Character Design: Well, They Need Some Money At Some Point, You Know…

Work.

**avoids the angry crowds**

Thought that might happen. Anyway, this little spiel is about the world of work. And, more accurately, your character’s work. After all, as the title said, money is kind of useful. Unlike the average RPG, people tend to complain when you wander into their houses and steal their stuff.

To start off this merry tirade, you need to think about your character so far. Intelligence, propensity for physical labour, that kind of thing. After all, a complete idiot is unlikely to manage to get a job as a rocket scientist. Unless, of course, they’re very good at bribery. Which, since they haven’t got a job yet, there’s not much chance of them having the money to do so. Blackmail requires intelligence, so that’s out of the question too. The jobs that they do also need to fit the world. Something tells me that in a planet with a few scraggly survivors in a harsh realm, accountancy won’t really be needed that much. Where as, say, mechanics will.

Also, you have to choose how the job will fit your story as a whole. You don’t want your character having to apologise to the main villain that he’s got to go do his job at Things That Go Boom Ltd. and that if (s)he wouldn’t mind, could (s)he just stay there for a few hours until they can come back and deal the lethal blow. After all, your villain would get cramps, and probably hasn’t got anything on him/her to pass the time with, and probably would get quite annoyed. Also, it helps if the job tends to have them get into the sorts of places necessary. The job can also be used as a fleeting thing. After all, if your character turns up late after having fought the villain for the seven hundredth and sixty fourth time, looking like they’ve been running through the average forest fire, then their boss is quite likely to sack them, and so the problems of working around it is thrown out of the window. Probably hitting a cat, too, if the area’s anything like where I live.

So you’ve accustomed your job, and made it suiting. Now what? How will it fit into the plot? Will it just be a bit part (the oh, by the way, (s)he does work occasionally) or be a major part (the source of problems, or the environment). If it’s a small part, there’s likely to be little detail necessary. A more major part, and you start having to think a bit more. Where is your character placed within the job hierarchy? Are they manipulative ladder climbers, or happy where they are? What’re the people they work with like? What kind of work do they do, admin or physical or management or something else? Is their office constantly besieged by rabid monkeys?

Okay, you can probably ignore the last one, but the facts of the matter stand. Your character needs a position within the job, else (s)he’ll just be flitting around doing odd jobs, which would be quite dull, and confusing for the reader to boot. They won’t know what comes next; while unpredictability makes a good story, complete unpredictability results in a big mess which no-one can understand. And that’s not good; if there’s no structure the reader’s quite likely to just stop reading. Also to be considered, although it is related to the job type, is the location in which this work takes place. While it’s obvious that admin work will take place in an office (and not a building site, no matter how many cups of tea they get through), what kind of office? One that should be condemned? One with a colour scheme which is designed purely to remove eyeballs? Or one that just is designed to look as dull as possible? All of these could effect the plot in some way, so it’s important to be careful.

Once you’ve constructed the job, and its locale, then it’s ready to be written. Treat it like plasticine; useful, but can be thrown around and changed if necessary. That way, you won’t end up with annoying situations. And annoying situations are bad, at least for you. I think. I hope so, anyway. It’s no fun otherwise.