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.
Tour Guide
Overview: Similar to an Outdoor Guide, a tour guide is someone who acts as a knowledgeable companion for a group of people wishing to experience local sights in a safe and educational way. Excursions might be a few hours (usually at a landmark location like a museum or a walking tour of an urban center) to several weeks, depending on the type of tour. Guides travel with their group, showing them landmarks, historical sites, and other areas of interest, encouraging tourists to…
Necessary Training: Education will depend on the type of guiding the character is doing, but many will have a degree in the area of tourism and travel as well as supplemental training and education that pertains to their area of focus. For example, a guide who focuses on a specific location such as a museum or historical site will have in-depth knowledge of that area, and possibly even an art history degree. If a guide covers a specific town or city, they will have significant knowledge of the history, landmarks, culture, arts, and language of that location, and will be able to…
Useful Skills, Talents, or Abilities: A knack for languages, basic first aid, charm, enhanced hearing, exceptional memory, haggling, hospitality…
Helpful Character Traits: Adaptable, adventurous, calm, charming, confident, courteous, diplomatic, disciplined, discreet, easygoing, efficient…
Sources of Friction: A group member entering an off-limits area at a historical site or causing damage to property, personality conflicts between one’s group members, a breakdown, travel delays, a client being pick pocketed, a client breaking a law because it’s not a big deal where they are from…
People They Might Interact With: travelers, bus and cab drivers, other tour group leaders, custom officials, museum curators and employees…
How This Occupation Might Impact One’s Basic Needs:
- Love and Belonging: A character with this job is away from home often, putting in long (or odd) hours. Their energy levels may be sapped from having to look after the every need of others, longer term travel, or both. This may make it difficult to maintain…
- Safety and Security: Having members on one’s tour group not realizing the danger of certain areas may place the guide into trouble if the client ignores warnings or breaks rules.
Common Work-Related Settings: airplane, airport, ancient ruins, antiques shop, art gallery, badlands, bank, bazaar, beach, big city street, campsite, canyon, casual dining restaurant, cave, cheap motel, city bus, coffeehouse, convenience store, country road, desert, diner, elevator, emergency room, farmer’s market, fast food restaurant, fishing boat, forest, grotto, hiking trail, hospital (interior), hospital room, hotel room, hot springs, lake, laundromat, marina, marsh, mausoleum…
How will your character’s occupation help reveal their innermost layers?
The Occupation Thesaurus is at One Stop for Writers, a game-changing creative portal to one-of-a-kind storytelling tools. Give our FREE TRIAL a spin and then level up your writing career by choosing one of our affordable plans.
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.
there is no twisting the stereotype for this entry. Or is it the same as the outdoor guide entry?
Hi Dylan, we don’t always include a “twist the stereotype” as sometimes an occupation won’t have really obvious stereotypes. If one comes to mind, let me know and I’ll add a way to twist it. 🙂