I gave my main character a boring job on purpose and it backfired in a weird way

I was writing a fantasy story and decided my hero should be an accountant before his adventure started. I thought it would be a funny contrast, you know, a guy who tracks numbers getting thrown into a magic war. I spent a whole afternoon in the library making up fake tax codes for his kingdom. But when I started writing, I couldn't get him to leave his desk. Every scene turned into him worrying about ledger entries instead of the quest. My writing group said he was 'weirdly compelling' but the plot was dead. I learned that a quirky detail can sometimes take over the whole story if you're not careful. Has anyone else had a small character trait completely derail what you were trying to write?

3 comments

3 Comments

victor_robinson22d ago

Honestly that sounds like a great start for a story. Maybe the plot needs to be about the ledger, not in spite of it.

quinna8922d ago

But what if the boring job IS the story, @victor_robinson?

nancyj1122d ago

Wait you made up fake tax codes? @quinna89 might be onto something with that ledger plot.

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