I mentioned in a previous post that one of my goals when doing a first-pass round of edits is to focus on appeals to all five senses. Done properly, the effect for the reader should be to make the story more pungent, vivid, and easier to imagine. I score two more benefits, though. I’m obliged to imagine the scene in fine detail in my own mind, and I’m also forced to confront some of the very different ways in which other people see the world.

For many people, I think meals are the (fanciful metaphor alert) hinges of the day, closing one segment of the day and swinging open another. Morning doesn’t begin without breakfast, lunch is a breath before the afternoon’s labor, and dinner heralds the calm before a night’s sleep. Food is a visceral pleasure. Food provides common ground for good conversation, and good food translates into better health.

None of that resonates with me. If I could pop a pill in the morning and have all my nutritional requirements met? I’d be content. I’m a rarity (not to say an oddity.) If I want to write fiction that appeals to people who aren’t like me, I think I’m obliged to see the world from different angles.

Or maybe that should be ‘I’m obliged to sample the different flavors of the world’?