"Four Reasons Food Can Spice Any Genres You Write" 🍝

Wonderful news! 🥳My article was published by Women on Writing today! Check it out, and then give the writing prompt a whirl. 📝

Four Reasons Food Can Spice Any Genres You Write

By: Melanie Faith

Photo by Mae Mu on Unsplash.

It’s just about autumn in the US, which is an important weather shift in the seasonal states. Humidity dissolves as leaves turn into a crayon-box bonanza of shades while it remains sunny, bright, and crisp enough for a walk in a cozy, knit sweater and a mug of steamy tea after.  Another signal of the time shift is the shortening of days and the lengthening of my appetite.

While I enjoy eating all year ‘round, there’s something special about the chill in the air and the darkening of the evenings that increases my appreciation for sweet and savory flavors. Bring on the ooey-gooey cakes and breads, the creamy mac and cheese, the hearty, saucy spaghetti Bolognese!

No matter the season, the rituals of eating; snacking; food buying, storage, and preparation; meal clean-up; and food sharing surround our days and can be integrated into our writing to enrich our work.  Let’s look at four reasons why adding food writing to our repertoire can deepen our writing:

Food connects us: Nothing reminds us more of our communities and the cultures we belong to than food.  References to the recipes, meals, and snacks your protagonist grew up eating and still makes can provide shorthand for so many parts of your character’s background and life, including but not limited to her family of origin’s geography, socioeconomic status, and more. Certain foods will instantly be connected in readers’ minds with a particular state, region, cultural heritage, or country, while other foods and beverages are universal to many communities—which will give your readers other insights into how your unique character fits into a larger trend or social sphere or, conversely, how they might rebel against it.  Including meals or restaurant scenes can also demonstrate how your character interacts with others, what she feels comfortable saying or not saying, what she wants to share in public compared to her private thoughts, and so much more.

Speaking of which, food can create both bonds and tensions:  If one of your characters loves attending a weekly potluck she organizes and hosts once a month while another character lives for a quiet dinner for one at home to get away from the stresses of his day job and rejuvenates with the radio on while preparing couscous and a salad, you’ve already set up a way to show (rather than tell) extroversion and introversion. You’ve also set up a scenario where their differing styles could create conflict if these characters become friends, coworkers, family, or romantic partners. Characters can react strongly, or they might have inner hopes or misgivings about what is being served, about their dining companions, or about where the dining takes place. 

Food is also often connected with larger social issues that deeply impact many people both locally and globally—such as food instability, hunger, and ever-rising grocery prices—that you can shine a light on within your writing in nonfiction, poetry, flash, novels, and many other genres.

Photo by Atie Nabat on Unsplash

Favorites and aversions make us each unique. Including small details about what your character loves and loathes eating can strengthen your characterizations. Just like all of us, characters can have detested foods show up in their lives and have to navigate their distaste quietly or verbally, or they can absolutely love quirky regional favorites that their friends and family can’t stand or refuse to try. Conversely, we all love to share our favorites, and sometimes these favorite foods are eagerly adopted by those we love, spreading the joy. Writing that praises, describes, humorously disses, or delights in foods can connect with your audience’s own experiences of likes and dislikes.

Try this exercise!  If you write fiction: your antagonist has just invited your protagonist to dinner. Where will they go? What will they talk about? What is being served for dinner? If you write nonfiction, poetry, or other genres: jot a list of five of your favorite or least favorite foods. Pick one of the foods, set a timer for twenty minutes, and describe a time when you were served or served others this particular food. Use as many sensory details as possible to denote the food and reactions to it. Go!

 Care to learn more? I have a few spots left in my Food Writing class that begins Friday, October 6, and I’d love to have you and a friend join in the fun. Details at: Food Writing for Fun and Profit.

One Book's Journey: Developmental Editing 📙

I look greatly forward to taking part in talented Joanne Nelson’s online class, One Book’s Journey: the path to publication, via Write on, Door County. During the first class on Wednesday, January 25th, I’ll be stopping by to discuss insights into developmental editing with Joanne and attendees.

To learn more about Joanne, her amazing writing, and her fabulous forthcoming book with Vine Leaves Press, please click here. To learn more about the other awesome topics and guest speakers who’ll visit her class, click here.

To learn more about the developmental editing talk on January 25th: click here.

My Article Published: "Delicious to Dish: 4 Ingredients That Make Food Writing Fabulous"

Excited that Women on Writing published my article today and to share it with you:

“Delicious to Dish: 4 Ingredients That Make Food Writing Fabulous”

Photo courtesy of Vincent Rivaud from Pexels

By: Melanie Faith

What does cooking and writing have in common? A richness of inviting language.

Think about the sheer number of words to describe something “delicious,” for instance. From “decadent” to “delectable” to “delightful” to “exquisite” and “appetizing” and “tasty” and “flavorful” and even “mouthwatering,” each word underscores a very particular quality about the dish.

Speaking of which, even the word “dish” has numerous shades of meaning, tones, and definitions that can lead to descriptive and delightful writing. From the cooking containers to the food itself to an attractive person to giving a friend the scoop by sharing gossip to punishing, as in “you can dish it out but you can’t take it,” the variety of descriptors, contexts, and diction choices make the pairing of writing and nourishment a natural fit. Much like ice cream and the waffle cone that conveys it, they can be a great symbiotic duo.

·         Food writing has ample diction options. Our descriptions of the foods we stir, spoon, swirl, chew, or slurp tend to be precise and as varied as the salad of verbs we can choose from to denote how we compose or eat our meals and certainly how we feel or felt about them and/or the people who made them. One of the reasons writing about food is so fun is that there are endless words that bring our passion, distaste, or other emotions about making or eating food to vibrant life on the page.

·         Food writing has point of view. Some types of writing are easier than others to denote a clear and strong point of view. Food writing tends to have a very focused and clear POV. For instance, people tend to have complicated relationships with certain foods, such as durian fruit or sauerkraut, and it’s often easy to spot the point of view and tone of the author—whether like, love, confusion, or loathing—often in the first few sentences.

·         Food writing has theme. One of my favorite qualities about food writing is that however much the focus is on creating or imbibing or not relishing some eating experiences, it’s never ONLY about the foods at all. Much food writing is rich in setting, imagery, and contextual details that tell the readers something deeper about the speaker’s life or the characters’ lives. Food writing covers a dynamic array of topics, from cultural celebrations and birth stories to addiction, divorce, office romances, first jobs and first apartments, and you name it. Food is present at just about every turning point in our lives, so when writing about food we are presented with endless possibilities, not only for what dishes have meant in our lives in the past but also now and what it might mean in the future. Personal essays, recipes, chapbooks of stories or essays, and/or characters describing foods for children and grandchildren are all food writing. Just about any topic or theme you can imagine from your everyday life will have at least one ingredient, dish, meal, holiday recipe, or family barbecue/picnic/party or road trip associated with it that could make vivid and meaningful prose or poetry.

·         Food writing is not genre restricted. We often think immediately of recipe books or cooking shows when we think of food writing, both of which are kinds of food writing, but that is just the very, very, very tip of the food-writing iceberg. Poems are also food writing. One-act plays with a dinner scene, also food writing. Restaurant reviews, too—food writing. Flash fiction and flash memoir and hybrid pieces, all food writing. Guess what: so are jokes, comedic essays, scenes from novels or novellas, and just about any other genre you can think of. If it has something about eating or being unable to eat, someone making something to eat and failing or succeeding at it, people congregating to eat, people rejecting what’s on the table to eat in favor of something else, the struggles of eating and cooking, people learning to cook, and so on, then it’s food writing. Period. The vast variety of food writing makes for especially fun writing and reading experiences.    

Considering the rich themes, descriptive language, focused point of view, and genre possibilities, food writing is one of the most exciting writing experiences an author can have.  Like a meal to savor, food writing invites a writer’s imagination, memories, and talents to the table, month after month, year after year.

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My Food Writing class begins on Friday, April 8th. I’d love to have you and a friend join me for this delectable and fun class. Click for more details and the sign-up link.

Exciting Spring Class! Register Now-- Photography for Writers :)

I’m happy to announce that I’ll be teaching my four-week Photography for Writers class again this spring.

Beginning on April 5, 2019, this class is tremendously fun and a great way for writers to sharpen their photography muscles and vice versa. No photography experience necessary, and you can use whichever kind of camera (including camera phone) you’d like.

For more details and to sign up to reserve your spot in this cool online workshop now, please visit: Imagery Power: Photography for Writers. Feel free to message me with any questions.

Photo courtesy of Alfonso Reyes, https://unsplash.com

It's All about the Tropes, My Friends! My Craft Article Published

My craft article about creating artistic imagery using tropes appeared at Women on Writing today.  

Image by: Jose Alonso

www.unsplash.com

"Tropey-Dokey: Enhancing Imagery with Tropes" 

By: Melanie Faith

          12:30 in the afternoon was a sacrosanct time for my grandma and my mom. It was the starting time for their favorite soap. As in their “stories.” Month after month, year after year, from two houses a half-town apart both of which used rabbit-ear antennas so popular in the ’70s and ’80s, they tuned in five days a week. Eagerly, they followed the unfurling complications of characters both glam-tastic and down-on-their-luck in a fabled city that had the same name as a European city (which didn’t hurt the appeal).

Okay, so sometimes the plot lines were admittedly fantastical—amnesia and never-before-mentioned twin siblings, anyone? Still, the protagonists (and often the rascally antagonists, too) were likeable in their emotional conflicts and botched intentions.

          Soap operas— like most novels, visual storytelling such as photos and movies, and plays— are based on comforting tropes, you know: those recurring motifs and literary devices that we can often foresee but still wait around to watch how it all shakes down anyway.

Unlike learning calculus or molecular biology, we don’t have to strain to notice bits and pieces of what it’s like to struggle and to celebrate human foibles and small triumphs within the characters whose lives unfurl scene by scene, even if our own lives don’t involve heirs/heiresses, ballrooms, or jet-setting.

Lest you think soap operas are solely low-brow and cheesy escapism, think again: tropes can be traced as far back as the ancient world. In Classical Greece the term meant “turn,” and is still used in modern Deconstruction Theory. Aristotle, in Poetics, discusses common tropes in tragedies and epics.

The important part about tropes is that viewers, readers, and artists all relish patterns. Also, these recognizable patterns can lead to some wonderful extended narratives. I’ve seen many photo series based on developed tropes from fairy tales and other imaginative and recognizable patterns.

In short: tropes, my friends, are our friends.

It’s not rocket science, but that’s not usually what we need from the art we enjoy or the art we create-- art is the balance of tension between the familiar and the human need for escape from drudgery. Resonant art has elements of the recognizable as well as elements of transcendence.  Too much of one over the other leaves us cold, with no connection to the material. Too little of both, and it likely won’t catch much less hold our attention in the barrage of sights, sounds, and events flooding our days.

Tropes might seem a shortcut, but they provide a meaningful jumping off point for riffs on numerous human experiences.

Timeless recurring tropes explored in the visual and written arts include:

·        Misunderstood or conflicted protagonists, commonly in youth but occurring in other life stages, too

·        Changes of personal or group identity, mistaken identity

·        Changes of locale/geography, escape

·        Love gained, love in trouble, love lost, love regretted

·        Death and the dying process

·        The un-suppressible secret

·        The unexpected accident and its aftermath

·        Retribution/Payback (whether delivered person-to-person or on its own)

·        Changing seasons—both geographic and internal/metaphorical

·        Rescue—of others, of self

·        Reunions of individuals (former friends, former enemies) or groups

Try this Prompt! Pick three of the above tropes. Jot ideas for ten minutes, without stopping to censor yourself, for how you might express these common tropes using your own unique talents and photo-taking skills.

Also consider locations or backdrops and possible props or subjects you might incorporate into each of the three tropes.

Compare and contrast the notes you take on your chosen three tropes. Cross out the most-cliché or obvious description of the three, and pick one of the other two tropes to make into a photo session or a photo series. Go!

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My "Photography for Writers" online class starts on September 21st. I'd love to get to work with more creative, inspired folks.

No previous training with a camera necessary (you can use a camera phone or any other types of cameras you might enjoy).

Guaranteed to inspire your Muse and enliven your written imagery as well.

More details about the four-week course: "Photography for Writers." 

 

Craft Article: "Image Power: Click-Click to Enhance Your Writing"

My craft article was published at Women on Writing today. 

"Image Power: Click-Click to Enhance Your Writing"

By Melanie Faith

"The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera." ~ Dorothea Lange

What one art form has most enhanced my writing? 

Photography. Hands down.

What makes photography such a great sibling to our poems and prose? What can we learn through photography that will inform our writing for the better?

• Both are imagery-based arts. Many of the same instincts and thought processes I use when writing also come into play when I make photographs. Paying attention to specific details is a key part of making written and visual art.


• Both photography and writing involve knowing not only what to include but what to exclude for the strength of the piece.
• Photography often follows similar themes as our writing. Perhaps you are drawn to family dynamics in your writing? Photos of children, babies, parents, grandparents, and more may shed light on a new aspect for you to consider in your writing. Or perhaps you enjoy writing about nature--from flowers to animals. Studying and taking photos outdoors can underscore elements to explore with detail in your writing.


• Both arts explore symbolism. Metaphors are often involved as well. Are there certain shapes or colors that recur in your photos? They likely recur in your writing as well. Are you interested in tumbling sheds or impressive arches and flying buttress beams in architecture? Then I bet you've written about structures--from apartments, trailers, and houses to dormitories and other buildings you've experienced--and what they symbolize personally and culturally from time to time, too.


• Both arts are great fun. Let's not overlook the joy of creating both media. There's never been an easier time to write, with computer software and online workshops, or to take photographs. Most cell phones have amazing cameras in them and digital photography has brought photo sharing to a wide audience. Not only are there amazing tools to unleash your creativity and to explore your questions about life, spirit, and love, but also the process of creating can be relaxing, fulfilling, exciting, and meaningful. You don't need to spend a ton of money on the latest lenses or equipment to make gorgeous, meaningful pictures or to write publishable verse and prose. Basic tools and a little time can yield amazing results.


• Both arts encourage variety and a slowing-down to focus. Exploring new ways to develop my still-life photos has also encouraged me to try new formats in my poems, essays, and fiction. At the same time, photography has taught me much about slowing down and being in the moment, something that's equally important in photography and writing...and daily life.

Try this Prompt! 

List two subjects you photograph and/or write about repeatedly. Describe this object, person, or place in 150 words. Then list two reasons why you repeatedly revisit this subject. What about this subject might you see from a new angle or describe with new words? What do you think these subjects symbolize in your current life or the life you'd like to lead in the future? What qualities do they represent about you as an individual artist? Break out your camera and take a photo of this subject in a way or from an angle you've never thought about before now.

Interested in a class that combines photography and writing? Click the link below.

Imagery Power: Photography for Writers

 

Instructor: Melanie Faith

Workshop Length: 4 Weeks

Class Dates: Friday, March 9, 2018 - Friday, April 6, 2018

Cost: $155, which includes e-mail critique and positive feedback on student writing, and access to a private group for student interactions.

Limit: 10 Students

Description: "Fiction, like dreams, exists in images... Fiction must exist in images, not abstractions," wrote John Dufresne. Indeed, the ability to develop imagery is important in all forms of writing, from poetry to essays and all sorts of descriptive writing. The art of photography, an evocative visual art, frequently helps authors hone our image-seeking and development skills. There won't be technical jargon of F-stops or aperture priority in this course and you are free to use any form of camera you already own and love--from camera phone to digital, DSLR to Lomo, instamatic, you name it; this class is about cracking open the everyday extraordinary, about the kind of seeing and focusing on detail that will enhance your writing and spark ideas for months to come.

In this four-week workshop, we'll take a daily photo-taking prompt for a spin, post our response, and describe what inspired each photo at our class group. During the second week, you will begin a piece based on one of the photos you've taken that you will share (in part as an excerpt or in full, up to you) with the class during our fourth week. Handouts on topics covered will include: Truthiness: Adding Layers to Your Art with Art; The Genesis and Development of Imagery: Example Sheet of Published Work; Submitting Your Work to Literary Magazines & Other Venues Looking for Photos: Cover Letter Tips; Photographic Resources to Check Out!; Tips for Writing about [Our] Art; How to Match Your Photographic Style to your Writing Style; Ekphrasis and You: Writing in Tandem with the Visual Arts; and Tips for Writing Fabulous Writer/Artist Bios. 

There will be a private group for students to discuss our creative process and share daily responses to each prompt and for sharing of literary resources, such as markets and quotations about the image-making process.