: Should I research what my protagonist’s job would involve, or just create it all from my imagination? My protagonist works in a pharma company and I really don't have a clue about how they

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Please do some research!

Books where the author has done prior research are better reads. This is especially true if your audience has the job you're writing about or does the thing you're describing. Not knowing what you're talking about leads to unbelievable plots and it alienates people who do know a little about the subject you're writing about. Research will also give you more material to use when planning your story and when describing details.

Suspended disbelief will only get you so far.

For you specifically:

Listen to podcasts with interviews of people in the area your character works in. There are lots of professional and industry specific podcasts that chat about work life.
Look up some industry journals. Most of the articles will be technical information but some of them will be career advice or interviews.
Search for and read job descriptions on a hiring site. These will have a general list of job duties and qualifications.
Email someone in the field with a few questions - you might feel nervous about cold-emailing someone but I bet you will be shocked at how many people are willing to engage with people they don't know.

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John Smithers touched on something that I believe is really important.

The idea behind "write what you know" is that you should understand the subject matter well enough that you won't smack a reader out of disbelief with your ignorance or undermine your thematic concerns with naivete.

As John answered, your solution is to acquire the knowledge that you lack. "Writing what you know" is a call to diligence, not a prerequisite check.

In the course of learning about that field, you may realize you need to revise your plot or characters. In order to tease that information out of anyone you engage, identify any key plot points or character behaviors in advance so you can ask the right questions.

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Why do you not want to ask a real person directly? Most people are pleased if they can tell about their job, especially when an author says he wants to write about it in a novel.

This "writing what you know" is becoming more and more dangerous, because it is widely misinterpreted. It's just an advice, that you shouldn't be too disappointed if you try to write literary fiction and all you have ever read are romance stories (and vice versa). So skip that "expert" nonsense.

You are a writer. Your job is to make things up. You can even do that without any research. Some readers don't even care if what you write is like it works in real life. After all they bought a fiction novel. Just look at movies. I'm a programmer and I can tell you that every movie I have seen where a hacker is involved tells you totally rubbish. But most people don't care (probably because they do not know better).

Now let us they you care (or you care about the readers who care). Then asking people working for a pharma company is the easiest way to get the interesting details. An internet search should give you a good start also. Yes, it's work, but don't expect someone is doing your job and gives you an already elaborated view.

If you want to please the readers who care, then research is part of your job. And very likely it will be a remarkable quality improvement for your whole story, even for readers who do not care about the details.

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