Storytellersunplugged

Where Words Meet

In it up to your elbows.

Writing is like everything else.

And as this is apparently the week for food metaphors on Storytellers Unplugged, who am I to break a trend?

See, I just finished stage one of one of the most ambitious projects I’ve ever been a part of. It’s this thing called Shadow Unit, Season 1. It’s not over yet, but this first bit–an interactive hyperfiction serial modeled on a television season, as you have probably inferred–is finally in the can. It consists of 250,000 (one quarter of a million words) of fiction written by Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, Sarah Monette, Amanda Downum and myself; interactive character blogs; original artwork; message boards; and other goodies. It’s about a group of unrealistically sey smart people saving the world from the worst monsters imaginable (I said it was modeled on a TV show!), and it’s some of the most fun I have ever had with fiction.

Anyway, one of the characters likes to cook. Likes to bake, in particular, and in particular likes to bake bread. And as he blogs about baking bread at great length, this has naturally led me to consider how writing is like baking bread.

And how stories are like bread loaves.

They start off much the same way, with some leavening, yeast or a starter. You add flour and water to make a sponge, and then you walk away for a while and let the leavening work. So maybe the leavening is sort of like your initial idea, and the flour and water are research, or the other things you add to the original idea (or character, or setting or argument, or whatever) to give it some substance. Something to work on.

And then after the sponge starts to bubble and expand, you have to add the things that will give it texture and flavor: salt, oil, milk, herbs, whatever. This is sort of like the part of story writing where you are figuring out the cool stuff, the quirky little magical things that make the story more than generic.

Then you have to knead it, which you could liken to writing and rewriting the story. And at this point, both loaves of bread and stories gloop to your fingers and are sticky and get on everything and you work and work and wear yourself out and then suddenly, magically, they form up and pull themselves together into clean squeaky rounds.

And you might thing, ahh, it’s done. All my patience is rewarded. But it doesn’t work that way, because there’s still the rising, and the slashing, and the baking–
…and then the eating, of course.

Which is what it’s all about.

Well, that and the picking crusts of dough out from under your nails for days afterward.

Related posts:

1. Metaphors
2. Stirring the Pot

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