Jobs are as important for our characters as they are for real people. A character’s career might be their dream job or one they’ve chosen due to necessity. In your story, they might be trying to get that job or are already working in the field. Whatever the situation, as with any defining aspect for your character, you’ll need to do the proper research to be able to write that career knowledgeably.
Enter the Occupation Thesaurus. Here, you’ll find important background information on a variety of career options for your character. In addition to the basics, we’ll also be covering related info that relates to character arc and story planning, such as sources of conflict (internal and external) and how the job might impact basic human needs, thereby affecting the character’s goals.
We hope the sample list of ideas below will show you how to choose and use your character’s occupation to do more than simply reference a day job. For the full entry for this career and over 120 other ideas, check into our bestselling resource, The Occupation Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Jobs, Vocations, and Careers.
Corrections Officer (Prison Guard)
Overview: a corrections officer works in a prison, guarding inmates serving out their sentences, ensuring they are afforded their legal rights while obeying facility rules and local laws. They rotate through different assignments, staffing different areas including the gatehouse, observation towers, unit deployments (accommodation wings, infirmary, recreation area, etc.). Some positions are very hands-on (such as new prisoner intakes, which require pat downs and inmate paperwork, escorting prisoners, and monitoring pod areas as prisoners engage in daily activities such as card-playing and TV watching). Other assignments include monitoring controls, running headcounts, room checks for…
Necessary Training: Non-federal prison require a high school diploma or a completed general equivalency diploma, while federal prisons require a bachelor’s degree or three years of counseling and supervising others. Officers must also pass background checks and…
Useful Skills, Talents, or Abilities: A knack for languages, basic first aid, blending in, enhanced hearing, enhanced sense of smell, esp (clairvoyance), exceptional memory, gaining the trust of others, good listening skills…
Helpful Character Traits: alert, analytical, bold, centered, confident, cooperative, courageous, courteous, diplomatic, disciplined, focused…
Sources of Friction: trying to manage friction between gangs, overcrowding issues, poor quality of living leading to volatile prisoners, prison rapes and attacks, a drug problem, discovering inappropriate conduct between a guard an a prisoner, a corrections officer who is unreliable, family problems due to…
People They Might Interact With: prisoners, prison staff, administration, the warden, psychologists, doctors and nurses, police officers…
How This Occupation Might Impact One’s Basic Needs:
- Self-Actualization: Because this work is mentally taxing and can drain one’s spirit, it is easy to adopt a jaded, negative worldview. This could prevent the character from fulfilling a life pursuit that…
- Love and Belonging: shift work and overtime can impact one’s ability to keep family relationships strong, or…
- Safety and Security: prisoners can be deceptive, violent, and have nothing to lose, so working as a jail guard means a constant risk to one’s safety, especially in…
- Physiological Needs: becoming overwhelmed during a riot or attempted hostage situation would mean….
Common Work-Related Settings: ambulance, break room, courtroom, hospital room, juvenile detention center, morgue, police car, police station, prison cell
Visit the other Occupations in our collection HERE.
How will your character’s occupation help reveal their innermost layers?
Much of your character’s life will revolve around their work, and whether they love it or hate it, their job is a great way to show, not tell, their personality traits, skills, work ethic, worldview and beliefs, and more, so we should choose it with care.
To learn more, we recommend The Occupation Thesaurus book. Explore 120+ jobs to choose a profession for your character that showcases who they are, what they want, and what they believe in. Then learn how that career choice can characterize, drive the plot, infuse scenes with conflict, and get readers on the character’s side through the relatable pressures, responsibilities, and stakes inherent with work.
You can find this bestselling thesaurus writing guide in print, ebook, and PDF formats. To see what other authors think of the book, read its reviews at Goodreads.
Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.
Waiting eagerly for this Thesaurus.
So glad you’re enjoying it! We never know which of our thesauruses will be turned into books; some of them just stay at the blog, or at One Stop For Writers. We’ll keep you posted on this one :).
Yes. I should have remembered not to trust Siiri’s spelling.
Autocorrect gets me ALL THE TIME, lol.
My SIL served for several years as a DO. (Detention officer) I think you nailed it. Another characteristic of a “good” DO is that they are hyper-observant. He often found things in cells during tosses – DOs work in an environment where they have to mistrust EVERYONE and that can leak over into their personal lives – they are always looking for motives to others behavior. (imagine what that is like if you are married to a psychologist! he is haha) they also must be able to remain calm in high-stress situations and that can be VERY beneficial in emergency situations outside the jail. Very good at taking charge in those situations as well. (ie a car accident, the DO will make sure everyone is moving to do something productive). They can appear secretive but they are not they are observing! 🙂
Great observations on how these skills and traits leak into other aspects of the character’s life! That was one thing I saw in the interviews I read for this entry…this is one job where you have to be 100% “on” all the time. Not only is it exhausting, but turning it off would be almost impossible outside of work, because this is so tied to self-survival at work. The boundaries between would be non existent I imagine.
Good one, thanks. Another good occupation that writers could use is Parile Officer.
Do you mean parole officer? If so, we have this on our list too. 🙂