My Food Worldbuilding and Character Questions Straight away you can start piecing together your impressions of these characters just from their food choices and without knowing anything about the kind of person they are! Dessert: Small pot low fat strawberry yoghurt. Dinner: Gnocchi and tomato bake (small portion). Lunch: Baked potato with small amount of low-fat cheese and side salad. will also be very careful about what they consume.Ī great exercise I like to do if I’m struggling to learn about my characters is to make them a meal plan! Setting out a character’s food choices and food preferences might help you unlock some new information about them or help you deepen your understanding of them.įor example, look at these examples of meal plans.īreakfast: Weetabix, skimmed milk, red berries. Someone who is gluten intolerant, dairy-free, vegetarian, etc. Someone from a multicultural family will have been exposed to different cooking techniques and dishes and may have a wider frame of reference. Someone watching their figure will be more conscious of their food choices. How Can Food Show Help Us Develop Our Characters?Ī character’s choice of food will be influenced by many factors, including but not limited to, geographical, climatic, historical, religious, cultural, political as well as personal taste, fashion, economic status, society and familial influence.Ī poor person will eat very differently from a rich person. Eggs were a rare luxury for a poor Irish-Catholic family at the time, and the fact that Frank ultimately does not get his egg (as his father squanders his wages) represents their dire financial situation, hopeless future, and lower social class. The thin gruel personifies the extreme poverty and the horrible reality for those in the workhouse.Īnd Irish novel Angela’s Ashes has a scene in which Young Frank fawns over the possibility of getting an egg to eat after his father’s wages come in. Where else does food serve as a symbol? It becomes a symbol of resistance and wanting more when Oliver Twist asks for more gruel in the infamous scene in the Charles Dickens novel. In the same way you may feel regretful after eating something too sweet, Edmund also regrets his decision to endanger his family. The fact that the Turkish Delight leaves Edmund feeling sick afterwards is also indicative of his feelings. So it’s a symbol for Edmund’s mistakes and how his desires are so strong that he is willing to hurt others to fulfil them. Many think the sweet was bewitched so that Edmund would want to eat it forever, thereby getting him to agree to anything The White Witch wanted in exchange for more. The sweet is described as being “ sweet and light to the very centre”. Using food as symbolism is a particular favourite thing to do in my own writing, but to use a much more well known example, let’s look at Edmund and the Turkish Delight from The Chronicles of Narnia. Metaphorical (Please sir, I want some more - Oliver Twist).Gives a good sense of character’s health/ mental state/ personality.Bringing characters together (around a table, peace offering, as thanks).Illuminate relationships between characters.Humanises characters (most things need to eat!).But other than adding flavour - if you’ll pardon the pun - to your work, why should we bother adding references to food at all? I’m sure we all have some positive food memories from our favourite childhood books! The Turkish Delight from The Chronicles of Narnia, the huge feasts from the Harry Potters, literally everything from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Food is a massively useful tool you can utilise in your writing - whether it’s for description, plot points, or in a symbolic/allegorical sense - and it can really help ground a reader and get them invested in your characters and your world. I love eating it, I love reading about it, and I especially like writing about it. An aye-write Guide to Writing About Food!
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