Writing Tips

Writing Descriptions for Food

One of my favorite ways to figure out what foods I want to include in my book is to mentally log several things: 

The scene (sexy, serious, business, or other kind of setting)

Upperclass or lower class (cheap vs. expensive)

Holiday or event or no

Foreign or domestic

character preferences (vampire, human, or otherwise)

What am I hungry for?

Main course or desert?

The action (related to scene, basically: how much time, or is the situation dire?)

If there are any special areas of interest, the above mentioned helps me to figure out what to aim for. If it is food for another species, like vampires, then I might tweak a certain food item in order to make it more vamipric, like I did in my old draft of The Dark Ones' Halo Gate with "blood Jell-O."

Often, I find myself watching the food channel -- yes, the shows there can make a person fat with food-envy. Or disgusted, if it's one of the ones that has that dude eating weird stuff. Ew, some of those things are so gross.

The hosts often describe the foods, and I use pieces of their descriptions either for that particular food, or for other foods. Example: Greasy, hot pizza baked to sizzling perfection straight out of the oven-- or -- Greasy, hot bratwurst fried to sizzling perfection straight off of the stove top.

Note that I included temperature and sound to the food item. "Hot" is a sense of touch, and "sizzling" is a sound. It provokes the tastebuds and the olfactory sense, readying a reader for the intake of food because of the thought it has provoked.

Positive words like "perfection" automatically slap the brain and tells it that this food will be delicious, because we want food items that are cooked to perfection, not something that is sloppy and stale, or sour. (Unless that is the intent of the scene.) And we certainly wouldn't order something off of a menu if its description was "kind of tender and seared okay" or "cooked until barely edible."

Those last two descriptions are ridiculous, and they give the mind room to doubt if the food is top of the line--or even edible. Thus, make sure you use the senses while describing foods or drinks. Sight, sound, taste, touch, indication (perfection), et cetera.

Also! This is my favorite way to figure out how to describe food, or even how to choose what foods to write about! This can also apply to writing about cooking the food.

Wait for it . . .

. . .

. . .

(hehehe)

. . .

Recipe cards.  Hmm.  That dramatic flair fell flat.  Meh.

Yep.  All of that drama for recipe cards.  I am a dweeb.  I get excited because of pop tarts. I eat the same stuff all of the time, but my inner chef wants to cook something else so badly sometimes. So I cook, sweat, and burn myself multiple times-- and used to, I would only come out with some nasty concoction even the cats were revolted over. Now I can even make bustles sprouts taste good.  So . . . I follow recipe cards in cooking, AND in writing.

No need to go into detail when it comes to recipe cards, though. Often the name of the food and a couple of things about what is in it, including sensory details, and wha'la! You have been served! You could always go about what trouble the characters had in getting the ingredients to shift the focus from the food to the drama, too.

Certain cook books have other terms like broil, and sautee. There is also a bunch of information online, so if you ever want to write about food, decide what is scene appropriate and go from there. 

YouTube makes life easier, too.  Never forget YouTube.