Why Women Writers Should “Work It”

It stands to reason that great fiction would take place in the great arenas of the human experience: the places where we test our talents, boundaries, and mettle. This could be the battlefield, the sports field, outer space, the kitchen table, or the classroom, among zillions of other places. But puzzlingly, in contemporary fiction, one arena we see relatively little of is the one where we spend almost a third of our lives: the workplace. 

No one’s saying there’s no workplace fiction. In recent years, Lessons in Chemistry and Whisper Network made the workplace the center of gravity to marvelous effect, just proving the point that there is great drama to be wrung from work stories.

And yet, in proportion to how much time most of us spend in our workplaces, there’s comparatively little literature about it. But whether on a factory line or a corporate board, there is endless fodder for drama and stakes: Work is where we come into our own and discover what we’re made of. Many of us derive a good portion of our identities from our careers. 

Women read more fiction than men. This could be because women use books, in much the way that they turn to friends, for advice and support. Women look to books for, among other things, roadmaps for how to live a good life. All of which would seem to imply that women might appreciate stories set in the workplace, a place where, in many industries, we’re still struggling to make inroads. 

Just how lacking is fiction in terms of the workplace as a driver or setting of the action? I recently found out.

When you are published, you may be asked to suggest potential “BISAC” codes for your book. “BISAC” stands for “Book Industry Standards and Communications.” It’s a system for categorizing books by content. 

For my new novel, Where You Once Belonged, I thought finding relevant BISACS would be easy. The book does deal with issues of family and friendship. There’s a brief moment of magic. But the novel is largely set in the protagonist’s workplace, which happens to be broadcast journalism. It explores the challenges of an ambitious woman trying to negotiate the strategic and moral quandaries of the modern TV news world while suspecting that such negotiations would be different if she were a man. 

Off I scrolled through the dozens of codes within the category of “Fiction.” The variety and specificity of the listings were staggering. I quickly found “Fiction/Amish & Mennonite,” “Fiction/Christian/Suspense,” and “Fiction/Horror/Monsters & Creatures.” 

“Fiction/Workplace” had to be in there somewhere. And there it was, finally, a single entry. BISAC code #FIC027430: Fiction/Romance/Workplace. “Workplace” was not itself a category, but a sub-category of romance. As if the only reason one would want to read about the workplace is because there’s a chance the protagonist might spy her new love interest across the conference room table.

Why might this be? Why should novels avoid engaging with work? It could be writers write to escape their day jobs, not wallow in them. Or perhaps authors worry that compared to a sitcom which is free to deal only glancingly with the particulars of workplace life, a novel has to nail the details, which could entail exhaustive research only to have some readers sniff, “that’s not what it’s really like.” Maybe authors assume work is inherently dull.

At the places where I’ve worked—everywhere from a bar to a kibbutz to network news—I’ve experienced the highs, lows and absurdities of life. I’ve made spend-Christmas-together friends and bitter enemies. I’ve been outsmarted, lied to, and had ideas stolen. I’ve overheard coworkers talk about me from their adjacent bathroom stalls, to both mortifying and hilarious effect. 

I once took a writing test at local news station. That evening, I saw two of my stories on their air, just as I’d written them. The eye-rolling insult was that I did not get the job. During a stint at Good Morning America, I went to London to cover the death of Princess Diana. My boss asked me to put makeup on the al-Fayed family spokesman outside Buckingham Palace to keep him from jumping to another network. My eyeliner did not look good on him. While toiling at a small production company, I was sent to a set to retrieve equipment my boss had rented to the filmmakers. It turned out to be a porn shoot. 

Is my work life typical? No. But even in the service industry jobs of my youth, there was plenty of fodder. The collection of personalities, the mercurial bosses, the competition; it all just needed a bit of sifting to mine story gold.

This is why I wanted to set my novels in the newsroom. Not just because, as a writer at Dateline NBC, that’s what I know. But because it’s a world fraught with moral complexities. Decisions must be made that may result in some damage, somewhere. Ambition is a given. It’s a world where the heroine can so easily make bad choices and perhaps slide into unlikability. But also relatability. And, just maybe, she can redeem herself.

I hope more authors will consider workplace fiction. And I would argue that now, with remote work, job security issues, burnout, the clash of generations, the gig economy, and fears of whatever work world AI delivers us into, the possibilities for stories set there are as endless as a ten-hour workday feels. 

Just a lot more intriguing.

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Across numerous films, PSAs, and speeches, she’s written for Presidents Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, and Morgan Freeman. Her debut novel, The Ghost of Greenwich Village , has been optioned by Stevie and Maureen Van Zandt’s Renegade TV. She graduated from Barnard College and lives in Greenwich Village.

WHERE YOU ONCE BELONGED

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips