Bettina's Books: Writing about Work

Monday, April 9, 2012

Writing about Work

I do not recommend writing about your coworkers. For one thing, casting your boss as a villain won't earn you a promotion, and for another, revealing your coworkers' embarrassing secrets as character traits will lose you the annual popularity contest.

However, writing about work in general terms can be a very rewarding tool. Use unimportant details about your workplace as the characteristics of places that your characters visit. Does your main character's office have an ocean view, or a view of a brick wall six inches from the glass pane? Does your fictional office have a water cooler? If so, do people tell rumors around it, or do they pick the second floor bathroom, and why?

Also, use your working experiences to address the universal truths about employment. For example: Is overtime worth the effort? How can your main character get credit for a project without ostracizing others, or avoid catching blame for something someone else did?

See the prompt above for an idea on how to get started.

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Writing Prompts: Traditional and Bookends

This section contains traditional prompts--those that inspire writers to start a short story or novel. It also contains a type of prompt that I created: the Bookend Prompts.

For the Traditional Prompts, take my suggestions and start writing! Feel free to tweak, alter, or completely reinvent the prompts to suit whatever story you want to write.

Traditional Prompt:
"I always knew that jumping jacks were dangerous. Now, I had proof..."

Bookend Prompts: Use the pair of prompts listed below as the beginning and end of your writing. A bit more challenging, but I know you can do it!

Bookend Prompts

1a. Why me?

1b. When he heard the sizzling of meat on the grill, he knew he was home.

For more writing prompts, check back regularly in the main blog (center column). I'll post more as I think of them!

Fanfiction Links

Even with a solid grasp of writing basics, it can still be intimidating to create an entire world of your own in which to write. Has this setting been done before? Are the plot twists too predictable? Are the characters no more than stock cut-outs, or are they so original that a reader won't know how to empathize with them?

To avoid those pitfalls, I suggest starting with fanfiction. You can't make money off of it, because the characters and settings have already been taken by established writers, but you can practice emulating writing styles, character descriptions, and plot twists until you're confident enough to use these elements in your own writing.

There are sites online that will host your fanfiction, but be sure to add a disclaimer at the beginning of these stories, so that it's apparent you aren't trying to horn in on another author or screenwriter's meal ticket. At these links you will find several (okay, so it's a few dozen) of my fanfiction attempts. These are Supernatural and Magnificent Seven fictions, sometimes crossed with other shows or characters, such as Highlander, The Pretender, and Boondock Saints.

Standard disclaimer for stories in this section: These characters aren't mine, and I'm writing for fun, not profit. No copyright infringement intended.