Balls of Steel™: Get a Job

Let’s get right to the point. Please … I beg you … please, stop creating a protagonist whose job is being a writer. Or a playwright. Or a struggling artist.

Sure, some stories pull it off, like Adaptation, Misery, or Syncedoche, New York (click that link … it’s wild). Before you scream, “But, but … what about writing what you know?” Your readers, as well as movie audiences, hold a wide variety of jobs. Frankly, jobs that are far more interesting than being a writer.

Writing about a writer is … well, lazy. Unless it’s an amazing story that only a writer could serve as the hero, similar to the aforementioned films. Indeed, none of them would make sense if the protagonist were anything other than a writer.

But when I watch a rom-com or read a novel, I want to experience a different world than the one I live in. Plus, there are far more opportunities for conflict when a person’s career doesn’t take place at a laptop, creating imaginary stories. Deciding between a semicolon or an em dash does not manifest tension. Shocking, I know.

How often do I see this trend? All. The. Time.

Reading contest submissions allows me the opportunity to see thousands of unpublished and unproduced story ideas. Far too many have writers in the lead. My own daughter, who is a therapist, even texts me her frustrations as she peruses yet another writer-centric novel.

Note: If you’re pissing off an extremely tolerant, patient, and well-read therapist, you might want to reexamine your strategy. In fact, she’s the one who chose this topic. Her goal is to read 50 books this year, and she’s hoping you don’t disappoint.

What kind of jobs make for interesting characters and plot opportunities?

You’re in luck. I can guarantee you don’t even know a fraction of the occupations that exist; jobs no one has ever given a protagonist. In fact, I found a book to help, Working by Studs Terkel—“… over a hundred interviews with everyone from a gravedigger to a studio head, from a policeman to a piano tuner” and then some.

Speaking of gravedigger, I manage a rural cemetery where 27 Revolutionary War soldiers lie at rest. When I mentioned my odd volunteer work at ThrillerFest last year, I suddenly had a circle of writers surrounding me, desperate to know everything about burying bodies.

I instantly became far more interesting than I was as just a mere “writer.”

But how to choose?

First, decide where your story takes place, and see what types of jobs might be specific to that location. Or do the opposite and find a cool job for your hero, then decide where to set your story. If you’re just in the brainstorming stage, simply looking at a list of unusual jobs might spark an idea for a compelling plot.

For example, if your setting is Alaska, you’re not going to give your character the role of theme park designer. Or maybe you do, and they’re a frustrated designer with no place to put their dream park. Then imagine what a day in their life would look like … and how many opportunities for conflict that specific job might produce.

For my regular readers, you know I’m slightly obsessed with characters. I love to crawl into their heads and analyze their motives. The career one chooses says so much about them, even if it’s one they fell into, like taking over a family business. Maybe good ‘ol Pop loved his pig farm, but his son resents having to run it and would rather be in the big city, opening a restaurant, and broiling said pigs.

Nothing spells conflict more than family drama.

The ultimate goal.

Give your readers something unexpected. People love to live vicariously through imaginary characters. They may never jump out of a plane in their lifetimes, but they’d happily climb aboard that ride if you promise to make it (almost) as thrilling as the real thing.

HBO nails this. “Six Feet Under” took us into the belly of a family funeral home business. How many people have you met whose vocation involves the dead? OK, apparently, I qualify for that, but you get my point. Each episode started with someone dying, then we followed the body to the funeral home, where family dysfunction successfully mounted like a team of park police on their horses.

Take Tony Soprano. Even an Italian like me was blown away at how many layers the writers were able to show of this complex mobster. I found myself both appalled by his crimes and also rooting for him to mentally recover from the abuse perpetrated by his mother.

Shepard us into a world we’ve never been. A life we’re unfamiliar with, but with a theme we can get behind and a goal we ache for our hero to achieve. That goal does not have to be watching them struggle to write.

Find your protagonist a job far more interesting than ours. My daughter will thank you.