Oh, you thought I was not going to explain precisely how to enter the young writers’ contest? How long have you been reading this blog?

As I hope every young writer within the reach of my keyboard is aware, I am now and have always been deeply committed to making age no barrier to membership in the Author! Author! community. I encourage questions and comments from writers just starting out; I try to keep the voice and vocabulary here at an extremely democratic reading level; I don’t allow profanity, even in the comments, so that filter programs at libraries or parental controls won’t block readers’ access. Heck, I once wrote a three-week series on how publishing does and doesn’t work in response to an extremely intelligent question from an 13-year-old.

He’d just completed his first novel and wasn’t sure what to do with it.

I do all of this, among other reasons, because in my opinion, there’s not enough good, solid discussion of writing for the under-18 crowd. Much of what is there strikes me as, well, a trifle condescending. And despite the fact that the fine print on the back of my adult card dictates that I should believe that youthful pursuers of my chosen profession could not possibly understand how it works, I can’t think that vague advice that would have insulted my intelligence in middle or high school would be a boon for writers in middle or high school now.

Call me zany, but I’m inclined to think that a smart, sensitive, creative person is a smart, sensitive, creative person at any age. I’m also inclined to think that it’s much, much harder for young writers to rack up the types of writing credentials that impress agents than it is for adults.

That massive groan you just heard was every aspiring writer in the continental United States writhing with frustration. It’s not easy for them, either. But let’s face it, there just are not a lot of contests out there for young writers that are not academically-oriented.

Which is why this year, instead of sponsoring only one Author! Author! Awards for Expressive Excellence competition, I’m offering two: one aimed at adult writers writing for the adult market and one for writers currently in middle school and high school, as well as those writing for readers in those age groups. Thus was the Make Us Want to Eat It Literary Competition of 2012 born, to create what we here at Author! Author! like to call Eye-Catching Query Letter Candy, writing credentials that will make your query letter stand out from the crowd.

I could have just felt good about that and gone home, of course. But having talked to a lot of young writers over the years, I have learned that one of the most common reasons that they don’t enter the few contests out there is that they’re afraid they are not going to put the entry together right.

At the risk of having my adult card revoked, allow me to let you in on a little secret: adult aspiring writers harbor that fear, too. In fact, they’re a bit more likely to be afraid of what a contest judge or agent will say; if they have been trying to get published for a while, they have probably been rejected quite a bit. And while anyone currently working within the publishing industry could tell them — and you — that getting rejected is a perfectly normal experience for writers that later end up selling their books to perfectly reputable publishers, it still hurts to hear no.

So many aspiring writers of all ages just give up, believing — not always correctly — that their work got rejected because their writing wasn’t good enough. Or because the market just wasn’t buying books like theirs. Or due to some deep hatred the staff at the agency of their dreams feels toward innovative prose stylings.

In practice, though, many, if not most, rejections do not stem from any of these sources — or, indeed, have much to do with what a writer would consider quality of writing. Queries and manuscripts get rejected all the time for purely technical reasons. Misspellings, for instance, or grammar problems. Lack of clarity. Overuse of clich?s. Not punctuating dialogue correctly. Not having been sent to an agent that represents that type of book.

Or — and this is one of the most common rejection triggers of all — not presenting the writing professionally.

Actually, I think younger writers have an easier time understanding technical rejections than those of us who have been kicking around the world longer typically do. Students are constantly running up against seemingly arbitrary rules and snap judgments. It may not be fair, but on the whole, smart kids learn to regard silly regulations and stereotyping philosophically. They’re just a part of going to school.

They’re just a part of holding a job, too, but writers often forget that professional writing is in fact a profession, with rules and standards just like any other. All too often, aspiring writers fall into the trap of believing that the publishing industry in general and agencies in particular are non-profit enterprises, selflessly devoted to the promotion of literature. So when an agent responds to a well-written manuscript like the businessperson she is, saying that she does not think she can sell it in the current literary market, aspiring writers often react with horror.

Or by giving up. Or by assuming that all agencies and publishing houses are uninterested in previously-unpublished writers. Or all of the above.

The fact is, though, that good writing by unknown writers gets published all the time. Previously-unpublished writers land agents literally every day. But I’m not going to lie to you: among the other factors that separate these writers’ manuscripts from, well, everybody else’s is that they are spelled correctly, grammatically sound, clearly written, free of clich?s, contain properly punctuated dialogue, and have been submitted to an agent that represents that type of book.

Oh, and they’re virtually always formatted correctly. In publishing circles, having taken the time to learn how book manuscripts are supposed to look is considered a sign of seriousness in a writer.

Which is why, in case you had been wondering, I spend so much time here on the blog talking about — wait for it — spelling, grammar, clarity, clich? avoidance, dialogue, and book category. And perhaps my favorite topic of all, standard format for book manuscripts. (Which, contrary to popular online opinion, is not identical to either what a published book looks like or proper format for short stories and articles.) I want my readers’ writing to be taken seriously.

In order to encourage learning the skills that will help them be taken seriously, I both explain the rules of standard format frequently and at great length here (with visual examples!) and require entrants in Author! Author! contests to format their entries correctly. Why, just the other day, I wrote aimed at helping entrants in the adult contest adhere to the rules of standard format. It’s not enough, I think, merely to provide writers with the opportunity to pick up some ECQLC; I want their manuscripts to be able to wow everybody’s favorite agency screener, Millicent. Like most of us that read manuscripts for a living, she’s distracted by improper formatting.

Which is a much better way to think of having to learn the rules of putting a manuscript together than to dismiss them as unimportant or ridiculous: not presenting your pages properly will make Millicent concentrate on something other than your good writing. She might not reject a submission or disqualify a contest entry on that basis alone, but it will almost certainly — chant it with me now, those of you who have been paying attention — take it less seriously.

Do I spot some raised hands out there? “But Anne,” those of you brand-new to the writing world will protest, “how do I get started? I’m more than willing to learn, but I’m frightened that Millicent won’t treat my early attempts with scorn. Why isn’t there a less high-stakes way I can try out my new presentation skills than sending my manuscript to an agency?”

Ah, but there is, bright rookies. You can enter a writing contest for practice.

Less intimidating than risking rejection, is it not? To make it even less scary, tell you what I’m going to do: for the rest of today’s post, I’m going to walk you through every syllable of the rules for Make Us Want to Eat It Literary Competition, giving you visual examples of how to apply those guidelines to your contest entry. And if you have questions, please ask them — I honestly do want to render the learning process as easy for you as possible.

Just remember to thank me on the Acknowledgements page of your first published book, okay?

Everybody ready? Okay, here goes. The contest’s rulesare in boldface; my explanations and helpful hints are in regular text.

The Make Us Want to Eat It Literary Competition of 2012

As I mentioned when I announced the previous contest for adult writing, although people experience life via all of their senses — sight, sound, taste, smell, touch — many, many of the manuscripts those of us who read them for a living see on a daily basis seem to assume that characters can only see and hear. Or that readers expect to know nothing about a character’s sensations except what an actor might be able to convey to us if we saw him playing that character on T.V.

But you’re a better writer than that, aren’t you? And you’re certainly a better reader.

This opening bit might not seem as though it’s important, but often, writing contest organizers will tell entrants up front what they want to see in a winning entry. It’s a good idea, then, not just to zoom in on the rules. It’s an even better idea to come back after you have finished writing your entry and re-read how the contest is presented, to make sure that what you are planning to send matches what the organizers are seeking.

This contest’s opening paragraphs will show you why: this says point-blank that the judges will be looking for entries that use all of the human senses in their descriptions. That means, in practice, that no matter how good the writing may be in the scene you were planning to enter, it’s unlikely to win unless the main character or the narration experiences what’s going on through many different sense organs — eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin.

That’s the goal of the contest. Let’s move on to see if the contest’s organizers have told us how they want us to achieve that goal.

Because I’m pretty confident that my readers are good at writing about what it’s like to be alive, I’m calling for young writers and adults that write for young readers to enter short scenes — anywhere from 2 to 8 pages in length — that present food in a manner that incorporates more than two senses.

Here’s the catch: the scene can’t take place in a kitchen — or at a dining table.

Why? Because I’d love to see you exercise your creativity, that’s why. That’s my idea of a proper reader-oriented spectator sport.

Ah, now we know what the entry will need to be: a 2-8 page scene about food, set somewhere other than a kitchen or table. Since it would be really, really easy to spend your entire writing time just coming up with new material for literary contests, the first thing a savvy writer should do with this kind of information is ask: have I already written a scene that might meet this description?

If the answer is no, that’s fine; this is a short enough page limit that you could write something fresh before the deadline (which, although we haven’t yet gotten to it in the rules, is September 30th). But your next question should be: do I have enough time to write a scene that I like before the entry is due?

Please consider this question carefully; it’s more important than most contest entrants realize. Having been a very good English student, I’m perfectly aware that it is in fact possible to toss off something good enough at the last minute — oh, as if you’ve never done that with a class assignment! — but in a writing contest that’s not for school, it really isn’t worth your time to do a half-hearted job. If you don’t think you will have the time to create something that you will be proud to share with the world, you’ll be better off investing your creative energies in something else.

Yes, yes, I know: pretty much every teacher you have ever had will have told you something different on this point. But writing for a reading audience is a completely different thing than writing for a grade; it takes one heck of a lot of bravery to bare your creations to the world.

Why? Well, readers will be basing 100% of their impressions of you upon those pages. You’re going to want them to see your writing at its absolute best, right?

While you are mulling over that one, let’s see if there are other restrictions on what you can enter. After all, you might be able to adapt something you already have on your hard drive.

In order to give young writers more freedom to stretch those creative limbs, you may enter either fiction or nonfiction. (Sorry, adult writers: you may enter only YA fiction. You can always enter your memoir in this summer’s adult contest ) If you are entering memoir and don’t want to use your real name, it’s fine to use a fake one; just make sure that you let us know, so we announce the right name when you win.

Either way, no profanity, please — and please have all of your characters fully clothed. I want to keep this site accessible for young writers whose parents have set up content filters on their computers. So if you wouldn’t want your parents to find a YouTube video of you doing something your characters do, give it a pass in the entry, okay?

My, that’s a lot of information a contest entrant in too much of a hurry to read anything but the numbered rules might have missed, isn’t it? (Try saying that sentence three times fast. I dare you.) Basically, it’s saying that the rules are different for adults that write for young readers and for young writers: if you’re in middle or high school, you can enter everything from a completely made-up piece of writing or one that’s a direct transcript of something that happened to you. Except, of course, without any swearing.

And you don’t even have to do it under your own name! Talk about risk-free.

If this is starting to sound as though I’m asking you to have an active conversation with any writing contest’s rules, you’re catching on. Literary competition organizers assume that writers can read really well; they will expect a winning entrant to have sat down with the rules and made a list of what is required. Being a passive reader — or, even more common, just giving a quick glance at the rules and assuming that you know what they are asking — is not a good strategy for pleasing contest judges.

Or anyone that reads for a living, for that matter. You would not believe how many college essays get bad grades because the student seems not to have understood the question being asked. A good half the time, students will just glance at an essay question, pick out a few words here and there — and go on to write an answer to the question they expected to be asked, not the one the professor actually did. This type of bad reading is so common that when I was teaching at a large state university with a rather well-known football team, the graders had an acronym to scrawl at the ends of tests that had this problem: R.T.F.Q.

It stood for read the question. (Hey, I told you this was a family-friendly blog.)

Now that we know in broad terms what the contest organizers want us to do, let’s see what’s in it for us if we win:

Winners will not only receive fabulous prizes (hold your horses; we’re getting to those), but may have their scenes and accompanying synopses both published and critiqued in a post here at Author! Author! for all the world to see and admire. And, if you’re a student, we’re going to recognize the teacher you feel has helped you most with your writing as well.

The grand prize winner in each category will receive a half-hour Mini Consult in order to discuss any aspect of writing. That means I will read up to 20 pages of your writing — a query? A synopsis? The opening pages of the manuscript you’ve been writing? — and call or Skype you in order to have a lovely, long talk about it. I’m also going to post your winning entry here on Author! Author! and tell everyone you know just how terrific your writing is.

Talk about having your writing taken seriously! This is your chance to get a professional editor take a look at your writing — not just the contest entry, but any writing you choose — and give you feedback. And since anything posted online is technically published (and this blog is pretty well respected in publishing circles, if I do say so myself), not only will thousands of people be able to read your entry, but you will have a publishing credential.

Think how good that’s going to look in a query letter someday. Not to mention on a college application.

It’s always a good idea, though, to find out what entries that don’t win top honors will get. Let’s take a gander.

First and second place winners will have their entries posted and critiqued on this blog.

Third place winners will receive copies of The Diary of Marie Landry, Acadian Exile

So you don’t have to win the whole thing in order to get feedback on your work. Even better, if you choose to enter under a pen name, you can get that feedback anonymously — yet still use the contest placing years from now, when you are querying agents under your own name. (Had I mentioned that in the literary world, there’s no expiration date on writing credentials? Or pointed out that the name of the contest says nothing about how old you were when you won or placed in it?)

All winners will also be asked to nominate the teacher that they feel helped them most in their quest to become a writer. Choose carefully: if the nominated teachers agree, I shall posting their names, a short bio, and a photograph here at Author! Author!, thanking them publicly for having done such a good job with these students. The judges and I shall also be putting our heads together on a pretty fabulous certificate of appreciation, recognizing the teacher as one of the great encouragers of future authors.

Obviously, this means that you will eventually have to ask the teacher’s permission, but if you’re shy — and many, many writers are — you don’t need to do that until after you have won. And then it’s going to be a pretty pain-free question, “Hey, how would you like international recognition for being a great teacher?”

Incidentally, adult YA writers, this part applies to you, too. As the rules go on to explain:

And yes, I do mean all winners, even in the adult writers of YA category. You think their favorite teachers shouldn’t be recognized? I couldn’t disagree more.

Hadn’t I mentioned that my mother was not only an editor, but also my junior high school librarian? Or that my completely fabulous seventh-grade English teacher is still one of my heroes?

Congratulations: you’ve made it through the contest’s description. That already gives you a significantly greater chance of winning or placing than the average entrant, regardless of age. Let’s move on to the more nit-picky rules.

Here are the specific steps required to win. Do read them all carefully, and post any questions you may have.

1. Write or select a scene no more than eight pages in length from your manuscript or manuscript-in-progress that best shows off a sense-based description of food.

Did that make the sharper-eyed among you do a double-take? If so, good for you: someone who read only the numbered rules might not have caught what you just did.

Oh, you missed it? Earlier, the contest’s description said that the entry must be 2-8 pages. In Rule #1, however, the phrasing leaves open the logical possibility that you could enter a 1-page story. (Don’t laugh; perhaps because reading contest entries is really, really time-consuming, there are plenty of writing competitions out there that call for what are called short-short stories.)

Literary contest rules do this kind of thing all the time, saying the rules calls for something in one part of the contest’s description and something else in another part. See why it might be a good idea to read everything the contest organizers post, making a list of requirements as you go?

That’s not a bad approach to answering an essay question for school, by the way, especially if it’s a question you’re expected to take a long time to answer. Read it in its entirety, making a list of all of the things it is asking you to do. If you are taking the test in a blue book, you might even want to construct an outline for your essay — college professors routinely give partial credit for items mentioned in outlines that a student did not have time to include in the answer. Then start writing.

Hey, I wasn’t kidding about the skills a writer has to learn to work as a professional being helpful in school. And that Godzilla-like shriek you’re hearing is all of the adults reading this wishing someone had explained about reading the whole question to them when they were in school.

“But Anne,” some of you ask, cradling your weary heads, “which of these two rules should I follow? Since it implies at some point in the contest rules that I can enter a single page, I’m safe if I do, right?”

Actually, usually not. When in doubt, go with the more restrictive rule.

So in this instance (which, if I’m honest about it, I didn’t notice until I began writing this post; that particular species of conflict-blindness is also not all that uncommon on contest websites), that would mean sticking with the 2-8 pages. But what length of pages does that mean? Let’s see if the rules address that.

How will you figure length? Glad you asked.

2. Pages must be double-spaced in 12-point Times, Times New Roman, or Courier., with one-inch margins and a slug line at the top containing your last name/title/page #.

That’s pretty specific, isn’t it? The left and right margins must be 1″. So must the top and bottom margins. It must be in one of the fonts mentioned here — which are, incidentally, the standard ones for the book publishing industry. It must also contain what the pros call a slug line: the entrant’s last name, separated by a slash, followed by the title of the piece (or the book from which it comes), slash, plus the page number.

Would it surprise you to learn that even with the requirements spelled out this much, many contest entries will disqualify themselves? (Again, most contest entrants don’t read the rules very closely.) So you don’t run that risk, here’s what the result would look like in 10th-grader Ima Newatit’s entry. If you’re having trouble seeing all of the details, try holding down the COMMAND key and pressing + to enlarge the image.

So far Ima has followed the rules pretty well, right? But wait — has she? The rules continue:

All pages must be numbered, in accordance with standard format for book manuscripts.

“Good,” Ima says with satisfaction. “I looked up what a slug line is — if Anne hadn’t just described it here, there are many examples of how to do it under the SLUG LINE ILLUSTRATED category on the archive list conveniently placed at the lower right-hand side of this page — and it always contains the page number. So my formatting work is done, right?”

Actually, it isn’t, Ima, as you would know had you followed the link the contest organizers so thoughtfully placed in that rule, leading you to the rules of standard format. Since most contest entrants would have done precisely as you did, however, let’s move on. That way, we can see just how disastrous the effects of not reading the rules in their entirety can be.

3. All entries must be in English.
Whether you choose to write in American English, Canadian English, or U.K. English, however, is entirely up to you. Just let us know which — and make sure it’s spelled correctly.

Oh, this is an interesting one: it tells us that we can expect entries to be coming from all over the English-speaking world, as well as that the judges will expect Ima to have spell-checked her entry. (Always a good idea, right?) When a contest’s rules go out of its way to mention this, it usually means that the judges will stop reading after the first or second misspelling or grammar mistake.

That’s pretty common for college applications as well, by the way. In fact, e-mails from adults that you may have seen to the contrary, in the literate world, spelling always counts. So does grammar.

And think about it: why should Millicent take a writer seriously if he hasn’t taken the time to spell-check? If her boss, the agent of that writer’s dreams, did pick him up as a client, who does he think will correct the typos? Not the agent.

There’s another, less obvious contest requirement here, though, something that might also disqualify an entry from a writer that did not read carefully. Any guesses?

If you immediately leapt to your feet, crying, “I know! Even if I’m sending this from within the U.S., I must say that I am writing in American English,” you deserve a gold star for the day. Publishers, agents, and contest organizers alike virtually always expect submissions to be in the form of English prevailing in the city in which they operate. So pervasive is this expectation that most of the time, agency submission guidelines and contest rules will not even mention it. They’ll just consider spellings from other places wrong.

Since this contest’s rules made a point of talking about it, Ima should assume that this restriction is going to be taken seriously at judging time — and that she can’t just presume that if she doesn’t specify, American English is the default setting. She needs to say.

But where? Relax; we’ll be getting to that later in the rules. Let’s keep going through them in the order they were presented.

4. The scene must center on food, but it cannot take place in a kitchen or at a dining table.
That should sound familiar, right?

Why, yes, it does: we talked about that one earlier. But let me ask you: do you think that Ima’s entry is focused enough on food to qualify? Yes, she’s just eaten a big sandwich, but that happened before the scene began.

I’m not going to answer that one — it’s a genuine judgment call. That means it’s up to you, creative writer.

5. The scene must include depictions of at least two human senses, but cannot include any profanity or references to sexual activity.
No exceptions. Humans have a lot of other senses. Remember, too, that the judges will be looking for a variety of senses to be addressed in the scene.

“Check,” Ima says, “check, and check. Moving right along…”

Not so fast, Ima. Yes, this entry is free of the forbidden elements, but let’s go through and count the number of senses used. Since the contest is specifically focused upon sensation, it’s a good idea to double-check. Sound is highlighted in green, touch in yellow, sight in purple, and taste in gray.

Ima didn’t do so badly here, did she? She has definitely included more than two senses. But did you notice how the second page keeps alternating between just touch and hearing? In a contest devoted to writing about sensation, the judges are probably going to want her to mix it up more.

“But Anne!” I hear some of you shout, and who could blame you? “Why didn’t you highlight all of that food in the first paragraph? Surely, that’s sense-based detail.”

Actually, it isn’t — it’s just a list of sandwich ingredients. It would be possible for the reader to guess what each tasted like, but here, Ima seems to be going out of her way not to describe them.

Now that you’ve read the text of her entry through twice (at least, I hope you have), though, did you happen to catch the typo that would have disqualified this entry in most contests? Hint: it’s in line 6 of page 1.

The swimming pool stretched out before him, the stench of chlorine rising from its depths.

See it now? Clearly, in an earlier draft, this scene was about a boy.

Yes, it’s a relatively simple leftover from that earlier version, but contest judges, like Millicents, don’t really care why typos happen. It’s not their job, after all. And since this is not a gaffe that a spell-checker would have caught, what should Ima have done here?

Take 14 stars out of petty cash if you exclaimed, “Why, she should have read her entry IN ITS ENTIRETY, IN HARD COPY, and OUT LOUD!” Yes, even for a contest that accepts only electronic entries. Since the human eye reads about 70% faster on a backlit screen than on a page, it’s quite a bit more difficult to catch small blunders like this if you’re only rereading your work on your computer screen.

And no, it’s not safe to assume that a contest judge or Millicent will not spot it in an electronic entry. They read for a living; trust them to be good at it. Besides, it’s not all that unusual for the finalists in an e-mailed-entry contest to get printed out so the judges can discuss them in a face-to-face meeting.

So a word to the wise: proofread. Always.

6. Polish your scene to a high gloss and save it as a Word document, as a .doc file.
Only .doc entries in Word will be accepted — not TextEdit, PDF, or any other formats, please. Please title the Word file your name and the abbreviated title of your book (Austen Pride & Prejudice), not just as contest entry or the ever-popular Anne Mini contest (The last time I ran a contest like this, I received 42 entries with one of the other file name.)

All of this is fairly self-explanatory, I hope — and even if a contest’s rules do not specify file format, it’s usually a better bet to send your work as a .doc file than as .docx. That way, it will be possible for someone running any of the last decade’s worth of Word versions to open it.

Oh, you may laugh, but believe it or not, many, many offices devoted to the promotion and production of books do not operate on the most recent versions of any word processing program. Heck, I know agents still working with Windows 95.

7. In a separate Word document, give your name, state (or country, if entering from outside the U.S.), age, name of your school (if you are enrolled in one), and e-mail address, as well as the category you are entering.

That seems fairly straightforward, doesn’t it? Yet here again, we can see the benefits of reading all of the rules, not just the numbered ones.

Oh, you didn’t spot what’s missing from this list? How about some mention of what English-speaking country’s version of the language the entrant will be using?

If you have been jotting down contest requirements — and you should be — make sure that you get each and every element on that list. It’s not at all unheard-of for writing contest entries to get disqualified, or at least knocked out of finalist consideration, because the writer simply forgot some technical bit like this. It may not have anything to do with the quality of the writing in the entry, but remember, in order to make a living as a writer, you’re going to have to be able to follow your agent and editor’s directions. This is one place that a writer demonstrates a willingness to do that.

One of the most common omissions in an entry: the category. This drives contest organizers nuts by making it harder to make sure that the entry ends up in the right judge’s hands. Since it’s in your best interest that it does turn up in the right place — almost universally, if a contest entry is not categorized correctly, it will be disqualified — why not make their lives as easy as possible?

To that laudable end, let’s take a peek at the categories, shall we?

Telling the judges the category will save a lot of confusion. The possible categories are:

Category I: Fiction on food by writers currently attending or about to enroll in middle school

Category II: Nonfiction/Memoir on food by writers currently attending or about to enroll in middle school

Category III: Fiction on food by writers currently attending or about to enroll in high school

Category IV: Nonfiction/Memoir on food by writers currently attending or about to enroll in high school

In theory, it should be quite simple to figure out which category to enter, right? Ima has only to match her grade with the category, then choose the fiction or nonfiction category, as appropriate. Yet you would be surprised at how often writers will glance at a list like this — which often, like this one, contain repeated words and phrases — and select the wrong option. Since this can get an entry disqualified, make sure to read carefully,

Hmm, where have I heard that before?

You have noticed, I hope, that in this section, the rules have not said whether this page needs to be in a particular typeface or have a specific format. When in doubt, though, it will look more professional if you submit any extra materials in the same format as the entry itself. So Ima’s second document would look like this:

Even though Ima had more room here, and the rules didn’t specifically rule out using a different font, sticking with the same as the entry is less distracting. Remember, people in publishing don’t consider typeface in a manuscript a legitimate stylistic choice. You’re better off sticking to the ones they are used to seeing.

Part of reading closely — and of jotting down notes as you do — involves figuring out whether any of the rules listed don’t apply to the category you are entering. But you can’t know whether you can afford to skip a section unless you read it all, right?

Category V: YA fiction on food by adult writers
If you are entering Category V, please see Rules #8 and #9. Everyone else can skip to Rule #10.

8. If you are entering in the adult writer category, on the same page as the material in Rule #7, please include a 1-paragraph explanation of how the scene you are entering fits into the overall story of the book.
This is the only chance you’re going to get to set up the scene for the judges, so make it count!

9. If you are entering in the adult writer category, on the second page of the document described in #7, please include a synopsis of no more than 1 page, giving the judges an overview of the book’s premise, its main characters, and its central conflict.
Again, this synopsis must be in standard format. If you are unfamiliar with either standard format or how to write a 1-page synopsis, you will find explanations (along with examples) under the HOW TO FORMAT A BOOK MANUSCRIPT and HOW TO WRITE A 1-PAGE SYNOPSIS categories on the archive list located on the right-hand side of this page.

Since all of these rules apply only to the adult YA writers’ category, Ima may safely disregard them. (But if any of you adult writers have questions about what to do here, please drop me a line in the comments.)

Rule #10, however, applies to everybody. And wow, does it have major implications!

10. Make sure that both documents are properly formatted: precisely as they would appear in a manuscript submission.
Part of the goal here is to help young writers learn how to submit their work professionally. If it is not double-spaced, in 12-point type, and featuring a slug line (Author’s last name/book title/page #) in each page’s header, the judges will not consider the entry.

At first glance, this reads like Rule #1, doesn’t it? But actually, it clarifies why the contest’s organizers wanted entrants to follow that link to the rules of standard format: in order to win this contest, we now learn, it’s not enough for the manuscript to be double-spaced, with one-inch margins all around and a slug line in the header. It has to be in standard format for book manuscripts.

How is that different? To save you some clicking time, here are the restrictions of standard format (which, again, are not the same as the proper format for short stories or articles). As we go through them, I shall keep modifying Ima’s entry, to reflect each new rule.

a) Standard format for manuscripts is not identical to the format of a published book; book manuscripts differ from published books in many important respects and for many reasons. To a classically-trained agent or editor, presentation is not a matter of style: what may appear to a writer to be a cool, self-expressive choice will strike a professional reader as a distraction from the writing.

b) All manuscripts should be typed or printed in black ink on 20-lb or heavier white paper. (I encourage my clients to use bright white 24-lb paper; it doesn’t wilt.)

c) All manuscripts are double-spaced, with 1-inch margins on all four edges.

d) All manuscripts are printed on ONE side of the page and are unbound in any way.

No worries here: we knew about (a) and (c) already, right? And (b) and (d) don’t apply to contest that accepts only e-mailed entries. No text change required yet, therefore. Let’s move on.

e) The text should be left-justified, not block-justified. The left margin should be straight, the right uneven.

Actually, Ima’s text did this one pretty much automatically: a straight left margin (meaning that every line of the text starts at the same point on the page) and an uneven right margin (although 1 inch is the smallest the white space can be, every line ends at a different point, as the words in it dictate) is the default setting for Word. Just to make sure that everyone understands what’s being requested here, let’s take a look at what Ima’s page would look like block-justified, as you might see it in a published book or magazine.

Making that right margin fall in a straight line down the page does all kinds of strange things to the spacing within the lines of text, doesn’t it? If you’re having trouble spotting it, check out the pages above again, then take a gander at the same pages with the proper ragged right margin.

Everybody clear on the difference now? If not, please speak up.

While you are thinking about whether to ask a question, let’s zoom through a few rules that should by now seem awfully familiar.

e) The preferred typefaces for manuscripts are 12-point Times New Roman or Courier.

f) No matter how cool your desired typeface looks, or how great the title page looks with 14-point type, keep the entire manuscript in the same font and typeface.

g) Each page should feature a standard slug line in the header, preferably left-justified: Author’s Last Name/Title/#
This should appear in the same plain 12-point type as the rest of the manuscript. The page number should appear in the slug line and nowhere else on the page.

We’ve already taken care of all of those under Rule #1, right? And the next few rules, as it happens, do not apply to this contest. Just so you will know how your book’s manuscript should be formatted, though, let’s give them a quick once-over.

h) Every page in the manuscript should be numbered except the title page. Do not include it in a page count. The first page of text is page 1, regardless of whether it is the beginning of Chapter 1 or a preface.

i) The first page of a chapter should begin a third of the way down the page, with the chapter title centered at the top.

j) Contact information for the author belongs on the title page, not page 1.

Got all of that filed away in your brainpan for future use? Good. Here’s something more directly applicable to entering this contest:

k) The beginning of each paragraph should be indented .5 inch, including the first paragraph of each chapter, no matter what you have seen in a published book.

l) Don’t skip an extra line between paragraphs, except to indicate a section break.

m) Section breaks are formed by skipping one double-spaced line, not by # # # or any other marker UNLESS you are writing a short story, article, or entering a contest that requires the inclusion of a specific symbol.

We’ve already taken care of these, right? The first lines of all of Ima’s paragraphs are indented (instead of being lined up against the left margin, as they would be in an e-mail), so there is no need to skip a line between paragraphs (as, again, you usually need to do in an e-mail, because most e-mail programs discourage indented text). And since this contest calls for just one scene, and section breaks come between scenes, (m) is not likely to be relevant here.

n) Do not use boldface anywhere but on the title page — and even there, it’s optional.

o) Words in foreign languages should be italicized, as should emphasized words and titles of copyrighted works like songs. Nothing in the text should be underlined.

Ima has gotten all of these right, too. The easiest way to remember these two rules: don’t do anything fancy to your text, if you can possibly help it — or unless you are borrowing a title (from a song or a publication) or a phrase from another language (sacre bleu!). While you can use italics to emphasize words (I’m so angry!), it’s usually not the best strategy in a contest entry: judges, agents, and editors tend to prefer writing that relies upon words for meaning, not italics that tell the reader how to read them.

Still hanging in there? Good, because our example has violated the last two rules of standard format — and in this contest, that could result in disqualification. Take a peek:

p) All numbers under 100 should be written out in full: twenty-five, not 25.

q) Dashes should be doubled — hyphens are single, as in self-congratulatory. Dashes should also have spaces at each end — rather than—like this.

Didn’t spot either in the last example, did you? If so, I’m not surprised — since these are peculiarities of book manuscripts, they usually only jump out at those of us that read professional writing for a living. But remember how I said earlier that formatting your writing like a pro will make it look more polished to Millicent?

To everyone else, the differences will be pretty subtle, I admit. Here’s Ima’s entry again, completely in standard format.

I sense some of you rolling your eyes, and frankly, I can’t really blame you. From the writer’s side of the submission desk, it’s not apparent why these changes are necessary. But from the editor’s side, it couldn’t be plainer: both (p) and (q) are guarantees that a typesetter in a hurry won’t misread the author’s intended symbols.

And congratulations — you have now learned all of the rules necessary not only to enter this contest, but also to submit a manuscript to an agency in the U.S. That wasn’t such a painful learning curve, was it?

Okay, perhaps I don’t really want a reply to that question. Let’s finish up the rest of the rules of the contest.

11. Attach both Word documents to an e-mail.
Please include FOOD! and the category number in the subject line. Please also mention the category In the body of the e-mail. (It makes it easier to process the entries.)

Make sure to say who you are, too, so we don’t get entries mixed up. It’s also a nice touch to say something pleasant (like “Howdy, Anne!”) in the e-mail itself. Just a nice habit for a writer to have acquired before starting to work with an agent.

Yes, these are just logistical requests, now that you mention it; they don’t really have anything to do with the writing in your entry. But honestly, it’s a false saving of energy to ignore common-sense rules like this. Just trust that the contest’s organizers have good reasons for asking — you wouldn’t believe how much more interesting it is for me to receive entries with notes attached — and be polite enough to honor these requests.

And if you’re not naturally polite enough to go along with this, consider: a contest entrant can never know for sure whether ignoring rules like this will get an entry disqualified. I’m just saying.

12. E-mail the whole shebang to contest(at)annemini(dot)com by Sunday, September 30, 2012, at midnight in your time zone. If you are entering more than one category, please submit each entry in a separate e-mail.

Don’t even try to push a deadline in a writing contest — they’re not movable. But in a web-based contest like this one, it’s always worth checking a few days before an entry deadline to see if it’s been extended. Surprisingly often, they are.

13. Because winners will also be awarded life-long bragging rights and coveted ECQLC , the judges reserve the right to award as many (or as few) prizes as the quality and quantity of the entry pool in any given category warrants.
That’s a fancy way of saying that if we don’t receive enough wonderful entries in one of the categories, we may not give an award for it. So you might want to urge your friends to enter.

Most contests will include statements like this, although usually not with the motivations behind them so clearly explained. Since contest organizers tend to value their prizes quite highly — even if the monetary value of the prize is low, they want a contest win to count for something special — it’s not at all unusual for organizers to add a clause saying that if the overall quality of the entries is not high enough, they will not award one or more of the prizes. It’s also pretty common for writing contests, especially those that ask readers to vote for winners, to eliminate a category if not enough people respond. Read carefully before you enter.

But that’s the overall moral of today’s exceedingly lengthy lesson, isn’t it? Be an active reader of contest rules, and you’re much more likely to end up in the winner’s circle.

And again, if any of this does not make complete sense to you, please ask. Helping aspiring writers is what I’m here to do, after all. Best of luck with your entries — and, as always, keep up the good work!

Using Food to Flavor Your Fiction, by guest blogger Stacy Allbritton — and yet another writing contest!

Happy Independence Day, campers!

Normally, I would open with a few remarks on the occasion — observing, perhaps, that the actual vote on independence in 1776 occurred on July 2, not July 4 — but given that I actually intended to post news about the summer’s second Author! Author! writing competition a good a week and a half ago, who am I to quibble about dates? Just because the nastiest head cold ever to visit a North American intervened between the announcement of our first literary contest of the season, aimed at adult writers and writers for the adult market, and what I had planned as the next day’s revelation of the rules for a competition devoted exclusively to young writers and those that write YA doesn’t mean that I should equivocate for a few more seconds now.

Except that I should say a few words about today’s guest blogger — and, not entirely coincidentally, the author that is going to be graciously giving away some copies of the charming middle-grade reader novel you see above. Since her book’s protagonist is in fact a writer who is herself very young when the story begins, young Marie has inspired me to create a contest that not only rewards good writing in YA, but great writing by writers currently in middle school and high school.

Well might you champ at the bit. Trust me, though, today’s guest blogger is here to help you polish up the writing skills you will want to have bright and shiny before you construct a contest entry.

Continuing what would have been a logical progression to self-evident to require explanation had my sinuses permitted me to post these two contest announcements back-to-back, I asked today’s guest, Stacy Demoran Allbritton, author of the recently-released The Diary of Marie Landry, Acadian Exile, to share her thoughts on how to write well about food in fiction. Not just in any fiction, mind you: in prose intended for young readers.

I see some of you purists scrunching up your noses, do I not? “But Anne,” you cry, “isn’t good, showing-not-telling writing pretty much the same, regardless of the intended audience?”

Heavens, no, campers. Good writing takes its target readership into account, always.

And before anyone wrinkles so much as a single proboscis at me, let me hasten to add: no, that’s not sacrificing art to market concerns. It’s simply good writing courtesy to craft one’s novel in such a way that the reader will enjoy it.

While being familiar with the conventions and overall vocabulary expectations of one’s chosen book category is, of course, one of the first steps a writer serious about treating potential readers politely is to familiarize herself with what’s currently being published for that readership. (Conveniently, that also happens to be excellent marketing strategy, too.) For all stripes of YA, though, writers also have to be extremely sensitive to presenting age-appropriate vocabulary and situations.

Which is precisely why I asked Stacy to blog on the subject: she has taken some quite dark historical subject matter and transformed it into a debut novel I was completely comfortable giving my 10-year-old neighbor. That’s quite a trick. Take a gander at the publisher’s blurb:

During the Great Upheaval of 1755, the British forced the Acadians to leave their homes in the Canadian provinces. After having lived in exile in Maryland for ten years, fourteen-year-old Marie Landry and her family prepare to join a mass exodus to Louisiana. In her diary, Marie describes the Acadians’ journey to Louisiana while simultaneously including the details of their removal from Acadia ten years earlier. This historically accurate account of Louisiana’s Cajuns depicts tales of hardship and friendship, anguish and hope. Because of their perseverance and faith, Marie and her loved ones are able to survive and find happiness in Louisiana. Illustrations enhance this engaging portrayal of human strength.

An intriguing bit of American and Canadian history to tackle for a young readership, isn’t it? Stacy does it both sensitively and surprisingly unblinkingly. I love it when YA authors respect their youthful readers’ intelligence enough not to sugarcoat tough reality.

She also did something quite clever on the vocabulary front: although the writing overall is age-appropriate, she peppered the manuscript with slightly higher-level vocabulary — and added a glossary of those terms to the back. I wish writers for the young would do this more often; one does not always have a dictionary handy at any age, after all.

The other reason that I blandished Stacy into writing on this particular topic is that her novel includes some actual recipes. Since I know that many of you that write about food in fiction have at least toyed with the concept of writing a cookbook, I thought it might be both fun and useful to ask her to show you the same recipe formatted to appear in a nonfiction manuscript and to show how she might write about the resulting foodstuff for a young readership.

Why might that particular distinction come in handy? Glad you asked. Once again, in the fine tradition of the Author! Author! Awards for Expressive Excellence, then, and as part of my ongoing quest to provide good writers with much-needed Eye-Catching Query Letter Candy (which, let’s face it, is harder for young writers to accumulate), I am proud to announce:

The Make Us Want to Eat It Literary Competition of 2012

As I mentioned when I announced the previous contest for adult writing, although people experience life via all of their senses — sight, sound, taste, smell, touch — many, many of the manuscripts those of us who read them for a living see on a daily basis seem to assume that characters can only see and hear. Or that readers expect to know nothing about a character’s sensations except what an actor might be able to convey to us if we saw him playing that character on T.V.

But you’re a better writer than that, aren’t you? And you’re certainly a better reader.

Because I’m pretty confident that my readers are good at writing about what it’s like to be alive, I’m calling for young writers and adults that write for young readers to enter short scenes — anywhere from 2 to 8 pages in length — that present food in a manner that incorporates more than two senses.

Here’s the catch: the scene can’t take place in a kitchen — or at a dining table.

Why? Because I’d love to see you exercise your creativity, that’s why. That’s my idea of a proper reader-oriented spectator sport.

In order to give young writers more freedom to stretch those creative limbs, you may enter either fiction or nonfiction. (Sorry, adult writers: you may enter only YA fiction. You can always enter your memoir in this summer’s adult contest ) If you are entering memoir and don’t want to use your real name, it’s fine to use a fake one; just make sure that you let us know, so we announce the right name when you win.

Either way, no profanity, please — and please have all of your characters fully clothed. I want to keep this site accessible for young writers whose parents have set up content filters on their computers. So if you wouldn’t want your parents to find a YouTube video of you doing something your characters do, give it a pass in the entry, okay?

Winners will not only receive fabulous prizes (hold your horses; we’re getting to those), but may have their scenes and accompanying synopses both published and critiqued in a post here at Author! Author! for all the world to see and admire. And, if you’re a student, we’re going to recognize the teacher you feel has helped you most with your writing as well.

The grand prize winner in each category will receive a half-hour Mini Consult in order to discuss any aspect of writing. That means I will read up to 20 pages of your writing — a query? A synopsis? The opening pages of the manuscript you’ve been writing? — and call or Skype you in order to have a lovely, long talk about it. I’m also going to post your winning entry here on Author! Author! and tell everyone you know just how terrific your writing is.

First and second place winners will have their entries posted and critiqued on this blog.

Third place winners will receive copies of The Diary of Marie Landry, Acadian Exile

All winners will also be asked to nominate the teacher that they feel helped them most in their quest to become a writer. Choose carefully: if the nominated teachers agree, I shall posting their names, a short bio, and a photograph here at Author! Author!, thanking them publicly for having done such a good job with these students. The judges and I shall also be putting our heads together on a pretty fabulous certificate of appreciation, recognizing the teacher as one of the great encouragers of future authors.

And yes, I do mean all winners, even in the adult writers of YA category. You think their favorite teachers shouldn’t be recognized? I couldn’t disagree more.

Hadn’t I mentioned that my mother was not only an editor, but also my junior high school librarian? Or that my completely fabulous seventh-grade English teacher is still one of my heroes?

Here are the specific steps required to win. Do read them all carefully, and post any questions you may have. And if you would like to see me walk through each and every requirement of contest entry, showing you step-by-step visual examples, all you need to is click here.

1. Write or select a scene no more than eight pages in length from your manuscript or manuscript-in-progress that best shows off a sense-based description of food.

How will you figure length? Glad you asked.

2. Pages must be double-spaced in 12-point Times, Times New Roman, or Courier., with one-inch margins and a slug line at the top containing your last name/title/page #.

All pages must be numbered, in accordance with standard format for book manuscripts. You’ll find examples of it in the guest post below. (And don’t worry — next week, I shall be showing you precisely what standard format would look like in a contest entry.)

3. All entries must be in English.

Whether you choose to write in American English, Canadian English, or U.K. English, however, is entirely up to you. Just let us know which — and make sure it’s spelled correctly.

4. The scene must center on food, but it cannot take place in a kitchen or at a dining table.

That should sound familiar, right?

5. The scene must include depictions of at least two human senses, but cannot include any profanity or references to sexual activity.

No exceptions. Humans have a lot of other senses. Remember, too, that the judges will be looking for a variety of senses to be addressed in the scene.

6. Polish your scene to a high gloss and save it as a Word document, as a .doc file

Only .doc entries in Word will be accepted — not TextEdit, PDF, or any other formats, please. Please title the Word file your name and the abbreviated title of your book (Austen Pride & Prejudice), not just as contest entry or the ever-popular Anne Mini contest (The last time I ran a contest like this, I received 42 entries with one of the other file name.)

7. In a separate Word document, give your name, state (or country, if entering from outside the U.S.), age, name of your school (if you are enrolled in one), and e-mail address, as well as the category you are entering.

Telling the judges the category will save a lot of confusion. The possible categories are:

Category I: Fiction on food by writers currently attending or about to enroll in middle school

Category II: Nonfiction/Memoir on food by writers currently attending or about to enroll in middle school

Category III: Fiction on food by writers currently attending or about to enroll in high school

Category IV: Nonfiction/Memoir on food by writers currently attending or about to enroll in high school

Category V: YA fiction on food by adult writers

If you are entering Category V, please see Rules #8 and #9. Everyone else can skip to Rule #10.

8. If you are entering in the adult writer category, on the same page as the material in Rule #7, please include a 1-paragraph explanation of how the scene you are entering fits into the overall story of the book.

This is the only chance you’re going to get to set up the scene for the judges, so make it count!

9. If you are entering in the adult writer category, on the second page of the document described in #7, please include a synopsis of no more than 1 page, giving the judges an overview of the book’s premise, its main characters, and its central conflict.

Again, this synopsis must be in standard format. If you are unfamiliar with either standard format or how to write a 1-page synopsis, you will find explanations (along with examples) under the HOW TO FORMAT A BOOK MANUSCRIPT and HOW TO WRITE A 1-PAGE SYNOPSIS categories on the archive list located on the right-hand side of this page.

10. Make sure that both documents are properly formatted: precisely as they would appear in a manuscript submission.

Part of the goal here is to help young writers learn how to submit their work professionally. If it is not double-spaced, in 12-point type, and featuring a slug line (Author’s last name/book title/page #) in each page’s header, the judges will not consider the entry.

11. Attach both Word documents to an e-mail.

Please include FOOD! and the category number in the subject line. Please also mention the category In the body of the e-mail. (It makes it easier to process the entries.)

Make sure to say who you are, too, so we don’t get entries mixed up. It’s also a nice touch to say something pleasant (like “Howdy, Anne!”) in the e-mail itself. Just a nice habit for a writer to have acquired before starting to work with an agent.

12. E-mail the whole shebang to contest(at)annemini(dot)com by Sunday, September 30, 2012, at midnight in your time zone. If you are entering more than one category, please submit each entry in a separate e-mail.

Do I need to explain that the (at) should be typed as @, or that (dot) should appear as a period? Nah, probably not; you all understand why reasonable people don’t post their e-mail addresses online.

13. Because winners will also be awarded life-long bragging rights and coveted ECQLC , the judges reserve the right to award as many (or as few) prizes as the quality and quantity of the entry pool in any given category warrants.

That’s a fancy way of saying that if we don’t receive enough wonderful entries in one of the categories, we may not give an award for it. So you might want to urge your friends to enter.

Those are the rules! Please follow them closely. As I said, I shall be writing a post next week that goes over them in detail, with visual examples, but in the meantime, you might to bookmark this page. As well as “the one on which I provide examples of how to follow each and every rule. (Oh, you thought I would leave my young readers to guess? How little you know me!)

And seriously, please ask if anything at all seems puzzling. It’s actually very helpful to know what could use more explanation.

And do read the guest post that follows. As I said above, I think you’re going to find Stacy’s insights into food writing very thought-provoking. You might even want to ask her some questions in the comments.

One last word before we begin: my apologies about the blurriness of the page shots here; I had asked Stacy to show you all how to format a recipe in a manuscript — because, presumably, some of you would-be cookbook writers would like to know — but the shots she sent me were exceedingly blurry. No one’s fault, as nearly as I can tell. I’ve fixed them the best I can, but if you would like to see the details better, I would suggest holding down the COMMAND key and pressing the + key repeatedly to enlarge the image.

Take it away, Stacy!

When you think back on a Christmas dinner, a birthday party, or a crawfish boil, the festivities were centered on food, but the experience was so much more than food. They involved the people who shared that food with you; the circumstances in which you ate that food; where you were, and when.

That is what makes writing about food in fiction so flavorful — the story, the emotion, the people surrounding the fare.

The use of food and recipes in fiction can be a tool by which you define and develop your characters, and by which you move your plot forward. Food can also expose your readers to a different world. So, though the scene might be focused on dining, it is what the food brings to the table, so to speak, that opens the window to an entirely new dimension — both for your character and for your readers.

In my novel for middle-grade readers, The Diary of Marie Landry, Acadian Exile, the multi-layered capabilities of food propel the story and reveal character. For example, on the surface, the cook Bernardine teaches Marie some Creole recipes, but more than learning about the food itself, Marie is able to learn about another life and another way of life. Through these recipes, she is able to share a piece of herself as well.

Let me give you some very concrete suggestions on how to use food in fiction to achieve such goals.

1. Use memory

I think almost everyone recognizes how memories can resurface simply from the taste of something long-since forgotten, or from a smell that morphs us back to another time and place. The most notable example I can give (from Remembrance of Things Past) is Marcel Proust’s biting into a petite Madeleine cake after he had dunked it into a cup of tea — the way he remembered doing at his aunt’s house when he was a child. Memories flood the forefront of his mind based on that simple act of tasting a tea-soaked cake.

Anne here: the passage to which Stacy refers is so wonderful that I cannot resist breaking in to share it with you, at least in part. If you’re not in a frantically Proustian frame of mind, feel free to skip past everything in boldface: Stacy’s guest blog resumes at the first plain text.

“I put down my cup and examine my own mind. It is for it to discover the truth. But how? What an abyss of uncertainty whenever the mind feels that some part of it has strayed beyond its own borders; when it, the seeker, is at once the dark region through which it must go seeking, where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not so far exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.

“And I begin again to ask myself what it could have been, this unremembered state which brought with it no logical proof of its existence, but only the sense that it was a happy, that it was a real state in whose presence other states of consciousness melted and vanished. I decide to attempt to make it reappear. I retrace my thoughts to the moment at which I drank the first spoonful of tea. I find again the same state, illumined by no fresh light. I compel my mind to make one further effort, to follow and recapture once again the fleeting sensation. And that nothing may interrupt it in its course I shut out every obstacle, every extraneous idea, I stop my ears and inhibit all attention to the sounds which come from the next room. And then, feeling that my mind is growing fatigued without having any success to report, I compel it for a change to enjoy that distraction which I have just denied it, to think of other things, to rest and refresh itself before the supreme attempt. And then for the second time I clear an empty space in front of it. I place in position before my mind’s eye the still recent taste of that first mouthful, and I feel something start within me, something that leaves its resting-place and attempts to rise, something that has been embedded like an anchor at a great depth; I do not know yet what it is, but I can feel it mounting slowly; I can measure the resistance, I can hear the echo of great spaces traversed.

“Undoubtedly what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must be the image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, has tried to follow it into my conscious mind. But its struggles are too far off, too much confused; scarcely can I perceive the colorless reflection in which are blended the uncapturable whirling medley of radiant hues, and I cannot distinguish its form, cannot invite it, as the one possible interpreter, to translate to me the evidence of its contemporary, its inseparable paramour, the taste of cake soaked in tea; cannot ask it to inform me what special circumstance is in question, of what period in my past life.

“Will it ultimately reach the clear surface of my consciousness, this memory, this old, dead moment which the magnetism of an identical moment has travelled so far to importune, to disturb, to raise up out of the very depths of my being? I cannot tell. Now that I feel nothing, it has stopped, has perhaps gone down again into its darkness, from which who can say whether it will ever rise? Ten times over I must essay the task, must lean down over the abyss. And each time the natural laziness which deters us from every difficult enterprise, every work of importance, has urged me to leave the thing alone, to drink my tea and to think merely of the worries of to-day and of my hopes for to-morrow, which let themselves be pondered over without effort or distress of mind.

“And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before church-time), when I went to say good day to her in her bedroom, my aunt L?onie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the interval, without tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks’ windows, that their image had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the forms of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness. But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.

“And once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theatre to attach itself to the little pavilion, opening on to the garden, which had been built out behind it for my parents (the isolated panel which until that moment had been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the Square where I was sent before luncheon, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine. And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little crumbs of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch themselves and bend, take on color and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognizable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann’s park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.”

This very phenomenon happened to me as an adult one year at a Christmastime cookie swap. When I bit into a cookie that a colleague had shared, memories of my childhood summers spent with my grandmother in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi demanded my attention. So important were those memories that I never again wanted to forget the taste of that cookie — and everything that I associated with it.

I just had to have that recipe! I’m happy to report that my colleague was not stingy with her recipe, and to this day I still bake that cookie every Christmas.

Paulette Rittenberg, a columnist with The Times Picayune in New Orleans understands the importance of stories connected to recipes: her food column includes the stories inextricably linked to the recipes she publishes. Lucky me, she included my cookie story in her column years ago. Her column will give you many examples of using memories of food to fuel a story.

What recollections do you have that revolve around a particularly meaningful food to you? Ask yourself a series of questions, and listen to your answers.

Where did you first taste it?

With whom?

How old were you?

What did you think of it –- liked it, hated it?

Be as specific as you can, then put the most evocative details into your tale.

As for me, many of my fondest memories go way back to when I learned how to cook the summer I was twelve years old. Thinking that my maternal grandmother was ancient at sixty-two years of age, I figured that time was of the essence — I needed to get those recipes out of her head, and soon!

That’s not entirely true. My biggest motivations for learning to cook were that I loved spending time in the kitchen with her, and I thought that she was the greatest cook on the planet. The lagniappe — the little bit extra — that I got when learning to cook from my grandmother was all those wonderful memories that became fodder for stories.

I so enjoyed cooking with my grandmother that I based Bernardine the Cook on her and turned those memories into scenes in my novel. Cooking was a natural way for my protagonist, Marie, to make a new friend. It was also the catalyst by which she was able to adapt to a new environment, to feel less frightened in unfamiliar surroundings, and to learn new ways of doing things. Food is her path to finding familiarity and acceptance in a new environment, in a different culture.

Using your own memories of food can help reveal your character’s values and personality traits in an oblique manner. How? Take a look at my grandmother’s recipe for drop biscuits — delicious hunks of dough, I assure you — and then, later in this post, I’ll show you how I turn it into a story for young readers.

Quick note from Anne to those of you planning on using this page shot as a guideline for formatting a cookbook manuscript: many publishers prefer that at the submission stage, abbreviations be written out. Do check small publishers’ submission requirements before you send so much as a page; if they do not specify that the standard American measurement abbreviations are acceptable, I would advise writing everything out.

Try to think about the difference between this example and the next as a matter of audience. As a recipe, this page contains all of the elements someone would need to bake this delicious biscuit, right? But novel readers are looking for more than that: they want to feel they are there.

2. Use all five senses

Let’s face it — eating is more than just a gustatory experience. Not only do we taste it: we see food, smell food, enjoy (or not) the texture of food. And when we are in the kitchen, the sounds of preparing and cooking it can entice us. We anticipate the act of eating for more reasons than just filling our bellies.

Every scene with food does not have to include every sense, of course, but you should give your readers more than just a description of what is being served. Let them in on the sensory indulgence that your character is experiencing.

Another way to think of it is allowing the reader to feel what it was like to be in your character’s body at that moment. To take an example from my novel, is Marie’s first experience of seafood gumbo:

[Bernardine] leaned her ample arms on the table as she pushed herself up and said, “Come see. I’ll show you just what gumbo is.” She limped slightly as she shambled over to the hearth. Then she swung the kettle out of the fire and grabbed her paddle without taking her eyes off of the pot. As she stirred the thick soup, steam whirled past my nose, and I unconsciously said, ‘Ummmm,’ and closed my eyes to savor the luscious smell.

Anne here again: sorry to keep interrupting, but since Stacy’s example is taken from a middle-grade fiction work, I do feel compelled to point out that in YA or adult fiction, this passage would be considered a bit skeletal, as food descriptions go. Why? Well, let me ask you: if you had never smelled gumbo before, what specific scents would you think Marie was experiencing in this moment?

Not to criticize Stacy’s choice of example, of course: it’s a great illustration of something that aspiring writers are all too prone to forget, that the prevailing style standards and expectations for one type of fiction are not necessarily what prevail in another. I’m grateful for the opportunity to show that important reality so explicitly. I’ll shut up now.

Eating is a multi-sensory experience, and a universal one to boot, so use what is naturally at your disposal to develop your characters. And I’m not just talking about culinary knowledge. Remember that bare-bones drop biscuit recipe? Here it is again as the opening to a story I’ve entitled Camelia’s Christmas Day Biscuits.

Notice how Camelia’s senses are tickled throughout the experience. And why not consider it an example of how to properly format a manuscript, while we’re at it? (Yes, this is a short story, but for the sake of usefulness, let’s imagine that it’s a novel I plan to submit to an agent.)


3. Use Details

Writing about food is more than just description — it was bland; it was spicy. Where is it? On the table? How did it get there? Who put it there and why?

If you are going to write a recipe into the scene, remember that if it is your character who is conveying the recipe to someone else, you must make sure that the retelling of it on the page is appropriate for the character’s personality, age, gender, etc. A ten-year-old girl would not have the same recollection of baking gingerbread cookies as a world-renowned gourmet chef.

You can propel the plot (and/or teach the lesson) through detailed preparation, consumption, and discussion of a particular dish or recipe. In my novel, for example, I don’t just have Marie and Maman discuss beignets: my readers learn that Marie has a remembrance of them, but she needs Maman’s validation of this memory because she was too young to recall them vividly. She wants to be sure, because she has discovered a recipe that had faded from her family’s daily life because of circumstances beyond their control. She learns that she loved this confection when her family was intact, when life was full of promise for them. For her, poignant emotion is attached to the taste of a doughnut.

But she didn’t understand this until she had a conversation about it with Maman. It is much more believable for Marie — a teenager — to understand her feelings by accident through food than through calculated introspection.

To show you how this dynamic might play out on the manuscript page, let’s take a look at rest of “Camelia’s Christmas Day Biscuits.” As you are reading, ponder what you learn about Camelia and her grandmother through the story’s food details. What is their relationship? How old do you think Camelia is? What kind of man is her father? What, if anything, did she learn here — about herself, about baking, about life?


Did you notice how the answers the questions above were not addressed overtly on the page? Instead, they are revealed to the reader only through details. That’s the essence of showing, not telling.

4. Read!

When it comes to writing about food in fiction (or writing about anything, for that matter), my last piece of practical advice is to read, read, read. Find out what you do and don’t like on the page. Good readers make good writers. And how!

Stacy Demoran Allbritton, a New Orleans native, has always been fascinated by the multi-faceted history of her home state. She holds a B.A. in French and an M.A. in Romance Languages from the University of New Orleans, where she received the 2005 James Whitlow Award for Excellence in Romance Languages. She was a high school French and English teacher in Louisiana until 2009, when she decided to pursue opportunities in writing and travel. The Diary of Marie Landry, Acadian Exile is her first published novel. She is currently working on her second novel in the Louisiana Heritage series. Stacy and her husband divide their time between Monroe, Louisiana and Paris, France. You can visit her on her blog.