So, What Do You Do for a Living?

I typically coach my storytelling authors toward less description, because in my experience most writers lean toward too much rather than too little. However, there is one area I believe more detail is frequently warranted: characters' vocations and/or specialties. The majority of my favorite characters, fictional and nonfictional, have had a particular skill (be they professionals or dilettantes), and the precision and detail with which their work was described was critical to their depth in my mind's eye.

This will likely require extra research on the writer's part, but the story will reap benefits. The writer will be giving the character (and thereby her creator) credibility, as well as injecting her with one of my favorite words: verisimilitude. Think about a friend you have who's a mechanic, engineer, banker, or airplane pilot. When he gets to explaining his job, you get a sense that he owns a great well of knowledge about his subject, hard won from performing his duties day in and day out. And this makes him interesting. (Unless he's an accountant.)

A couple of examples come to mind other than the book I'm editing right now: The reclusive writer Bill Gray in Delillo's Mao II and the everyman neurosurgeon Henry Perowne in Mckewan's Saturday. Who's got another example?