Want a Food Memoir Readers Crave? It’s Easy with a Little Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
Photo by @pinarimsi at Unsplash
Over the years, I’ve heard people say no one teaches you how to write a book. Good grief, I even say it. After I read Samin Nosrat’s multi-award winning Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, a light bulb went off: No one teaches you how to combine the essential elements of storytelling to create good stories consistently.
Some of this may not seem like a mind-blowing discovery in the writing world, but just as Nosrat’s personal aha of the four elements of cooking was met with an eye roll, I feel like folks aren’t talking about book writing in this way.
Every story will have a little more of this or less of that, but the framework is the same. So when you feel like something is missing from your story, this is a good place to start. If you want a food memoir readers crave, it’s easy with a little Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.
Salt aka Details
In Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, Nosrat starts with the note that salt is added to amplify a food’s flavor. It’s not salt for salty taste sake. If you salt something correctly, it can make your dishes spicier and balance sweetness, among other things. When I added salt to my frozen PF Chang’s Orange Chicken (not even sorry about that one), it knocked out my taste buds with the kick it added. The tiny extra layer of salt brought out what was just under the surface.
That’s how details work in your writing, too. You need details to make your characters (aka you and the other folks involved) and story pop. We don’t need to know the sun skipped across the kitchen counter as Xochilt’s fingers danced as she minced garlic or that the curtains were a pale blue, like the sky on a bright day.
Too many details are the equivalent of drowning mashed potatoes with salt — you were excited to dig in, but quickly forgot what you were supposed to be tasting in the first place. It’s not that you don’t want to use any details, but as Nosrat says: Use salt better.
It’s all in the timing.
Here are some questions to ask if you feel your story is too “salty”:
What are the details you can add to make your characters or story spicier, more textured or enhanced?
How are your details taking your story up a notch?
What are they revealing about your characters?
If you were reading a story with these same details, would you be more engaged or would your eyes glaze over?
Details should draw a reader in, so they’re drawn into your story. You don’t want them left wondering why they care what kind of ballet flats your main character is wearing. Over-salting your story happens to the best of us, and the good news is that you can grab a red pen or hit the delete button when you need to.
Fat aka Internal Conflict
Have you ever read a book where you just couldn’t care less about a main character and what happened to them? Same. Plenty of times. I used to believe it was me, and I didn’t understand the story.
Turns out, the character didn’t have anything they really wanted. There was no internal conflict. You weren’t clear about what they were after and why it mattered.
As Nosrat points out in the “Fat” section, the quality of your food depends on how good your fat is. Your internal conflict needs to be juicy, like bacon fat, to make readers crave more.
It’s easy to get sucked into plot points and create an elaborate story, but your main character better have a transformation, or readers won’t give a flip. This is why I believe Hallmark movies are the crispest examples of internal conflict. Within the first five minutes, you have a clear internal conflict, and even if you “know” how it’ll end, you’re actually watching for the journey.
The internal conflict is what you coat your story in. When the heat is turned up, it’ll either simmer slowly or explode all over your stove top. So, make the internal conflict something that’ll make your story and characters richer. It should be rooted in the understanding that this will show up again and again throughout the story.
For example: The chocolatier who’s afraid of marrying their longtime fiancée, you better believe their partner’s ex-girlfriend will be the editor of a premier chocolate magazine who wants to rekindle their long-lost love. Oh, that’s definitely a Hallmark movie, and one of my personal favorites.
Acid aka Cause and Effect
The only thing worse than a character who has no driving force is a story where a lot of things are happening for no reason at all. Sometimes, you’ll get a plot heavy book where it seems like there’s a story, but all the “discoveries” and “secrets” leave you yawning. That’s because you have a whole lot of cause without effect. You need a natural balance in storytelling.
It’s the same thing with acid. As an avid pickle, vinegar and mustard lover, if I bite into a sandwich or salad without one of the above, something feels off. Nosrat’s idea is that acid balances every dish, and as soon as she said it, I thought: Duh. Why didn’t I realize that before?
With your food memoir, you need the back and forth of cause and effect, so your readers don’t have whiplash moving from one major event to the next. Going back to the commitment-phobic chocolatier, her fear of marriage causes her fiancée to break things off for good. So when his ex-girlfriend shows up and finds out he’s single, our sweet chocolatier has to deal with the consequences of her actions. From there, everything she does will have an effect on her own journey and everyone else’s.
Heat aka Tension
When answering the question of “What is heat?”, Nosrat says: Heat is the element of transformation.
It also has to be used at the right time with the right temperature for a tasty product, and every dish is a little different. In story terms, heat is tension and without it, you’ll try to swallow a book raw. I tried a “raw” pizza at a cafe in Berkeley once and instantly regretted my decision. You can try to stomach those heatless scenes or meals for only so long. But I like my stories to come the same way I like my pizzas: Hot.
Tension really comes down to one thing — stakes. In Bill Buford’s Heat, he chose to prove he was more than a home cook by joining Mario Batali’s kitchen staff. The invitation came after Buford had Batali over for dinner, so this wasn’t a random job. Buford had to succeed for himself and Batali. His first day alone will make your palms sweat, but the tension keeps you reading.
People say that you see who people really are when they fight. The same thing is true for adding heat to your story. You’ll immediately see who you and your characters are, even if you thought you saw everyone clearly before.
Does the tension make your characters stick with things or want to run away? How do they solve problems? Are they petty or can they own up to mistakes?
Adding heat to your scenes will leave you with fully cooked characters and stories, and that’s all readers want, anyway.
How to Put It All Together
Once you’ve figured out your own ingredients for your story, there is no one recipe for your story. Now you know the elements that make up a book readers will crave, so when you need to adjust the dish (aka make those revisions), you’ll have a better idea of what other elements to add.
Writing, like cooking, is trial and error. It’s all a process. If you’d like someone to test out what you’ve been creating in your writing kitchen, get your name on my coaching waitlist now, so we can serve up a dish only you could make.
