What if James’ job was another form of Injected stability?
Some narrative templates use a job as a reason to pull the hero in various directions. (James Bond is a classic example.)
But what if that was reversed, where environmental circumstances were dragging the hero around, but the job adapted to always be there for the hero?
What if I avoided any causality for how James’ job kept aligning with careening circumstances?
James could suddenly find himself in some alternate reality, yet he would also have an assignment in that alternate reality.
I would provide details that would make it clear that the job is neither causing the turns (he is not being led by the job) nor is the job following him.
The job is simply a constant—independent of the careening plot yet always magically present.
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And maybe I wouldn’t need to be 100% consistent with this pattern. Occasionally he could be sent somewhere because of his work, and occasionally his work could hunt him down and find a job nearby.
If I did employ those, I would want to make sure they felt like rare exceptions.
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Possibly I could blur the transitions as well, where there wouldn’t need to be clear introductions are closure from one job to the next. Like a dream, James could sometimes get pulled away from an assignment and the assignment is forgotten and no one involved with his work thinks anything of it.
The trick would be not to make it confusing or feel like the author (me) forgot what he was writing about.
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