story idea that i'm having trouble with.

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wheelchair27

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Hello i'm new here and i have this story idea that i am having trouble with.

all i know is that involves a husband and wife. the husband is disabled and the wife is his caregiver.

But aside from this i think that she should have another job of some type.

But i am not sure what this job should be if anybody has any suggestions for occupations it would help me out very much.
 
Hello i'm new here and i have this story idea that i am having trouble with.

all i know is that involves a husband and wife. the husband is disabled and the wife is his caregiver.

But aside from this i think that she should have another job of some type.

But i am not sure what this job should be if anybody has any suggestions for occupations it would help me out very much.

Does the occupation have to fit certain parameters? Like, should she work from home since she has to provide care for her husband? What is her education level? Personality type? She could be a hair stylist who works out of her home, if she needs to be there constantly. Plenty of computer programmers and web designers work from home, as well. In fact, I have a co-worker who often works from home as a programmer because her husband is disabled with severe Parkinsons.
 
To be honest no she does not need to be home around the clock the husband is able to care for himself to some degree but the needs help and care at night time.
 
Without knowing anything about your character, or the story, it's hard to make a suggestion. You can approach it a couple of different ways: You can pick a profession based on your character's traits or the story setting. Or, you can turn it around and mold your character's traits based on the profession you pick for them. The important thing is that your character act, and speak, like someone in their profession.

We all have preconceptions about different professions. When we think about a construction worker, we immediately "know" how they dress, what kind of car they drive, what kind of neighborhood they live in, where they go to eat, etc. When we think of a doctor, a very different image appears. Different educational level, different cars, neighborhood, clothing, even the way they speak. A doctor also isn't going to say something like, "Hey, youse finished wit dat chicken leg dere?" So your character needs to sound like someone in their profession. If you don't think you can write dialog so that your character sounds like a doctor or police officer or soldier (many professions have its own jargon or slang, too), then avoid those types of professions.

We even have a vague idea of their spouses' occupation; a doctor probably isn't going to be married to a supermarket cashier. There are exceptions, of course. I know a family where the wife is a dentist and the husband is an auto mechanic. However, the husband was in his first year of dental school when he quit to take over his father's small auto repair garage (his father had either died or taken very ill, I forget which it was). If those type of incongruities are incorporated into your story, there should be some sort of explanation in the backstory.

If you already have a complete character sketch (age, sex, physical characteristics, family background, socio-economic status, educational level, personality type, automobile, religious background, political affiliation, etc), then you can pick a profession that matches the character sketch. For a character in her mid-twenties, a college grad, very outgoing and personable, joined a sorority in college, very successful, drives a BMW, dresses sharply, tall and attractive, owns a townhouse, I might make her as a sales rep for a drug company, for example.
 
Possible scenario

In backstory I would have the husband disabled from a car crash with his wife being the driver and responsible for the crash. She is overwhelmed by guilt and takes the only job she could find that paid enough and allowed her to stay close to her husband in case he needs her. She becomes a phone sex operator working from home. You can take it from there!
 
Hello i'm new here and i have this story idea that i am having trouble with.

all i know is that involves a husband and wife. the husband is disabled and the wife is his caregiver.

But aside from this i think that she should have another job of some type.

But i am not sure what this job should be if anybody has any suggestions for occupations it would help me out very much.
What type of format would you imagine? I know this sounds kind of like, "Would you like fries with that?", but that's the kind of question it is. If you can imagine it, you can write it. Just use an editor if you don't do well with grammar or punctuation.
 
Story Problem

Perhaps this scenario:
The husband is a fairly young veteren, say in his early 30's, a career combat arms NCO perhaps, besides having some mobility problems from injuries from an IED incident he is tormented by PTSD from multiple deployments, some back on back, to Iraq and Afghanistan. His insomnia, pain, flashbacks and mobility issues are tormenting his wife who holds a fairly demanding job as a credit union branch manager. His VA disability status is among those that are perpetually f'ed up so he is getting a much smaller VA payment than he really merits. Bills are accumulating and he feels the walls closing in. His neighbor's daughter is a voluptuous and throughly selfish young woman who has an unsettling but not frightening meeting with this man when he walks about with his shambling painful gait late at night to try and dispel the demons of insomnia and flash backs. Slowly and then more quickly she finds this handsome but damaged and hurt man to be fascinating and draws closer to him eventually yielding her self to him homing her body and passion can if not cure his torment at least give him some relief from his pain.
 
hamilcar: I like what you posted but i think i would remove the wife from the story and make the neighbors voluptouous daughter the leading man's nurse instead. Night after Night this nurse has to watch while her patient suffers with the bad things he saw when he was in the military.
 
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