Tag Archives: the five senses

Dill Pickle Popcorn to Add to Story Lines

Pickle dancing  I shopped at  Trader Joe’s today. The store featured dill pickle popcorn. The sample tasted good so I bought two bags since our college-aged daughter, Ariana, is living with us during her freshman and sophomore years. She has liked pickles since she was little.  Of course, I checked the ingredients and the flavor is from dill pickle oil. I wouldn’t have bought it if it was artificial pickle flavor.

On the drive home, I thought about my novels’ characters and which ones would eat dill pickle popcorn. In Hada’s Fog, her youngest granddaughter, Judi, certainly would but her older sister, Esther, would not.

In Norman in the Painting, Jack, the jerk, as Jill, the protagonist, calls him would eat the dill pickle popcorn, so would Jill and Norman, when he’s out of the painting, of course. Her sister, Viv, wouldn’t and neither would Evelyn or Maggie, certainly not Arctarius.

Jessica Barksdale, my mentor and friend, told us the benefits of writing food into our stories. Food provides several senses for the readers to experience: texture, taste, smell and hearing (if eating something has a sound, like crunching popcorn or pickles.)  Now I’m wondering which scenes would be the best places to put this new popcorn. Besides evoking the senses, how would it move the plot forward?

I received Ariana’s review as she has had her first taste of Dill Pickle Popcorn. She says, “At first it’s confusing, but then it gets addictive.”

By the way, have you tasted Cotton Candy green grapes?  Nob Hill Grocery Store has them.

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Filed under Hada's Fog, Norman in the Painting

Using the Sense of Taste in Writing

taste of betrayalUsing the five senses in writing helps the reader experience the scene. Sight, smell, sounds, and touch are easy to add. Taste is often forgotten unless there are several scenes with food in them. However, your character’s lover could be tasting her berry chapstick. At the beach, the character could lick her lips and taste the salt from the ocean breeze, or if she’s running in a competition on a hot day, she could lick her lips and taste sweat.

In my novel, Norman in the Painting, Jill bakes cookies for her friends who have been threatened by the antagonist. She’s worried about their safety and the baking calms her down. At first I wrote cookies, but then I realized it was an opportunity to include taste. I named the kinds she made, chocolate chip, oatmeal, and sugar cookies. Later she delivers them and joins Maggie in sampling a few with the coffee her friend offers her in the gallery.

The bigger challenge, for example, is to write the taste of something like betrayal as the writing prompt above suggests. For Jill, I’m thinking of what her fear would taste like. Maggie has unresolved anger toward the hit and run driver that made her paralyzed. What does anger taste like?

Any ideas for the taste of betrayal, fear, anger, or whatever your character is feeling?

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Filed under Writing Tips