#character occupations

triggers : mentions of dr*gs & p*rn .

Did you mean my life story?

It all depends on when the story is set. In the present day, without a college degree, waitressing and retail are the most abundant jobs out there. If you know somebody, you may be able to get a desk job doing clerical work. That’s if you know somebody. Those jobs are difficult to get into without experience and most of them require it. It’s a vicious cycle. 

Even if she was able to go to college with grants and scholarships or loans, the fields where one can get a job right out of college are few and far between because people are retiring later and later in life and there just aren’t as many jobs available (that’s not the only reason, but we’ll just leave that there), so unless she’s in IT (Information Technology), medical, or teaching (those are just what I though of right off the top of my head, more research may be necessary if none of those work.), it’s unlikely she’ll be able to get a job in her field. Not to mention the fact that unpaid internships running rampant in the professional world. 

I personally have done a whole slew of jobs for different levels of pay. I’ve worked for minimum wage at McDonald’s, I’ve been a police dispatcher, I worked in a photography studio for a time and I’ve done warehouse work packing online orders on my feet for 12 hours a day. I’ve also worked as tech support in a call center and I’ve worked at a psychiatric hospital doing patient safety checks. All of the jobs I’ve had that weren’t minimum wage, I knew somebody higher on the corporate food chain who told me about it and gave me a reference–or even pulled strings to get me hired. 

This is just my own personal experience of course, but as far as getting your character a better job, that’s probably how that would happen. Either that or being promoted at her current waitress job to a manager or something to that effect. 

Hope this was helpful!

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Today’s Writing Tip

Every occupation has its own jargon. Use enough in character dialog to sound authentic, but don’t boggle the reader’s mind with too much technical terminology or acronyms, which should always be defined the first time they’re used. If several pages or chapters separate their next use, remind the reader. This can be easily done via dialog. For example:

“The ARU went out again,” John said.

“That’s…