Thursday 7 October 2010

Help, please.

A rather cardboard male character in my WIP needs a job. It (he) must be compassionate, not too well paid, terribly worthwhile, (fairly) interesting, and involve some travelling (so that he can have illicit couplings with one of my heroines. He's married). I've racked my brains, and can only come up with medical things. Has anyone any ideas, please? At the moment, he's an oncologist, but I don't think he's really got what it takes. I've been trying to solve this problem for about three weeks, and am totally stuck.

7 comments:

  1. Butcher?

    :)

    Okay, maybe not. Hmmm...How much travelling? Would a job with two or three conferences a year do it, or does the travelling need to be more frequent? Likewise, from the other direction, should he be on the road all the time, or should there be significant time at home?

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  2. Hi Frances

    What do you mean by travelling? If it's abroad, then perhaps an aid worker or someone working for Raleigh International. If we're talking more local, then perhaps someone working for a big charity like Oxfam or something. Even they do the odd conference here and there. Other than that, like you I'm stuck with medical professions too!

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  3. My son travels around the country(and the world too occasionally) as a repair/maintenance engineer for printing machines. Most of his trips are to factories but as his repair skills include heater/dryers he sometimes visits hospitals and surgeries. He can get quite filthy though sometimes.
    This may give you some ideas.

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  4. Human Resources manager for a charity? Would have to travel to different shops/offices in the UK and abroad, but still be a 'ground-roots' approachable kind of figure to gauge how the workers are feeling.
    He could care about equal pay, equal rights and all that. A fair, square kinda guy.

    That's all I can come up with. It's difficult to think of jobs that aren't soulless. That's sad.

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  5. Thanks, everyone. I particularly like the charities ideas. The travel would involve perhaps 3 conferences /year, in England.

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  6. Another option would be work as a school psychologist or a trauma response therapist. Doing good work without being flashy per se, with usually two or three conferences and training events a year.

    From my experience, social workers typically don't have as many conferences, but if they have a specialty they can be asked to travel to other cities to help when there are crises or new initiatives.

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  7. That's an idea, Nevets. Thanks! I like the idea of training events (all those "getting to know you" exercises; all that dividing into small groups and brainstorming, with flip charts...oh, happy days)

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