Career Choice: Not Something to Ignore in Your Queer Romance
One might think it simple to make your character career choice. After all, it’s just one more piece of the character sketching puzzle. Career choice is up there with hometown, family history, or what that character likes for breakfast.
In truth, picking your character’s career can be an in-depth process. It’s kind of like being asked your whole life, “What do you want to do when you grow up?”
For a while there, I wanted to be a veterinarian. Then I was convinced I was meant to be a UN ambassador. Finally, I settled on becoming an event coordinator for the WWE. Color me surprised when, three years after graduating from college, I ended up as an entry-level technical editor contractor for the US Navy. My job history since then would likely shock College Freshman Me.
Your queer romance character might work to live. In essence, they accept the mundaneness of their day-to-day working life. The conflicts available here are a veritable goldmine.
On the other hand, they might live to work. A character who thoroughly enjoys what they do for a living is primed for some interesting reactions when wrenches get thrown into the engine of their utopic life.
In light of this, career choice is a direct route to establishing characterization. Determine what research you might need to do prior to deciding your character’s career choice. Finally, their job history and current day or night job must play into your story’s overall progression.
How Career Choice Relates to Characterization
Who characters are at their core will play the biggest role in their career choice, for good or bad. For example, someone who works in the medical field (e.g., doctor, first responder) is compassionate, unselfish, and ethical. A bodyguard for a mafioso may only be two out of those three.
In fact, Lisa Jordan says a character’s career choice “will shed light on what they value, what causes they champion, and how they view the world.”
At some point, your readers will need that introduction into your character’s ordinary world. Part of that includes seeing them in the job you’ve chosen for them. It may even be in touching on their job history. Before you yank the rug out from under your readers, ensure they have a solid first impression of that character as they perform their current work.
Show how they interact with their coworkers as opposed to how they interact with non-coworkers. I talk to my mother way differently than I do my editing and writing colleagues. And I talk to my sister way differently than I talk to my mother.
A last factor to consider is how your character’s job history may have provided an outlet for them or inhibited their personal endeavors. Say your character managed a small local bookstore, but they changed jobs and now work in a skyscraper on the fifteenth floor in a six- by seven-foot cubicle. The motivation behind that change offers readers plenty of potential insight.
What Research is Needed for the Career Choice
Realism in the fiction world has become more important than it is even in nonfiction. No matter the subgenre of queer romance, readers need a base impression that you know the career choice you’re writing about.
I spent well over a decade working with, befriending, and casually speaking with active military members, veterans, and government officials. I’ve lost count of the US military history and military biographies and autobiographies I’ve read over the past eight years alone. I have a solid (if broad) understanding of how the Navy and Coast Guard work.
When I pick up a military romance only to find sailor and coastguardsman used interchangeably just because they both are tangentially related to water? Well, you can’t fault me for returning that book to Kindle Unlimited expeditiously.
A basic Google search gives you the basics about your character’s career choice, what’s realistic or not. Assume your readers know as much—if not more than you ever could—about it. With this in mind, consider asking someone who has that particular role for an informational interview. Primarily for people looking for a job in a particular industry or field, they’re also great research tools for authors.
You may not be able to interview the head coach of the most recent Super Bowl winner. However, any college football coach can lend you some useful tidbits that you then fictionalize for your sports romance. Their own job history can play a role in your character’s journey to current story time.
Why This Should Play Into Your Story’s Arc
As shown above, your character’s career choice is both genre-dependent and character-dependent. A police romance better feature at least one law enforcement protagonist. That baseball romance? If your protagonist isn’t a player on the team, they should at least be on the coaching staff. And military romances? These days, if the protagonist isn’t a special operator, is it even really a military romance?
With that in mind, Brandon McNulty affirms, “Your character’s occupation should factor into the plot.”
What this means is that your character’s career choice or job history should directly (or indirectly) affect that character’s decisions. On-the-job problems offer options for external conflicts. Analogous to that is when a character’s internal conflict starts to make job pressures all the worse.
Real-World Example
Your main character, Joey, is loyal to a fault. They truly love what they do for a living, and the company they work for. However, a recent management change means they’re not only working longer hours, but they’ve taken a pay cut as well. Joey and their love interest, Styx, initially met in a local baker’s shop six months prior, arguing why their respective dessert tasted better. The change in Joey’s job situation obviously affects the vacation they’ve been planning with Styx.
Styx starts pulling away thanks to the increased hours Joey’s working. He questions Joey’s dedication to their relationship. After all, this isn’t the first time Joey has put their job over their relationship. He accuses Joey of being more loyal to that company than to anything they could be together.
Joey now has to decide if they’d rather live with their fear of personal commitment or their equal fear of striking out on their own to open the beachside cookie shop that they’ve dreamt of since they moved to Small Coastal Town. They grew up in their grandmother’s dessert shop, learning various secrets to baking that their grandmother used in her own successes. Striking out on their own, though, means giving up a sure thing for a maybe thing. Joey isn’t sure they want to do that, professionally or personally.
To Sum It All Up
The closest I ever got to my dream job interviewing with the John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville, Virginia. It’s fair to say that when I didn’t get a second interview, I spiraled. I had followed The Plan taught and reinforced to me my whole life.
- Get good grades in high school.
- Go to college, and get good grades there, too.
- Do as many internships as possible.
- Get the Dream Job that lets me use the degree I spent [redacted] years earning.
Needless to say, my job history has yet to involve event coordination. (That might change in 2025, apparently.) In truth, getting into technical documentation was a fluke. I essentially did what Becca Puglisi talks about:
Someone who experienced a humiliating failure may avoid their preferred career and choose something that will allow them to underachieve so they won’t have to risk failing again.
Your character’s career choice shouldn’t be something they landed into by chance. If it does, there certainly better be a History there. And that History should have major impacts on both your character and your story. Ignoring that, or choosing your protagonist’s job as an afterthought, means your readers miss out on a very large piece of your story’s puzzle.
Reflecting On Your Story One Word At A Time!
