Jun 24 2009
Key traits of interesting jobs
Many, perhaps most, real life jobs have a fairly narrow and specialized focus. For example, most people of a company’s employees work for a particular department and newspaper reports usually focus on stories related to their section of the paper. In general, I’d recommend giving your heroes jobs that are more flexible because it gives more opportunity to entangle the character in the plot and add new developments.
Here are some aspects that can make a job more flexible and plot-friendly.
1. Get the character out of his office. Offices are mostly bland, forgettable, comfortable and safe. As far as readers and interesting stories are concerned, they are Kryptonite. I’d recommend giving your character a lot of work outside the office because the real world is harder to predict and gives you more opportunities to work in new scenes, danger, seedy characters, etc.
2. Please avoid making the character the boss. Usually, the boss has the least interesting job in the building. Privates and flunkies usually have more at stake than a general or a business magnate does. In addition, low-level work is generally more interesting. I’d much rather read about a platoon patrolling hostile streets or a corporate flack trying to steal corporate secrets than about the men that decided to send the patrols or steal the secrets.
3. As much as possible, please have the hero spend his time working with people outside of his company. The relationships within a company are usually tidy and well-controlled, especially if the characters share the same goals. When a boss lays down the law, that’s usually the end of it. It’s usually more interesting when a character can’t just order other people to give him what he wants. For example, a police officer has to convince a reluctant witness to testify, which will give you an opportunity to show you how impressive he is. In contrast, if the cop could just order the man to testify, that wouldn’t be very interesting or impressive. (Well, technically, cops can order witnesses to testify, but persuasion is often necessary in dangerous cases).
4. I’d recommend making the hero accountable to a tough boss. Characters like JJ Jameson tend to add a lot more dramatic potential than friendly bosses like Perry White. They create more of an obstacle for the heroes and usually make the heroes seem more likable.
One of the things this doesn’t take into account is the sheer number of jobs that don’t take place in a cubicle. Rarely do superheroes seem to get cubicle jobs like this article suggests… Writers seem to think they’re above that kind of thing, unless it’s for humor purposes.