How I decide what occupations to give my characters

There are millions of potential jobs or careers out there, so how do novelists choose which ones their characters should have? I can’t speak for writers in general, but I can tell you what informs the choice of my own characters’ occupations. In my latest novel, The Apartment Upstairs, Scarlett is a self-employed accountant who works from home and whose career enables her to make a good living, despite her suffering from ME. I wanted her to be a sensible, rational individual, the sort of woman who could go on living in the same house where her aunt has been murdered, a methodical woman motivated by a puzzle and determined to keep looking until she finds the right answer. Not knowing much about the profession, other than having typed up tedious profit and loss accounts in my days as a secretary, I asked my own accountant to tell me about her average day. As expected, her return email was very thorough!

The second main character in the novel is Dee, an undertaker and co-owner of a funeral firm called Fond Farewells. Dee’s occupation is pivotal to the plot, as she is engaged by Scarlett to arrange the late aunt’s funeral and the two women are thus thrown together in a common purpose. Ever since a former colleague of mine retrained as a funeral celebrant, I’ve been fascinated by the emerging trends in the funeral industry and the move to simpler, greener funerals. The scene in the book where Dee visits Scarlett at home to discuss what sort of funeral she would like for her aunt, was first written as the opening chapter, but moved position during the editing stage. The gentle, compassionate and respectful Dee is just the sort of person who would be attracted to a career that involves honouring the dead and helping the bereaved. It’s also why the parents of her best friend, Gina, who is missing presumed dead, have asked Dee to help them organise a gathering to mark the ten-year anniversary of her disappearance.

In my first novel, The Rumour, Joanna was an estate agent and I’m pretty sure this came about because I’d recently moved house when I first started writing it and had spent many hours dealing with estate agents and scrolling through Rightmove. At the time, I thought it was just one of those random decisions, but my subconscious must have known exactly what it was doing. Making Joanna an estate agent actually helped form the plot as it meant I could have her looking round different houses and speculating on the people who lived there. With a rumour doing the rounds about a rehabilitated child killer in witness protection, this was a handy device. Making Joanna’s boyfriend an investigative journalist was an obvious next step, for how could he resist pursuing the story?

In Who Did You Tell, Astrid was unemployed as a result of her alcohol addiction, but prior to that, she was a set designer. Why did I give her this creative, artistic background? Possibly because one of my step-sons had a girlfriend who had chosen this career and I’d often heard her talking about it. Once the idea took hold, I started to think about how Astrid’s love of painting and design might be instrumental to the plot - she is commissioned to create a trompe l’oeil for her new boyfriend’s father - and instrumental, ultimately, to her recovery, although being a psychological thriller, her trajectory isn’t quite so straightforward!

In The Dare, Lizzie - a former receptionist - is also unemployed. She has moved to London to live with her fiancé and is looking for a new job. She feels suffocated by everyone’s concern over her epilepsy and is determined to prove that she is now well enough to cope with a full-time position. Her lack of financial independence and the fact that she is in a new neighbourhood without friends or work contacts adds to her vulnerability as a character, making her even more susceptible to manipulation.

Occupations then (or lack of them) can be used to convey particular character traits and are often integral to the plot of a novel, either by design or, as often seems to happen with my own novels, the magic of serendipity. In my next novel, which is still in the process of being written, the main character is a photographer, so expect a few moody shots to start appearing on my Instagram feed later in the year as I ‘get into character’…