My main character was flat, so I tried giving him a boring job

I was stuck on a detective story set in Boise, but the lead felt like cardboard. On a whim, I made him a part-time tax preparer, not just as a throwaway detail, but his actual day job. Suddenly, his dialogue got drier and his method for solving the case became about following paperwork trails. It made him feel real in a way my old 'brooding loner' draft never did. Do you think grounding a character in a mundane routine is a good shortcut, or does it just make them boring?

2 comments

2 Comments

john6503d ago

Hey, that's a great fix... reminds me of this book I read where the hero was a night shift janitor at a community college. The whole plot kicked off because he found a weird stain in a lab he was cleaning... and his way of dealing with the monster was just to follow the cleaning schedule and trap it in the boiler room during his rounds. It was weirdly tense because he wasn't some action guy, he was just a tired dude trying to do his job. Made all his choices feel real.

the_jordan3d ago

That book sounds like it gets the real horror of night shift work. I had a job cleaning offices after hours for a few months. The worst part wasn't being alone, it was the weird little things you'd find that broke the routine, like a phone left off the hook or a chair facing the wrong way. You start jumping at every noise because your whole world is just empty halls and the sound of your own cart. A monster would almost be a relief, something big to explain that feeling.