The tickle of curiosity. The gasp of discovery. Fingers running across the keyboard.

The World of Iniquus - Action Adventure Romance

Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Does Your Job Influence Your Writing?


Most of us have a job to pay the bills while we noodle-away on our vocation. Few of us consider the wealth of ideas and drama that is inherent to those day-gigs. Or even how the philosophy of our labors subconsciously influence our imaginative playground.


It will surprise no one who has read the Hannah Swensen/Murder She Baked mysteries that author Joanne Fluke comes from a long line of bakers. Nor would it be particularly shocking that she worked as a personal assistant for a private investigator. I was surprised to find that she also worked as a software consultant and a writer for a game show. 

 

However, you see the riches of those experiences in each Hanna Swensen adventure. 



Michael Crichton wrote four books before he hit it big with The Andromeda Strain. The first three were standard pulp of the day, heists, assassins, and mistaken identities. Oh and lots of sex. The fourth book though, A Case of Need, was something completely different. The story of a pathologist determined to help a friend accused of murdering a nurse, the book is timely (abortion is the subplot and it was illegal in many states then, too) fast, and best of all, it smacks of hard-earned experience. That is mostly because Doctor Michael Crichton was a Havard educated doctor and research biology fellow. He’s seen some things and I’m not just talking about science.


Science does pays more than bills


As stated The Andromeda Strain was his first big hit, allowing him to leave medicine (which he hated) and write full time.  It is no coincidence that Crichton’s biggest successes were the science books—Coma, Jurassic Park, Rising Sun et al. His gift was conveying complex ideas in easy to understand terms. Story was the objective rather than show how smart he was.



Arthur Conan Doyle predates Crichton by almost 100 years. Also trained as a physician, Doyle actually practiced medicine first as a ship’s surgeon and then in private practice. Also like Crichton, Doyle's earliest publishing successes were based in science. Doyle, however, had a different drive than Crichton. Born into the closing days of the British Empire, Doyle in his work, is very much the bubbling Watson attempting to reconcile his scientific training with generational superstition and prejudice, all at the turn of the century. Holmes is his ultimate expression of reason and rational thought, standing against ignorance and brutality.



Perhaps the best known vocational writer is Dashiell Hammett (bottom row, center). A Pinkerton detective for nearly a decade, Dash knew the ins and outs of crime which can be boiled down mostly to greed and deceit. He brought that experience both to his writing—his detectives wear hard lives just as they wear threadbare clothes and comfortable shoes. They take those lives off with a drink a the end of the day and then put them back on, along with necessity and worry. Just as Dash had.



He also brought his experiences with people to his activism. Disillusioned with the Pinkertons’ union-busting activities, Dash left the agency the first year he was published. He would use experiences with surveillance and infiltration to advise the fledgling Screen Writers Guild and the Civil Rights Congress. 




But maybe you’re not a former private detective like Dash, or a doctor like Doyle or Crichton, you may not be a baker, like Fluke, either. Aren’t you ashamed? Jokes aside, I just bet, you have some experiences that have shaped your views on life and will likewise shape your writing. 


Because I don’t think anyone’s bingo card included a failed restaurateur and middling line cook become a world-wide phenomenon who would change the way a nation viewed food and travel.


The Fraud Triangle is the barometer of credibility in my little diddies.


In June of this year I will celebrate my seventh year as a Certified Fraud Examiner…by paying a stack of cash to renew my certification and attesting to my continuing professional education. Yet the CFE has provided me with a wealth of experience beyond the job qualification it imparts. Years of study and work in the field has informed my fiction writing. 


Developed by criminologist, Dr. Donald Cressey, the Fraud Triangle neatly represents the key aspects of fraud: financial pressure, (may be professional or personal pressure) rationalization, and of course, opportunity. The triangle, employed like a compass, allows the examiner to track just about every case of fraud we are likely to encounter.


Bernie Madoff toiled for 30 years to build an investment empire on word of mouth and computer innovaiton. He was also under intense pressure to conceal the fact that his investment empire was a sham. Further, he rationalized that his dupes “should’ve known better,” or “could afford it” or “they were greedy." Finally, he had unrestricted access to his client’s money—in direct contridiction to (most) state and SEC guidelines for investment services.


In my writing the fraud triangle becomes the checklist for credulity. What is it my bad men/women want? What is the pressure? What is the opportunity? What do the worse-er men/women want, etc? Granted, I come from that side of the tracks so I’m not writing entirely in the abstract or necessarily about fraud. Still, the root formula still applies. 


Like Dash, none of us are writing anything that hasn’t been written before. But just as none of it had been written in the way that Dash wrote it, nothing that has been written before has been written in your voice, or lensed through your experiences. You have some gold in your past, don’t be afraid to let it shine.


I own none of the photos above. They are used here for educational/instruction purposes as covered by the Fair Use Doctrine.