Creative resume writing makes for intriguing characters.When you think of creative resume writing, you may think of spicing up your own resume to make it look more appealing to your potential employers. For our creative writing purposes, however, it has to do with how to write a job description for each of your characters. Click for Free Writer's Block Help E-Zine and Free E-Book Think of your creative writing career and how you can make it better through creative resume writing. You can choose to make your characters have grand or bitter personalities. You can make them have all the luck in the world, but they may just be in the middle of the worst dry spell in the history of their lives in terms of luck. Creative resume writing goes along these same lines. You are the bearer of bad news or the creator of good. You are the one who makes or breaks your characters, so learn how to write a job description for them that entails their best and worst, their high points and low points. In this way, you will create a more solid structure for their interactions with others throughout your writing. If you choose to make your main character a professional athlete, you don’t necessarily have to make the character the star quarterback or lead scorer. He or she can be made very interesting even if they hold a very minor role in the athletic arena. Maybe your main character is the equipment manager who longs for a chance to get out there and show everyone what he or she is made of. You may also choose to have your character be a professional bicyclist or bowler – two professions that are not quite as largely discussed in sports journals or news headlines. Have your characters take on ordinary, everyday jobs that the common man may have to take in order to make ends meet. Think back on your own experiences that led you to where you are today, and do some creative resume writing of your own to write a job description for your character that is partially, or even fully, based on the trials and tribulations, or even the good aspects, of what made you land on your feet in the end doing whatever you are doing today. Your characters' jobs may lead to bigger and better things, or they may be the beginning of a slew of menial labor jobs that the characters must take on in order to work through the struggles and trials that they are constantly facing. Make your character a waiter looking for his or her big acting break, a bookseller at the local bookstore, a janitor, a woodworker, a glass blower, a clown who is hoping to strike it big as a comedian one day, or even a Civil War re-enactor. Whatever you choose to have your character do, even if the character despises that particular job, make them have to do the craziest, wackiest things to make the conflict grow all that much stronger. If they hate what they do, have their boss give them more tasks that eat away at them. If they love what they do, give them some exciting aspects of the job, but also make them do some trivial tasks in order to show them that they can’t always have what they want out of their job. Your characters have to learn that life is not always easy, and that is what often makes for the greatest conflicts! Now, if you decide to make your characters into musicians, be careful. You want to be sure you choose cantatas, songs, and worthwhile musicians for your characters to aspire to. Pianists can get their starts as keyboardists when they are very young, and they can learn to play everything from Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony over the course of time. You can have them turn into bassists, flutists, guitarists, or even vocalists. Be aware of the characteristics of the type of musician you choose to write about so you do not express something illogical or irrational. Creative writing research can be a big help in situations such as this. Learning all that you can about the line of work you are creating for your characters can be a huge factor in the overall composition of your character and his job description. Listening to some music by musicians that are in the line of work you are putting your character into can provide much needed insight as well. 
The show The Office has done a superb job of making paper supplying seem like a job that anyone would love doing. Granted, the characters on that show barely get any work done, but they are constantly reminding the viewers of their "mockumentary" about how their company thrives on certain people being top salesmen, and how they have mastered their craft. Have your characters master their own crafts, do their own jobs, and travel in their own circles to get there. Creative resume writing can be as simple as thinking about the description of a job and detailing how your character works hard at fulfilling the goals and obligations that the description entails. Mr. Mom is a movie that took a man with a job and turned him into a "house-husband" (rather than a housewife) who had to take care of the kids, make the meals, and work at doing what he had watched his wife do for years before he was laid off. His wife took on a job in the corporate world leaving him at home. It is an interesting, yet believable scenario. Just because it used to be more uncommon for fathers to stay at home while mothers worked doesn't mean that it couldn't be true. Many people who watched the movie probably found themselves in similar predicaments back in the 1980s, and therefore could identify with the situation the movie presented. The key to doing creative resume writing is to think outside the box and find out-of-the-ordinary situations that can present themselves in ways that reveal unique traits, flaws, and inadequacies of your characters. There is so much to write about when you consider opposite perspectives. Mimes, hot dog vendors, artists who draw with chalk on the street, caricaturists, and a slew of other jobs can afford you with great creative resume writing techniques. You can make up your own job descriptions for these characters and make them successful. You may choose, on the other hand, to make them despise each day that they go to work. One job may be worse than the previous, or than the next. Find what creates tension and work towards letting the conflict worsen before you lessen the blow of how hard the job is. A very important idea to always remember is to never have your characters take on jobs or perform tasks that do not fit whom they are and what you have already written them to be. Creative resume writing relies on the fact that you have created stable characters that have a background already. You are creating another facet of their personalities through the job you write for them.
To return from Creative Resume Writing to the New! CommentsHave your say about what you just read! Leave me a comment in the box below. |