the career is pretty much set and your next job will be making yourself familiar with what those jobs are like. Sometimes the genre doesn’t determine the career. I have a wonderful book titled: The Occupational Thesaurus – A Writer’s Guide to Jobs, Vocations and Careers, by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. This truly awesome reference not only outlines the career/job options, but it includes information like required training/education, useful skills and talents, helpful character traits, sources of friction, how this occupation might impact the characters and their needs, how to twist the stereotype and reasons why a character might choose this occupation. With a guide like this, if you already have a plot, and you have some ideas on occupations, you can look them up to see which best fits your plot or other characters and conflicts. 
Choosing the right career or job is critical to whether you plot works. If you have a long-distance trucker or a soldier trying to strike up a romance with a woman who hates to be left alone or left out – there will be serious conflict. Now the question is, will this conflict support or sink your plot? Sometimes it might be good to have two characters who have careers that create this kind of conflict which, in itself, becomes the plot or the story. Other times it might add pressure to the main plot. But there might also be times when the career choice is all wrong for the story you are writing. If your story is about someone who wants to be an entrepreneur, then turning them into an airline steward or a cop probably won’t work. Neither would someone who has zero fashion sense be much good at interior design or modeling, nor would a character who is shy do well as a real estate agent or a concierge in a classy hotel. 
down for a very, VERY lengthy lunch with the only female on my local sheriff’s department’s major crimes squad. Not only did she give me a clear vision of what her job was like, but she gave me ideas I might never have had on my own. She even made herself available to answer any questions that came up while I was writing the book and kept that promise. I followed this up with two ride-alongs which put me right in the car with them, experiencing a patrol deputy’s typical day. If I’d chosen to make my heroine a spy or an undercover deputy getting this kind of first-hand information might have been a whole lot harder, but there are always retirement homes full of people who would love to share old stories of their careers and you never know where that might lead. 
Not every career would have a course like the Citizen’s Law Enforcement Academy that I attended to fill that void in my personal experience, but shadowing someone in a career or just visiting their spaces and people watching is a start. If you want to set a story in an ER, then spend a day in one. If you share the reason for hanging around that doesn’t involve a medical emergency with the people who work there, you might be 
amazed at how much they would be willing to share. In fact, almost everyone likes to talk about their jobs, both the good and rewarding parts and the awful stuff that just needs putting up with. Need your character to be a teacher? Ask one if you can follow them through a day or a week. Ask a commercial pilot what it’s like to sleep in a different city every other night, or a car salesman how it feels to get shot down more often than they watch the new car drive off the lot. There are lots of jobs you can learn about just by watching, but never just settle for the watching. Ask questions, and better yet, tell them you are a writer and your hero is whatever they are and ask if they would be willing to answer questions that might come up later. I have never been turned down when I’ve asked this of people. 
companies hire etc. And any man or woman at a booth that’s not being swarmed with kids would be happy to share information with you. They might not have details like the book I mentioned above about personality traits and talents, but they could definitely fill you in on the good, bad and ugly about their careers, where the best colleges or training schools are for this job, what their day-to-day life is like and especially, given why they are there, the rewards of pursuing their career. There might also be military recruiters available, but they aren’t likely to tell you the really ugly part about a military career. For that, talk to a veteran. 
If you are writing historical novels, the whole career hunt will be different. Unless your book is set since the middle of the last century, your search will mean reading up on the history of the era, pinpointing jobs that fit your plot, and then researching what it was like in that particular era. There are still a few folks around who lived through WWII, but prior to that, it’s going to be reading research. Here I’d suggest journals when available or biographies. I’ve only written one historical prior to any living memory. My book was set during the American Revolutionary War. My absolute best resource was a book titled: The Spirit of Seventy-Six – The Story of the American Revolution as told by Participants. This book introduced each chapter with a summary of the events and ramifications, then proceeded to “show” the story through the eyes of those who lived them, via journals, diaries, letters, and official reports. While I learned a lot of details about the war I’d never learned in school, I also got a peek at what their lives and jobs were like. Be curious – read about the lives of people in your era, especially as it’s told by those who lived them. 
