How to Write More Effectively About Food in Fiction
Former pastry chef, librarian, and award-winning author Alechia Dow shares her top tips for writing about food in fiction, whether it’s to excite the senses or add depth to your characters.
Hello! I’m Alechia Dow, the author of The Sound of Stars, The Kindred, A Song of Salvation (all young adult sci-fi-fantasy with HarperCollins), An Enchanted Match (middle-grade foodie fantasy with Feiwel & Friends), and The Cookie Crumbles with Tracy Badua. I’m also a former pastry chef with my Bachelor’s Degree in Baking & Pastry Arts with a concentration in food writing. As you can imagine, I love writing about food!
Let’s talk about why describing food is important. You know when you’re watching a movie or reading a book, the table is set, everyone expresses how hungry they are, food is put down, conversation begins… and then no one eats? It can take readers outside of the story. It’s a missed opportunity to connect.
Food is a bridge. It’s universal. You can write in a different language, talk about different cultures, write in any genre… but everyone eats. That’s the beauty of it. Outside of cookbooks, it doesn’t need to teach the reader anything. It exists to create an atmosphere, make the reader hungry by hooking them in, setting a scene. It adds flavor to your story.
So here are my tips on making your food take center stage in your stories:
- Think beyond the general adjectives; delicious, sweet, spicy, etc.,...What makes something delicious, sweet, or spicy? When you answer that—when you write that, you can make the story that much stronger.
- Use food for character depth. What a character chooses to eat tells us a lot about who they are. If they are stressed, maybe they wolf down a Pop Tart. If they are starving, maybe they’ll eat a giant cheeseburger. What they eat explains their frame of mind, their mood, their interests. If the character eats something that makes them feel a certain way or triggers a memory, then that’s an area to add a backstory, createsdepth, and make the character feel real, relatable.
- Get spicy! This isn’t purple prose, it’s foodie prose. You want the readers to taste and feel. Example: 1. I tasted spice and sweet sugar. —> 2. Spice, cardamom with a hint of cinnamon and maybe a dash of nutmeg, mingled with the sweetness of the brown sugar and settled on my tongue. You can see the difference. One is short, not evocative, the other is immersive, sparks the senses.
- Use the senses! What do they see on the plate? What exactly did they taste? Did they hear the crunch when they chewed? We want the crunch between their teeth, the silky smoothness of a cream, the whiffs of a sprig of mint, the tartness of a thick raspberry sauce that pulls at the cheeks and lingers on the roof of your mouth, and the joy of a slice of birthday cake layered with soft buttercream and crispy sprinkles. Sensory details can fully immerse a reader.
- Don’t be afraid to write what you know. If the character shares aspects of your identity and culture, eats things that you eat, use that connection. If you believe that food is love, and it evokes love and memories, imagine what it’d do once you put that down on the page. I’m a firm believer that readers can sense when the author enjoys writing the story. Imbue your work with that joy, and if food inspires you like it does me, it’ll be the same for readers.
Thanks for letting me talk about one of my favorite subjects with you! Happy (and tasty) writing!
Check out Tracy Badua & Alechia Dow's The Cookie Crumbles here:
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Alechia Dow is a former pastry chef, a librarian, and an award-winning author of acclaimed young adult sci-fi fantasies, several short anthology pieces, and magical (sometimes mysterious) middle grade stories. When not writing, you can find her having epic dance parties with her family, baking, reading, taking teeny adventures, and exploring her local food scene. AlechiaDow.com (Photo credit: Juliet Peel)
