Cooking Up a Good Story by Gerri Brousseau

Over the course of the last few Thursdays, I have been posting comfort food recipes.  It got me thinking about the similarities between cooking, following a recipe, and writing a novel.  Ok, so you had to know this was coming … right?  In cooking you have your list of ingredients and your instructions as to how to put those specific ingredients together to make your dish.

When I am cooking, I first ask myself what I want for dinner.  I mull this around in my mind and come up with an idea for a meal.  I gather all the ingredients, put them together in the order according to the recipe, and before long, dinner is ready.

In much the same way, when I am writing, I first come up with the idea for a story.  I mull this around in my mind and let the idea stew (pun totally intended).  I gather (think about) the ingredients, the characters, what they will be like, what is important to them, what are their motivations, their goals, their conflict, the plot, and the dialogue.  I research if I need to.

Once I have my ingredients for the story, I think about how I will put it all together.  How I will create a recipe, if you will, to make my idea into a novel.  Sometimes while I'm writing, I find that my recipe, I mean story, needs a little something.  Some spice maybe?  Is the love scene the right spice to toss in at this point?  I know sex sells, but when is it too much?  Have you ever read a book where there seems to be a sex scene on every other page, so much so that it interrupts the flow of the story?  So, can your recipe be too spicy?

Filed under: romance [image error]