Thursday, May 20, 2010

Writing Food in Drops and Dribbles

Fiction characters are starving! Have you noticed? The typical 400 page novel - at least that's the length I prefer - often shows the characters eating once, maybe twice. They may slurp coffee with conversation, or toss back a cookie on the run. A picnic will show them grilling, laying out flannel backed table cloths and flipping flies off of deviled eggs, but when do they actually have a healthy meal? The television roars with a football game and beer is consumed. But where are the lavish dinners, the civilized repast?

Maybe it's because writing about food, and writing about eating food, is difficult. Hard to have a heart-to-heart talk over lobster dripping with clarified butter? Yeah. Hard to stay focused on the company when you're cracking crab legs? You bet. Hard to keep the pace when chewing is the action in the scene. Mmm - yes, again.

So, how to work in the ingredient list, the mouth-watering odors of fabulous food wafting from the heroine's kitchen, the texture of sirloin, the masterful color combinations that make nourishing meals appealing to the most finicky eater? And keep up the pace?

Drops and Dribbles. A sophisticated imaging tool that allows golden rice, accented with turmeric and saffron, to lodge on the heros chin as he moans in ecstasy over the home-cooked Indian meal. (The heroine must lift the wayward morsel in delicate fingers and seductively place it in her own mouth to make this work.)

Or the girlfriends show up for a carry-in lunch with farm-fresh vegetarian salad recipes. Lots of yummy food here, but a real pace-breaker, unless you spike the lemonade and spice up the conversation. Let food be the device that reveals your characters. Suzy, who only wears yellow, shows up with grape-tomato and mozzarella salad after meeting the Italian of her dreams. Allura, whose mom had one too many hippie lovers to pick out her dad, became an attorney, wears sweater sets and prefers basic green salad - but she switched from bleu cheese to ranch dressing after meeting Ricky Wrangler. Obviously we're working on a romance theme here, but why not? Food is a sensual pleasure. And you'll notice neither of these women is starving.

Spicing up fiction, especially women's fiction, with food is fun. You've probably got some ideas of your own. So let's read them! Now I've got to go eat my mid-morning snack. Happy Writing!


2 comments:

Lauri said...

Have you ever read Laurie Colwin's books? She describes food so beautifully in her novels and in her food writing of course.

Deni Cary Phillips said...

I haven't. Thanks for the recommendation!