Roots and Branches

In food writing, it’s all about relationships

I recently gave a talk on food writing at Forsyth County Public Library, where I was asked to share what food writing is, and how you pick a topic. As I prepared for the talk, I realized that for me, choosing a topic is not simply about picking subject matter (which for most of us is the easy part): Instead, it’s about how we frame our discussion of the subject. And that framing, in large part, is a series of relationships.

There’s a common saying that “every story is a food story,” so the playing field for possible topics is pretty large. But food stories are themselves stories of relationships: With producers and consumers, with oneself, with the land, with a myriad other individuals, groups, and contexts.

Here’s how I use relationships to help me map out my topics:

I start to think about the kind of story I want to tell:

I’m a nonfiction writer primarily, so I’m writing stories rooted in history, or in the natural world, or some other part of our shared reality and lived experience of the world. But fiction is rooted in those things too, right, that’s how we can appreciate and understand other people’s fictional worlds even if they seem very foreign to us.

When I think about the kind of story I want to tell, I think about the subject matter I want to cover, if there’s a particular angle I already know I want to approach it from (is this a memoir? An investigative piece with interviews? Etc.) Then, it’s time to dive into relationships.

I think of these as a series of concentric circles expanding out around my desired subject.

Your relationship to the subject

In the center is our relationship to our subject.

If you’re planning to write about food, you may already have a topic or a few in mind. A certain person in your life, a certain dish, various memories, travels, there are any number of possible avenues.

So begin with your own relationship to the subject: What experience do you have with it?

Reflect on your relationship to the topic to see if that can help you frame it: Maybe you have strong sensory memories of the food you want to write about, maybe you connect that food memory with a certain person, or there’s a certain way you want the reader to feel when they read about it.

Think about the story’s viewpoint, too, and what you need to relay that viewpoint effectively. So, for example, I can write about going to a party at my friend’s off-grid cabin in Alaska.

But if I want to write about day to day living in that off-grid cabin, I need to turn to folks with expertise: For example, with interviews and lots of research. Being honest about our level of expertise makes us better writers.

In the first case, my relationship to the subject (going to the party) is enough to craft the story. In the latter, my relationship reveals that I have an interest in the topic and need to add to my knowledge to write about it effectively.

Which brings me to the next layer of relationships: Our relationship to our reader.

I think about what experience I want my reader to have, since writing is an interactive, communal experience: Even for the short stories I write for myself and never share, I still consider the experience of the work. Even though (for the moment at least) I’m the only reader experiencing it. So what experience do I want to create?

Once you know how you personally connect to a topic, thinking about how your reader might also connect to that topic (or how you want them to) can help you narrow it down, and I encourage you to listen to your intuition and gut sense here, and to follow what gets you excited versus what your logical mind says is most practical.

What sparks your own emotions and excitement? What can you dig into and get specific about while harnessing that energy and momentum? Because that’s going to spark those feelings for your reader, too.

Here’s an example from my life:

If I’m writing about eating rainbow trout, I can talk about how it reminds me of growing up in Colorado and how it was on a lot of menus in the 80s and 90s out west and whatever else.

Or, I can talk about the one time I went trout fishing with my aunt and parents, and we foraged for berries while our fishing lines were in the water, and I made the mistake of naming my fish (“Rainbow,” creatively) immediately before the fish was cleaned and handed back to me.

And how we drove out of the mountains, tired from the day in the bright sun but also refreshed, and grilled our trout with lemons tucked inside and had rice and fresh berries and it was easily one of the best meals of my life.

Both of those possible pieces are, broadly speaking, about the same topic (eating rainbow trout).
In the first, I’m simply describing. But in the second, I’m building relationships: By outlining, then sharing my relationship to the topic, and using that to connect to my reader.

Even for research-heavy work like a lot of what I do, relationships are key. In Our Fermented Lives, for example, I wanted my readers to not just learn about the history of fermentation, but to see themselves as a part of history too. And beyond that, to be intentional in their own participation in history by, for example, recording their and their families’ food traditions.

That meant this participatory aspect of relationship was baked into the book: For example, by consistently mentioning the ways in which we shape our environments and how small actions (like what and how we cook) can echo through time.

Your story’s context is a web of relationships

But there’s another relationship to consider too: the contexts in which our topic lives, and the web of other topics it might connect to. My fish story might connect to (for example), stocked versus wild fish populations in freshwater lakes, or to travel in the Rocky Mountains, or to foraging, or hiking, or to any number of other topics. And I might choose to weave one or some of these in in some way.

And so, in building my web of relationships between self, reader, and subject, I want to also consider what other relationships I might want to include in that.

If my fish story is a memoir, then many of the other contexts might feel irrelevant. If my fish story is part of a larger narrative about the relationship between our eating habits and mountain ecosystems, however, those contexts might be important.

How do you build relationships into your writing?

P.S. My new book, The Fermentation Oracle, is available for preorder.

Preorders are critical for authors because they tell publishers and bookstores the book is in demand: Which means more copies get ordered, displayed, and sold, and the book has a longer lifecycle (and the author gets paid more for their work).

We have some really cool preorder gifts we’re announcing soon: Get your copy at the link below!

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