food writing / 3 posts found
The Braided Essay: What It Is and Why I Used This Writing Structure for My Food Memoir
I’ve always been a passionate fan of the braided essay in creative nonfiction. In a braided essay, one can align three or more threads of focal ideas throughout the piece, each idea separated via space breaks, white space, or section breaks. I’ve usually used a memory-based/childhood or an event’s narration, or my own perspective of a personal incident and highlight a more universal topic or thread in the second braid. Sometimes a third braid is a researched topic that ties the above two together. Much like the mosaic essay, the threads appear disjointed, or out of place till a third […]
How (And Why) To Write About Food in Fiction
Whoever first said “You are what you eat” probably didn’t mean it as writing advice, but that’s how I take it. What you eat doesn’t just literally keep you alive, it can say so much about who you are, where you’re from, and more. (Amanda Elliot: On Food and Romance in Fiction) In my new book Sadie on a Plate, a romantic comedy following a young chef on a Top Chef-like cooking show, I made spreadsheets to keep track of what every character was cooking for each challenge, because each dish was meant to tell the reader something about the […]
3 Ways To Incorporate Food in Your Fiction
Food and books are probably the greatest pleasures of my life. So imagine my excitement when I found out there was an entire sub-genre that combined my two loves: culinary cozy mysteries. I was so happy to contribute my own spin on the genre last year with my debut novel, Arsenic and Adobo, which is part of the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery series. My books center around a family-run Filipino restaurant in a small town just outside of Chicago (and murder, but this article isn’t about that). (Mia P. Manansala: On Savoring Positive Feedback) Just like sex scenes and fight […]