Food Values

elenabtvs asked me about the 'food values' thing I alluded to in my last post here, when I was talking about qualities to look for in good writing.

I was introduced to the idea by Will Shetterly and Emma Bull, who taught a week at Clarion West when I attended. They pointed out that as a basic rule of thumb, good writing will have scenes where characters eat and drink, or talk about eating and drinking, or think about it, or make the obtaining of food and/or drink a major plot point.

It's not a hard and fast rule, there's no requirement that characters must take "time out" of the plot to sit down and have a nosh... but generally, it's integrated into the plot. This is a sign that the writer is thinking about the reality of her characters' lives, slowing the action down enough that they have real lives to consider. This is especially important in literature of the fantastic, because it helps ground the fantastic elements in sensuous detail that the reader can relate to, whether it's Sam longing for some 'taters to fry with his fish, or Harry Potter sitting down for a grand Hogwarts feast.

Even Pirates of the Caribbean found time in a mad-cap relentless plot to have food values -- think about Elizabeth eating in Captain Barbosa's cabin, or Barbosa's obsession with apples and description of his undead state, or the pirates trying to lure the dog with the key by waving a tasty bone, or for that matter, Elizabeth and Jack getting shit-faced on smuggler's rum. These ground the action in ways that subconsciously we can believe, which makes the big leaps of wonder a lot easier to 'believe.'

So, that's food values. Think back to the last two or three good movies you saw or books you read... I bet they were all over them....

Obsessivitivity

What can I say? The questions were fun. I answered for LJ only, since between GEnie and its successors, I've been blogging -- before it was called that -- since like 1992 or so. So I could have fairly answered "have you traveled to meet people" et cetera questions quite differently.

( My Live Journal Obsession Test results.... )