Old and Tired Character Careers

Fins Left

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 26, 2010
Messages
439
Reaction score
32
Personally, if I never read another romance where the heroine writes romances it will be too soon. This seems especially prevalent in erotic romance.

YES! My first thought was the female writer. I'm so tired of them in books, movies, everything. There are plenty of jobs that allow you to frit around all day, please no more female writers who save the day!

ETA: I'm also tired of male writers too.
 
Last edited:

Lyra Jean

Two years old now.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 10, 2005
Messages
5,329
Reaction score
794
Location
Boca Raton - Mouth of the Rat
Website
beyondtourism.wordpress.com
So on my book, I'm toying with the career my hero has. He does well, since he is in like the top 40 most eligible bachelors or something like that, but what is his career? Does he own his own company? Was it inherited? Is he the bastard son of a European prince? lol. My first thought was that he owns a record label and the story is set in Nashville. But I haven't done any research yet so it isn't solid. I've never seen that done before though...but certainly it would be more refreshing than the multi-millionaire greek business tycoon? lol. What do you think, what are the most used careers for the heros?

What about the heroine? She's certainly easier I guess since most of the time, she ends up being happy homemaker cause he can provide more than enough to support whatever family they might have. Teacher, librarian, owns a bookstore that has been in the family for generations...a writer! lol. I can't think of the more used careers for heroines since mostly what I read is historicals where women didn't have jobs XD. So far my heroine works in a local library while she's going to school part-time to be a teacher. Easy enough I guess. I'm still refining the details. But what are the most used careers for the heroines?

And finally, does the career being used too much really affect the book overall? Sure if you look at ALL books as a whole, it is a bit unrealistic that there are THAT many billionaires with their own companies in the world, but who really looks at it that way? lol. I think I could deal with another European billionaire as long as the rest of the book was good. I dunno, what do you think?

I start too many topics XD. I'm sorry, I am just brimming with the need to discuss stuff like this. Perhaps I shall browse through the old topics and see what I can collect that way.

You do realize that to be a librarian you need a Master's degree while to become a teacher you only need a Bachelor's depending on what grade you are teaching.
 

frimble3

Heckuva good sport
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 7, 2006
Messages
11,574
Reaction score
6,396
Location
west coast, canada
You do realize that to be a librarian you need a Master's degree while to become a teacher you only need a Bachelor's depending on what grade you are teaching.
But to be a library clerk - the 'library lady' that most of the public interact with, checking books in and out, collecting fines, and putting books back on shelves, you often only need general office skills, esp. in smaller places.
 

Lyra Jean

Two years old now.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 10, 2005
Messages
5,329
Reaction score
794
Location
Boca Raton - Mouth of the Rat
Website
beyondtourism.wordpress.com
But to be a library clerk - the 'library lady' that most of the public interact with, checking books in and out, collecting fines, and putting books back on shelves, you often only need general office skills, esp. in smaller places.

True. I think library assistants also do not need an MA.
 

JMC2009

Your friendly neighborhood Chat Op
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 16, 2010
Messages
1,698
Reaction score
316
Location
Kansas
But to be a library clerk - the 'library lady' that most of the public interact with, checking books in and out, collecting fines, and putting books back on shelves, you often only need general office skills, esp. in smaller places.

I can vouch for this... I have a couple of friends who work in libraries... One does thingskme acquisitions and dealing with fines and such and she had to have a masters. Another is a page shelving books and while she has a bachelors in psychology, she has coworkers who are in high school.

I thing one of the more annoying heroines I've read recently she was a teacher, supposedly the best in the nation working with troubled kids, but yet she let the hero (wealthy guardian of kid in question) basically steam roll right over her. I found myself with no respect for her and didn't even finish the book (unusual for me).

On the other hand, I read another book where the heroine was the owner of a scuba shop and the hero was a lawyer - both very dominant personalities which was fun because at ever disagreement there was always the question as to who would get their way. Helped to get from one scene to the next.
 

girlyswot

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 1, 2007
Messages
2,227
Reaction score
389
Location
Cambridge
Website
myromancereviews.wordpress.com
Something that can be useful is to think of careers that bring inherent conflict. I've had a chef/food critic pairing and a marine biologist sheikh/oil tycoon pairing. In each case, the pairing of hero and heroine's careers was the source of their external conflict. Think about how their work will impact their lifestyles - again, this could be a source of conflict. What if one works Mon-Fri, while the other has a job that means they're travelling every weekend? And so on. For most people, work is a huge part of their lives, so it's bound to have an impact on their romance. So make sure their work works for you.
 

gingerwoman

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 27, 2007
Messages
2,548
Reaction score
228
I don't want to read any more stories where the heroine is a waitress in a diner and the hero rescues her from her life of drudgery.
 

gothicangel

Toughen up.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 29, 2008
Messages
7,907
Reaction score
691
Location
North of the Wall
And see, that's exactly why I can't stand to read a lot of the Regencies or historicals. I can't imagine wanting to be taken care of, nor bonding with a guy who'd want to take care of me. So, I tend to create "equals who don't really need each other, but love each other." That tends to make our books appeal more to the urban fantasy reader than the romance readers. Because I think that you're right and some women really DO long to be taken care of--and whether that comes down to mean "dominated" I'll leave to individual discretion. ;)

I agree, I don't like those kind of historicals. But it is also true that history is littered with strong female characters like Mary de Guise or Cartimandua who blow this whole stereotype of women out of the water. I write Roman historicals, and can point to the archaeological record that prove that women ran taverns in Pompeii or Empresses who where better politicans than their husbands. In my current WIP, my female lead is a Christian Deaconess in the 2nd century CE.
 

WormHeart

Dual class author / nightguard
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 16, 2013
Messages
254
Reaction score
23
Location
Frozen wasteland of Denmark
Website
www.fromthefrozennorth.com
From the total outside of the genre...

Do he have to be legit?

I mean, oodles of money, high self esteem, macho, can take time off when he wants.

So ... druglord?

Mafioso?

They dont have to be psycopaths, you could think up a reason for them to be "honorable" criminals. Heck, he could turn out to be undercover as the big reveal.
 

morngnstar

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 9, 2014
Messages
2,271
Reaction score
297
Write the stories you would want to read, not what other people wish the genre would cater to. If you can relate better to a relationship in which the man is dominant, write that.

That said, I find the tendency to write stories about millionaire / billionaire men disturbing. It smacks of shallow greed for money. A man does not have to be a millionaire to be deserving of respect. Nor does he need a million dollars to be able to take care of you so that you can pursue an avocation instead of a paid career. You only need a millionaire if you want to buy a new pair of the hottest shoes every week, jet-set around the world, or spoil your kids with ponies and go-karts.

How about if, instead of a billionaire CEO of a major corporation, he is the founder of a medium-sized non-profit. He's not a volunteer; he pays himself a respectable salary appropriate to someone with his responsibilities, and sufficient to allow him, you, and children to live comfortably. Since his charity is up-and-coming and frequently featured in the news, and since he is handsome and charming, he is still one of the "top 40 most eligible bachelors" despite being #40 among them in net worth.

Maybe he is thoroughly capable enough to be a CEO worth billions in stock. Maybe he had an opportunity to go down that path. He had only to be complicit with a minor breach of ethics, and he would have been on his way, but he was too pure.

For the heroine, librarian is pretty cliche. Not everyone gets to have a job that relates to their passions (or rather your passions, as a reader and writer). If her real goal in life is to be a homemaker, then for now she's likely to just fall into whatever work pays the bills. Maybe she's close to her family. So maybe she has for the past couple years been working as a waitress for her uncle's catering company. Her humble career ambition is to move up to being the assistant chef.

Give her an avocation, too. Maybe she volunteers with kids. Maybe she has a creative hobby (but avoid writing - too self-referential). Maybe she studied history in college and collects antique maps. Whatever. Just something so she isn't passively pining away until Mr. Right comes along.
 

TessB

The Boxing Baroness
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 12, 2014
Messages
336
Reaction score
65
Location
East coast
Website
www.tessbowery.com
For historicals, if you're willing to go down a social rung or two, there have always been women with jobs. My current WIP has an actress (alas! Overused, perhaps) and an abigail; the hero is a staymaker.

There are lots of well-paid professions that aren't terribly glamorous, mind you... Electrical engineers installing city-wide systems and the project manager he ticks off? Astronomer with some bestseller popular science publications and access to a planetarium late at night... The chemist who accidentally invents the next post-it note, and the lawyer trying to steal her patent for her employer? :D
 

frimble3

Heckuva good sport
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 7, 2006
Messages
11,574
Reaction score
6,396
Location
west coast, canada
I can vouch for this... I have a couple of friends who work in libraries... (snip) Another is a page shelving books and while she has a bachelors in psychology, she has coworkers who are in high school.
This could be kind of fun in a story. Maybe the MMC mistakes her for a librarian, and an actual librarian gets annoyed, and she has to explain, etc.
 

Littlebit66

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 16, 2014
Messages
65
Reaction score
1
Location
Illinois
I'm personally not too fond of the wealthy man/poor woman trope because I'm not comfortable with my preteen daughter growing up with the idea that women need to be taken care of in stories (like so many Disney animated films) when at the same time we urge our daughters to get the best education to support themselves. I don't like characters like Bella Swan in "Twilight" who seems to have no other goal other than her relationship with Edward Cullen.

Partially in reaction to that, my WIP is more of a young adult/new adult romance between a couple in their 20's who meet in college. I'm planning to make the relationship equal by giving them both career goals where each one (at different times) is willing to break up with the other so as to not hold their partner back from achieving their professional dreams (The other partial reasons for the break ups are due to religious differences and later because of family obligations after a serious accident). Towards the end he converts on his own and they both realize that they love and need each other and decide to stay together after she moves out of state for a career opportunity. Luckily he gets a chance at a start up company close by.
 

lianna williamson

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 20, 2013
Messages
942
Reaction score
196
Location
small-town New England
Just piping in to say that although librarian and teacher are both traditionally "female" jobs, and although they frequently used as afterthought professions for Romance heroines, there is no reason you can't write about a librarian or teacher who takes her career seriously. Also, neither of these jobs is general; for example, a woman teaching Physical Science in an inner city middle school has a very different job than a woman teaching Drama in a performing arts boarding school or a woman teaching Kindergarten in a Midwestern farming town.

I am a teacher, and nearly all my friends are either teachers or librarians. We are passionate about what we do. Dismissing both fields as boring girl stuff is just as sexist as deciding all women secretly just want to be homemakers married to billionaires.
 

lexxi

bold enough for both those XXs
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 2, 2008
Messages
757
Reaction score
149
I'm not writing category romance, but the love story is pretty central in my current mystery work in progress.

The heroine is a stage manager and the love interest is a director who used to be cutting edge brilliant and she was a big fan of his work when she was in college. But now he's burnt out, recovering from a substance abuse problem, trying to rebuild his career from the bottom up. So they are closer equals working together at a level that would have been well beneath his notice when he was at his peak.

I had also done some collaborative writing with a partner a number of years back that focused on intrigues including romantic ones at a figure skating training center. There were two central interconnected love stories that we could have excerpted out as the focus of a romance-type novel: in that example, three of the four main characters were competitive skaters, and one was a musician/skating fan who started out carrying on an online relationship with someone she thought was another fan but was actually the champion skater she was a fan of. So there was some secret identity plotting going on there, before they finally met in person and all was revealed.

In both cases I'm interested in stories set within a somewhat-glamorous world that I do know something about but not on pure wish fulfillment. Not everyone is at the top of their field, and even the champion skater plot was more about how he deals with being fallible, and with retirement after not quite reaching his Olympic gold medal dream.
 

SiennaBloom

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 25, 2015
Messages
78
Reaction score
12
Location
On the shore of Lake Superior
Although this topic was originally started a long time ago, it interests me as well as the poster above me.
Personally, I do not read billionaire romances. I don't like the premise although I'm sure there are some really great love stories written with that premise, when I see that the hero is a billionaire in the blurb, I pass it by.

I am writing a series of 5 books. Here are the hero's careers for each: 1. Master's Degree Athletic Trainer, owns his own very small fitness center in a small town. (But he had dreams of things much bigger in his back story.) Novel is not about his training heroine. 2. Former military, back story, worked in a factory, did some house flipping. In the novel, he starts out unemployed actually and buys a run down motel that he plans to flip and ends up running with the heroine. 3. Youngest hero, inherited his father's contractor business, is a licensed contractor. 4. Fitness trainer (works for Hero #1), also a young hero (but novel is not about his training heroine). His character is not fully developed though. 5. Oldest hero, former Olympic Skier, now moving into retirement, works for Hero in #1 as a trainer.. not the emphasis of the novel. He is still competing in cross country skiing as well as mountain bike but not getting to nationals anymore.

Heroines careers: 1. Parole Agent (and absolutely loves her job, keeping it after the HEA). 2. Convenient store clerk ends up helping run the motel hero buys. 3. Musician. Very talented song writer, not so successful band. Wants to teach music. 4. Artist who ends up creating an event planning business (she will be more successful and earn more than the hero... I thought that was an interesting twist.) 5. Oldest heroine... yoga teacher for hero #1. I've been thinking of making her a writer or photographer as well. She's not fully developed.
 

travelgal

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 17, 2006
Messages
521
Reaction score
66
Location
South Korea
Just piping in to say that although librarian and teacher are both traditionally "female" jobs, and although they frequently used as afterthought professions for Romance heroines, there is no reason you can't write about a librarian or teacher who takes her career seriously. Also, neither of these jobs is general; for example, a woman teaching Physical Science in an inner city middle school has a very different job than a woman teaching Drama in a performing arts boarding school or a woman teaching Kindergarten in a Midwestern farming town.

I am a teacher, and nearly all my friends are either teachers or librarians. We are passionate about what we do. Dismissing both fields as boring girl stuff is just as sexist as deciding all women secretly just want to be homemakers married to billionaires.

Ancient thread, but THIS. Even part-time, teaching is demanding, not some girly fluff.

I recall a time when very other job was the all important advertising executive. I detest rampant commercialism, and the billionaire trope reeked with the message us females are only good for is buying stuff we don't need, and being beautiful.

I'm one of those who thought 50 Shades was a mystery because of the cover. When I opened it, what a disappointment to discover another billionaire trope, and the heroine struck me as weak with no moral compass.