Character Labor and Plot

It’s Labor Day here in the U.S., and while I am sitting around waiting for a hurricane to decide whether or not to give me a glancing blow, a full miss, or steamroll as a Cat 5 right across the house, I was thinking about Labor Day and how it intersects with writing.

As in, how much of a character’s job is appropriate to include in a story. Many aspects of a person’s work just aren’t moving a plot forward. Most people, especially in the U.S., spend a great deal of their daily lives working. B...