Using the Workplace to Add Depth to Your Novel

Today’s post is by writer, editor, and book coach Jennifer Landau.

After reading several novels in which the protagonist’s work life was completely offstage—or where they seemed to have no job whatsoever—I kept thinking about all that can be gained by incorporating your characters’ work life into your fiction.

You don’t need to be writing a “workplace novel” for work to be integral to your protagonist’s life. But using it as more than a backdrop can supercharge the stakes, conflict, and character development.

How does your main character’s job raise the stakes?

For most people, their financial survival depends on work. Folks want to get (and keep) a job, earn a promotion, or switch to a higher-paying field. Work can also give a person a deeper meaning to their lives and a sense of being part of something bigger than themselves. Pretty high-stakes stuff.

Adelle Waldman’s Help Wanted takes place within the confines of a big-box store in an economically depressed town in upstate New York. The hourly workers, who form a sort of Greek chorus, are nearly all in dire financial straits. They are dependent on government assistance and the good graces of their families because they are not paid a living wage or given enough hours to meet their basic needs. And, as one worker puts it, corporate would rather they steal from the cash register than speak to a union representative, leaving little hope of substantive change.

So when the store manager is promoted to another location, several workers scheme to have his undeserving underling become store manager so she will be too busy to mistreat them daily. But that plan involves sabotaging a more deserving candidate and the risk of getting caught. That tension keeps the reader turning pages.

Exercise: List three consequences your main character would face if they lost their job, both financial and emotional. Which would hurt the most and why? How can you show that on the page even when no one is talking directly about work?

How does work create conflict?

A character’s job can be a great source of conflict. Workplaces contain built-in hierarchies, petty grievances, the attempt at a work-life balance, and the stress of working with people you’d typically cross the street to avoid.

Jolene Smith, the protagonist of Natalie Sue’s I Hope This Finds You Well, loathes her job as an administrator at the corporate offices of a big-box chain. But she can barely make rent and dreads moving back in with her parents, so she deals with the drudgery by adding nasty postscripts to her work emails in all-white text, safe in the knowledge that no one will read them.

But Jolene is soon found out and required to take anti-harassment training with a handsome HR guy. Corporate is supposed to restrict her computer access, but a technical glitch gives her access to all her coworker’s emails and messages. When there is news of layoffs, Jolene weaponizes this access. She can do stellar work because she knows exactly what her boss wants. And she can undermine her rival by changing a number or two on an important spreadsheet.

Will Jolene have a crisis of conscience? Will her nemesis suss out the truth? Or the hunky PR guy become such a distraction that she gets sloppy in her deception? As the conflicts—and consequences—pile up, the reader eagerly follows every twist and turn.

Exercise: Write a scene in which your protagonist’s boss asks them to do something morally sketchy. Contrast their dialogue with their boss with their interior thoughts. Do the two line up or are they at odds? Why? How does the scene end in a way that builds momentum for what comes next?

How can work depict a character’s transformation?

At the start of I Hope This Finds You Well, Jolene is isolated at work, refusing to take part in any company social events, and taking out her anger through her mean-spirited email postscripts. As she sets her sights on a promotion, she views her colleagues as either nuisances or combatants. There’s little difference in how she operates outside of the office. She gives a neighbor child the brushoff, avoids her parents, and takes refuge from her traumatic past in a glass of wine or three.

But as she learns more about her coworkers struggles, her outlook slowly changes. The guy who seems to come and go as he pleases is really caring for his sick mother. The woman who brags incessantly about her close relationship with her son has been estranged from him for years. And her rival’s loving boyfriend proves to be anything but. Jolene’s transformation is helped along by the HR guy Chip, who proves to be more of a support system—and potential love interest—than a foil.

In the end, Jolene becomes a more authentic, less guarded version of herself which helps her make strides in both her professional and personal life.

Exercise: Write a scene in which your protagonist has to give an in-person presentation during her first week at a job. Have they overprepared? Are they confident? Angry about being put on the spot so early into their tenure? So nervous they can barely stand still? Then write that presentation scene after they have been working there for a year. How has your main character changed? What brought about that change?

Parting thoughts

If you are using the world of work in your novel, make sure you know enough about the job to be believable. If you don’t have experience as a doctor, social worker, or plumber, do your research—and not just online. Reach out to people who do that line of work. Many are happy to chat about their line of work. (I can tell you from my experience as a medical writer that doctors love to talk about their specialty.)

Jennifer Landau

Jennifer Landau is a writer and Author Accelerator-certified book coach in fiction and memoir. She has a master’s degree in creative writing from New York University and has worked as a teacher, medical writer, and children’s book editor. Her book coaching services focus on women in midlife and beyond writing memoir and literary and upmarket fiction.