Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food

Useful Tips, Interviews, and Stories to Inspire Food Writers and Bloggers

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Q&A: David Leite and The One, on Writing about the People You Love

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Writer and blogger David Leite (right) with his partner, The One.

It’s never just about the food. Soon enough, your partner or your kids start creeping into your food blog, because you’re writing about your life and they’re inseparable from you.

Suddenly a post about baking a red velvet cake includes how you made it for your husband, how your mother used to send you a whole cake on your birthday every year, and how your toddler smeared it on her new dress. It might be food writing, but as we know, it’s the storytelling around food that draws people in.

At some point, you decide how much to make the people in your life part of the story. And then, there are more questions. Do you [Read more…] about Q&A: David Leite and The One, on Writing about the People You Love

10 Feature Story Formats for Freelancers

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When I was a magazine editor, part of my job was to design the perfect mix of feature stories that kept readers turning the pages. I would lay out maybe two trend pieces, two service guides, one how-to, a round-up, and a profile, with different lengths for variety.

These types of feature stories are formulaic, and most magazines (newspapers and websites too) rely on them. Once you understand the 10 types of features and how they work, you’ll start thinking of story ideas that fit their molds.

When pitching your feature story to an editor in an email, identify the type, so editors can envision the story. Of course, before you pitch anything, go through the magazine’s features and make sure they publish the types listed here.

Now, let’s get back to shaping story ideas. Here’s the rundown on popular magazine story formats:

1. Seasonal recipes. This is the most common format for food magazines and those with recipe sections. Usually the piece begins with an introductory paragraph or two and follows with three or four recipes. Time your content to the month the magazine will come out. For example, national magazines work around six months ahead, so don’t pitch a piece on pomegranates for the June issue. Conversely, you might have to find out-of-season produce to test recipes.

2. Profile. Features on a chef, founder of a company, or newsmaker detail the person’s background, influences, and decisions as an influential market leader. If you want the editor to jump on your story, tie the chef or founder to a trend or news angle. Try not to resort to an email list of questions. You might get skimpy or vague answers. Face-to-face meetings and interviews are best, or a telephone interview. Make sure you have done your homework on the person before the interview begins. That means interviewing friends and colleagues, perhaps family. Here’s one of my favorite profiles.

3. Interview with Questions and Answers. Similar to a profile, this type of feature is not a narrative story. Instead, a paragraph of introduction leads into a question and answer session. If you do a few of these for the same publication or website, you might get offered a regular column.

4. Resource Guide. An “all about” story where you detail the subject matter exhaustively. For a story on cooking with farro, you might include 3-4 recipes plus sidebars on storage tips, buying tips, and how chefs use farro in restaurants.

5. Service or How-to. These are such a mainstay of the magazine industry that you can probably think of a million subjects, such as how to figure out if you have a food allergy, how to set up a brunch buffet, or how to stretch meals with meat as a flavoring. How-to stories might give step-by-step instructions. They always provide insider tips and secrets on how to succeed. Because you know the topic so well, you are that expert.

6. Trend. These features are prominent in industry magazines, such as those tied to retail food stores and restaurants. These magazine editors want their readers to know about the latest national trend and how it can be applied to their businesses. For stories like this, you may need to interview people nationally.

For your town’s newspaper, however, the local angle is paramount. You may have better luck getting these types of stories published in the Business or Metro sections than the Food section, which relies mostly on recipes.

7. Round-up. Here’s a mainstay of alternative newspapers and snarky websites, such as “Ten Best Burger Joints in Los Angeles.” There’s a theme or focus, and you’ll need to have opinions and substantiate your choices.

8. Travel. Usually written as a first person essay, travel pieces often include resource boxes for where to stay and eat. It’s often easier to get a food story published in the Travel section of a newspaper than the Food section.

9. Reviews. Whether for books, restaurants, products or movies, critical thinking is a must for reviewers. You can do it if you’re comfortable discussing the grey area between “fabulous” and “hated it,” because reviewing is not about extremes. Know how to discuss the pros and cons, and you’ll make a good reviewer.

10. Personal essay. Publications feature these rarely, yet they are one of the most sought after published pieces for writers, especially beginners who want to tell their stories. Here’s a writer who excelled at them.

Did I forget some categories? Let me know. And comment to enter my free magazine subscription giveaway.

You might also like these previous posts:

(Photo courtesy FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Q&A: Get Out There and Build Relationships, Says Book Author Nancy Hachisu

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Nancy Hachisu makes rice bran pickles in her Japanese farmhouse. Photo by Kenji Miura. (Courtesy of Nancy Hachisu)

When I met Nancy Singleton Hachisu in Mexico in 2010, I was taken aback by the sight of another woman in her 50s at a food blogger camp.

Over our week together, more surprises came. Nancy had moved to Japan to teach English 22 years earlier, married her English conversation student —- an organic farmer, and raised their three boys in the Japanese countryside, living and working on their farm.

My head was spinning. How did a blond white woman from an upscale California neighborhood live in rural Japan with her family and mother-in-law, where there were no others like her? Plus, she spoke Japanese with ease, established an English immersion preschool near her home, and cooked traditional Japanese meals with her husband. How did she do all this with such gusto?

Fortunately, now there’s a 400-page cookbook to explain, called Japanese Farm Food. (Disclosure: I helped Nancy with the book proposal.) A hefty hardcover with a spine wrapped in indigo cloth, the cookbook features stunning photographs of Nancy’s food, family, and life on the farm and off. Personal essays make the book almost memoir-ish, but in a no-nonsense, affectionate way, not confessional or nostalgic. Simple vegetable-forward recipes are based on seasonal fresh produce from the family farm, flavored with classic ingredients such as miso, sake and soy.

Nancy began her writing career in 2008, with two magazine articles published in Japanese about Slow Food and Alice Waters. A year later, she took Stanford Continuing Studies writing classes and started a blog called Indigo Days at the encouragement of fellow writers, about [Read more…] about Q&A: Get Out There and Build Relationships, Says Book Author Nancy Hachisu

Whose Fault is It that Food Writing Doesn’t Pay?

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Every once and a while, I hear resentment. Someone’s to blame about why food writers aren’t paid well for their work.

Whose fault is it? Here are the three most common scapegoats:

  1. Writers who have partners who work. These writers don’t care if they make a living wage because they don’t need the money. They might not work full time or care what they’re paid.
  2. People who work full-time and write about food as a hobby. They will probably never make food writing a full-time career. And they don’t need the money because they have jobs, so they write for free or for little pay.
  3. Hobby bloggers. They write for free or little pay too, because they’re thrilled to be [Read more…] about Whose Fault is It that Food Writing Doesn’t Pay?

Six Useful How-To Books and Guidebooks For Writers

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I know. If we’re going to talk about books, you want cookbooks, preferably with luscious photography. Fine. Here are two lists of favorite cookbooks of 2012 from The Washington Post and The Kitchn.

Now that you’ve got that out of your system, we can get on with today’s post. In the past few weeks I’ve paged through and marked up six how-to books sent to me, at my request, by inquiring publishers. I’m here to report on how or whether they’ll help you improve your writing, freelancing, photography, book promotion and public speaking.

Despite reading an essay on how writers don’t need to read how-to books and attend conferences, I am a big fan of how-to books (and conferences). Whenever I read one, I find something valuable I can immediately use to improve myself. Besides, people learn and progress in different ways. Some read books and practice with exercises. Some take classes and attend workshops. And some just stumble through, learning by doing. That’s what writers always say in interviews, right? “If you want to be a writer, write.” I’ve heard it a hundred times.

Well yes. But some of us need help, encouragement and inspiration. We need to learn from people who have been there or done that. We need new skills, like how to write literary narrative, photograph food, promote books, and pitch articles. So if you’re the type who learns by reading, here’s a handful of books that came across my desk recently:

1. Plate to Pixel: Digital Food Photography & Styling, by Helene Dujardin of Tartlette. Shame on me for not recommending this book as soon as it came out. Dozens of luscious photographs will lure you into understanding how Dujardin works her magic, and how you can do it too. This is a full-color book full of photos that teach you how to set up a shot, find the light, diffuse it, understand non-automatic camera settings, be an effective food stylist and other subjects valuable to food bloggers.

2. Talk Up Your Book: How to Sell Your Book Through Public Speaking, Interviews, Signings, Festivals, Conferences and More, by Patricia Fry. Finally, someone had the courage to join the two topics writers dread most: promoting their books and public speaking. Fry, the author of [Read more…] about Six Useful How-To Books and Guidebooks For Writers

Q&A with Cookbook Author and Chef Yotam Ottolenghi: Know What You Stand For"

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Yotam Ottolenghi, co-author of Jerusalem, says food writers should specialize. (Photo by Keiko Oikawa)

It’s unusual for a famous chef and restaurateur to write his own cookbooks. So when Ten Speed Press sent me an copy of Yotam Ottolenghi’s latest cookbook, Jerusalem, I was curious about his process (and intrigued by this stunning cookbook). I interviewed the chef about writing, collaborating and on establishing oneself as a food writer:

Q. You have a degree in a philosophy and a Masters in comparative literature. What were you planning to do with them?

A. I wasn’t sure, but a university teaching career seemed like a possibility at the time.

Q. But then you left to study cooking in London.

A. I didn’t get enough fulfillment from academic life. It felt a bit stale and was also stressful – papers to write, books to read.

Q. Why did you decide to write a column on vegetarian cooking in The Guardian in 2006? You had been the chef at Ottolenghi for four years by then.

A. That’s what The Guardian asked me to do. At first I wasn’t sure that this was a good idea; after all, I wasn’t a vegetarian. But as this was a great [Read more…] about Q&A with Cookbook Author and Chef Yotam Ottolenghi: Know What You Stand For"

Chefs Blast Bloggers on Restaurant Reviews

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In the old days in newspapers and magazines, if a restaurant chef or owner didn’t like my review, they called my boss. The editors never passed the phone call on to me.

But now that reviews are online, chefs can vent at reviewers directly, and that is not a good thing. Two bloggers who wrote less than glowing reviews of good restaurants were subject to vulgar and harassing comments that generated a lot of press.

The incidents brought up some good questions, however, about our expectations of reviewers, and I’ll get to that. First, let’s look at what happened:

1. Chef’s response: “…Wear a condom on your tongue to contain the orgasm of your ignorance.”

Dubai food writer and blogger Samantha Wood of FooDiva wrote a review of Giannino, an offshoot of a three-Michelin starred restaurant. She and a friend paid more than ‘a3200 (around $350) for a two-course [Read more…] about Chefs Blast Bloggers on Restaurant Reviews