I’m very excited that in a couple weeks, my colleague and friend David Leite and I will be presenting an “improve your culinary writing” workshop at BlogHer Food, in Atlanta. We’ll be sharing both general tips and leading some specific writing exercises (like using active verbs and various literary devices), so attendees can actually practice sharpening their writing skills and strengthening their own personal writing voice. In preparation, I’ve come up with several basic guidelines I’ve found especially useful myself over the years. In case you can’t attend our session, I hope they’ll help you write tastier prose, too.
Plunge right into the middle of your story.
It’s common for writers to slowly, gently get their feet wet with the story they’re telling, but it’s a habit to curtail. The reason: Prose is usually much more compelling when you dive instead of timidly wade in. Journalism writing coach Don Fry aptly calls the typical tedious introductory stalling, “throat-clearing.” Newspaper editors routinely look for it, and often just lop off the first few sentences before the story really gets going.
Many fiction writers and editors are also keenly aware of the importance of beginning with a bang instead of a whimper. In the writers’ group (of mostly novelists) I belong to, colleagues whose first chapter lags are often advised to, “start with a dead horse in the living room.” Obviously, such a scene would virtually compel the reader to keep reading.
Notice that David Leite, who’s rightly collected lots of kudos for his prose, leaps directly into his very funny, lively story, “Savior on a Stick. ” We readers don’t have to slog through the details of his eviction, we just find him out on a stoop with his suitcases but without his precious freezer full of corn dogs. Plus, he tosses in a colorful, vivid simile, the lawyer as a “bowling ball with legs” to liven the prose even more. How could we possibly stop reading!?
June 1988. I stood on the front porch of my friend Patty’s Arlington, Texas, home with suitcases in hand, not unlike Felix Unger in the opening credits of “The Odd Fellow.” Like him, I was being thrown out–not out of a tiny Upper East Side classic six–but rather a sprawling six-bedroom casa, complete with pool, three-car garage, automatic sprinkler system, and, what I would miss most, a freezer full of corn dogs. As Patty’s lawyer–a bowling ball with legs who had skin like tobacco-colored crepe paper–put it, I was an “unnecessary risk.”
Patty and her husband, Dan, were getting divorced. While he was shacking up with his dental assistant, I was living non-conjugally with his wife and three kids after I had, for the nth time, denounced New York City. The greater Dallas area was my new home, I told myself, and I embraced it with all the excitement and innocence of Kennedy in 1963.
Choose topics you’re passionate about.
A good deal of both life and writing are ho-hum, and just tackling topics that matter to you will usually make your prose livelier. Many staff writers must write assigned stories and remain unbiased, so if you have the luxury of choosing subjects that please or peeve you, you have a big advantage. Writing about a dish you’d either love or hate to eat; a restaurant you’d either want to visit or avoid like the plague; or an ingredient you adore or can’t abide is excellent insurance against wishy-washy (yawn!) prose.
I’ve found that some of my most popular blog posts, like this one called “Everything I Don’t Like,” have resulted from taking this approach. Like David, I employ some literary devices to brighten up the passage, such as the alliteration in the the phrases “tenderize the tough tissue,” “porker appendages, and “ringers for really rank pickled tennis shoes:”
[Pigs’ feet] should be declared unfit for human consumption! I’ll start simply by mentioning that though human and dog feet can reek, they’re roses compared to hog’s feet on the funkiness scale. To mask the noxious odor and tenderize the tough tissue of these porker appendages, people usually boil them in a strong vinegar brine, but this is as helpful as dousing the living creatures with perfume. Moreover, the boiling yields a gelatinous texture and ghastly, pungent odor that lurks in the house and continues to punch you in the nose for days. …. I would probably starve if I had nothing to eat but these dead ringers for really rank pickled tennis shoes.
Be sure to actually describe the food you’re writing about.
Oddly enough, bloggers and food writers often forget to do this, and it’s a mistake. Even if your blog post or article has pics, they won’t provide many of the details necessary to whet readers’ appetites. Analyze and convey how the food not only tastes, but smells, feels on the tongue (think tapioca pudding), and even how it sounds when munched (think celery and gingersnaps!). Try to be very specific, and avoid generic words like delicious or yummy, which indicate only that you enjoyed what you ate!
Here’s how award-winning blogger, Hank Shaw, of “Hunter, Angler, Gardener Cook,” describes caviar—not the easiest subject to wrap one’s words around—in a post several years ago. Notice Hank’s delightful simile suggesting that fish eggs look like alien jewels:
Caviar has always had a hold on me. It is a mysterious ingredient, almost otherworldy; the individual eggs look like jewels from an alien planet. Caviar tastes briny and vaguely floral, and the textural surprise of the pop in your mouth has led more than one writer to liken it to pop rocks for adults.
For more of my blog posts on food writing, check out Waging War on Wordiness, “Ms. Grammar Lady’s Rules for Better Writing,” and tips on how to describe what recipes taste like.
Excellent advice and tips, Nancy. I've been following the twitter feed and it sounds like you and David hit a home run with your workshop. I'm not surprised!
Thanks Amelia, will look forward to meeting you, too. I'm a food history buff, so your subject really interests me.
Nancy: this is tremendous. Thank you for laying out some very usable tips. Looking forward to meeting you at BlogHerFood this week. I am also speaking on a voice panel (about food in travel, experience and history)
Good luck on your workshop. I know we will enjoy ours. My problem organizing is too much material to cover in 1 1/3 hours!
Nancy, what a timely article because in just over a week I"ll be giving a culinary writing workshop so I have been making notes and organizing my thoughts. Your post is perfect as is everything you say. You have inspired me! Have a fabulous time and I wish I could be there!