Careers for Your Characters: A Writers Guide to 101 Professions from Architect to Zookeeper
Author: Raymond Obstfeld, Franz Neumann
List Price: $18.99
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ISBN: 1582970831
Publisher: Writers Digest Books (October, 2002)
Sales Rank: 65,804
Average Customer Rating: 3 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 3 out of 5
Not as detailed as I would like...
I picked up "careers for your characters" hoping that this book might assist me in fleshing out the backgrounds of some of my characters in my writing. While I enjoyed some excerpts, I found the careers mentioned weren't detailed enough to be useful. In particular, the section on law enforcement was pretty thin. There weren't very many surprises either in the choices of 'careers' mentioned, except perhaps: sex worker, and even this 'career' seemed included more for prurient reasons.
Overall, it might be useful for those who know absolutely /nothing/ about the trade they are writing about... But for me I found it to be only an average resource - one I'll probably shelve and not refer to.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Outsider's view of professions but of some value
This book has positives and negatives. I would not advise using it in lieu of talking to multiple real people in the profession you are casting your characters. Having worked in a couple of the profiled professions, this book gave an outsider's viewpoint with some of the info downright wrong and some skewed. The occupation buzzwords given are strange: not the most common words and a weird assortment.
Positives: The chapter end references are useful. I liked the listing of fiction and nonfiction books using given occupations. The information given could be a starting point, but I would check everything with real people in the profession.
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