Food is an important part of making a story feel real.
Let’s take a look at some examples from books, then practice writing our own tasty/terrifying descriptions of food together!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we go over how to write delicious/disgusting food.
Watch what we did here, or scroll down for highlights.
How to Write Delicious/Nasty Food
- Food is an important part of a good story: what kinds of food your character eats, how they eat it, what they think about it, and more are important in making your story feel real
- If your character is eating something good, then you want the reader to feel like they’re eating it too; if your character is eating something awful, then you want the reader to cringe in pain
- So let’s take a look at some examples of food in stories, then practice writing our own together!
Hunger Games (pg. 9)
Gale spreads the bread slices with the soft goat cheese, carefully placing a basil leaf on each while I strip the bushes of their berries. The food’s wonderful, with the cheese seeping into the warm bread and the berries bursting in our mouths.
Everything would be perfect if this was really a holiday. But instead we have to be standing in the square at two o’clock waiting for the names to be called out.
- The main takeaway here is that verbs can show off the food more powerfully than adjectives
- “The cheese seeping into the warm bread” and “the berries bursting in our mouths” is much more effective than “smooth cheese” and “juicy berries”
- Make the food the subject of the sentence rather than the object: instead of “there were apples on the table,” try something like “apples glistened on top of the table”
Hunger Games (pg. 65)
He presses a button on the side of the table. The top splits and from below rises a second tabletop that holds our lunch. Chicken and chunks of oranges cooked in a creamy sauce laid on a bed of pearly white grain, tiny green peas and onions, rolls shaped like flowers, and for dessert, a pudding the color of honey.
What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the press of a button? Days of hunting and gathering for this one meal and even then it would be a poor substitution for the Capitol version.
- The main takeaway here is that food description is most interesting when it relates to the character eating it
- Describing random meals in detail is not interesting, but describing specific meals for specific reasons is compelling
- Here, Katniss has never had a meal this grand before, and her mind goes to how hard she’d have to work for it, which makes it feel more impactful
Name of the Wind (pg. 138)
I sat on the stone by the edge of the pool. I stripped the leaves from the stalks of motherleaf and ate one. It was rough, papery, and bitter. I ate the rest but it didn’t help.
I found some shelf fungus growing on a dead tree and ate it after washing it in the pool. It was gritty and tasted like dirt. I ate all I could find.
- The main takeaway here is that bad food description is very impactful when it uses non-food words
- Here, “papery,” “gritty,” and “dirt” are all words rarely used to describe appetizing food, so they instinctually make you recoil when you read it
- Combined with the desperation of the main character to consume it despite the readers disgust, it’s a very effective scene
Name of the Wind (pg. 169)
I made it to my hidden place, where the roofs of two buildings met underneath the overhang of a third. I don’t know how I managed to climb up there.
Inside the blanket was a whole flask of spiced wine, and a loaf of fresh bread nestled next to a turkey breast bigger than both my balled fists. I wrapped myself in the blanket and moved out of the wind as the snow turned to sleet. The brick of the chimney behind me was warm and wonderful.
The first swallow of wine burned my mouth like fire where it was cut. But the second didn’t sting nearly so much. The bread was soft and the turkey was still warm.
I woke at midnight when all the bells in the city started ringing. A new year had begun.
- The main takeaway here is that sometimes you can say a lot by saying very little
- The only description of the food we get here is that “the bread was soft and the turkey was still warm,” but it’s effective because of the contrast with the surroundings, and the horrible past of the character (when he was eating fungus)
- Knowing when to juice up the food description vs. tone it down is hard, but sometimes less can be more
After that, chat shared some images of food for us to describe in delicious/disgusting ways.
Here’s what we came up with:
#1. Quadruple Bypass Burger
DELICIOUS
The burger was a promise of an hour of bliss between two buns. Four patties, eight slices of bacon, dripping juices down the slices of cheese, tomatoes and onions gluing it all together. A leaning Tower of Meats-a, each layer another delicious floor for my tongue to peruse. New sights, smells and tastes to remember on my fantastic trip to this exotic location. Bon voyage, my arteries! We will go on this heart-pounding adventure together.NASTY
Watching the man at the other table eat the quadruple bypass burger was like seeing a birth in reverse. Something being shoved into someone that just wasn’t right, didn’t belong in this world, fluids and specks of flesh dribbling as the two bodies oozed together as one. He slurped it up, inch by inch, like a wide-eyed snake thrusting an even bigger snake down its throat. I couldn’t believe this was legal, much less allowed to be happening in front of people eating.
#2. Pig on a Spit
DELICIOUS
There’s something primally satisfying about roasting a pig on a spit. The way the skin snaps and crackles, releasing hisses of juice into the fire, slowly crisping to an orange-brown sunset. A thin coating of maple sugar glaze locks in the sweet tenderness beneath, glistening in the gentle lappings of the fire. Just imagining puncturing the smoked skin into the succulent meat below was plenty to set my mouth to waterfall-mode.I was a shoo-in to win this year’s BBQ Sauce King crown.
NASTY
Despite the heat of the fire pit, seeing the pig on the spit sent a chill through me. The way it hung there, impaled through its mouth, its face seared in agony, as it slowly rotated over the flames while the onlookers chatted about football and sipped beers. They were the devils in this pig’s hell, calloused to its suffering on display.All I could imagine was myself, stretched across the fire, a splintered stake running through me, scorching my skin black as I screamed and the devils stabbed me with sharpened thermometers to see if I’d hit that juicy 180 degrees yet.
It was time to sow some discord at the BBQ Sauce King Festival.
Be sure to check out the video for dramatic readings and more descriptions from viewers!
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso