Worldbuilding
An apprenticeship system can tell you a lot about a fictional society before anyone starts giving speeches about it.
Who gets to spend years “learning” instead of earning usually says more than the official rules do. If the good jobs require unpaid or barely paid time, then talent is only part of the story. The rest is family money, connections, and a fairly elegant way of calling class privilege tradition.
Useful little detail, that. It does half the worldbuilding for you before the plot arrives.
Who gets to spend years “learning” instead of earning usually says more than the official rules do. If the good jobs require unpaid or barely paid time, then talent is only part of the story. The rest is family money, connections, and a fairly elegant way of calling class privilege tradition.
Useful little detail, that. It does half the worldbuilding for you before the plot arrives.
Apprenticeships can also be a very tidy way of making people grateful for scraps. If the training is tied to obedience, you get a workforce that’s skilled, cheap and already used to not asking awkward questions.
That’s useful in fiction because it tells you what the society fears. Not poverty, usually. Insolence.
That’s useful in fiction because it tells you what the society fears. Not poverty, usually. Insolence.
Apprenticeships can also be a way of keeping people out, though. In fiction they’re often treated as a neat meritocratic ladder, when in practice the gatekeeping can be brutal. Who can afford the low status, the long hours, the uncertainty. Sometimes the real worldbuilding detail is not the job itself, but who gets to survive long enough to be considered suitable.