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WHAT IS FREELANCE FOOD WRITING?
by Brian Scott
If you have a
good appetite and a way with words, food writing may be a career option to
consider. Not only is doing research for food writing one of the more enjoyable
tasks in freelance writing, but you'll never be short of restaurant
recommendations and potential free meals -- though you may run short of
well-fitting pants.
To become a successful freelance food writer,
you'll need to know how to describe food well. The key to description, at least
in traditional literature, is to make focused, concrete comparisons. To see
why, ask yourself which sentence you find more appealing: "It was the tastiest
shrimp I've ever eaten," or "The lime-pressed garlic shrimp, grilled over
applewood, had a texture between the crunch of caramelized sugar and the soft
resistance of a medium-rare salmon filet"?
The fundamental law of food
writing is to make your reader wish that he or she had some of whatever
delicious dish you're writing about, to make the reader personally invested in
the food. And there's a strange quirk in the human mind: whenever we think
about an object or activity, we activate the parts of our brain that turn on
whenever we're interacting with that object or engaged in that activity. In
other words: if we think about throwing a baseball, the nerves in our arm
twitch. Or, if we think about eating a thick steak, our stomach grumbles and
our mouth waters. When you're writing about food, you want to activate those
same parts of the brain to make your reader feel that he or she is sharing in
the experience of eating it. Words like "tasty," "delicious," or, worst of all,
"really good," won't do anything for your reader's emotions. Only words related
to food -- or words and images with strong emotional connotations -- will
really get your readers' mouths watering.
Once you've written your
articles, where do you market your food writing? If you live in a large city,
you can write for a local newspaper or an alternative paper (i.e. the LA
Weekly, the Austin Chronicle, etc.). Millions of people read these papers daily
or weekly, and a good portion of those millions read the food section. When
anyone in a major city needs to make restaurant reservations for a date,
business dinner, party, or other social engagement, they look in the food
section of the local paper for hot new restaurant reviews. Stay on top of
restaurant openings and closings in your city. New restaurant openings can be
your “bread and butter.” Local newspapers and online city guides are
always wanting to print new restaurant reviews.
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If
you have a favorite local hangout that not many people know about, write an
article on it. Submit your article with a proper query letter to a local
newspaper. You might be the first one to write about the place, throwing needed
business their way. In the end, you collect a decent paycheck from the
newspaper, along with a published clip, a byline, and hopefully more work and
referrals.
Another option is to write for magazines dedicated to
food, dining, city nightlife, general lifestyles, or for the tourist market. If
you plan to write for magazines, your choice of what to write about becomes
much broader. You can write how-to articles, interview pieces, cookware
reviews, and so on. If you plan to write for local tourism guides, your best
bet is to write restaurant reviews. Tourists may not know about any of the
well-known restaurants or diners in the area. Tourism guides provide insight
and guidance to what’s hot and what’s not in the area. This means
that there's a steady flow of potential readers for your restaurant reviews and
other food writing.
If you don't live in a large city, it's much more
difficult to become a food writer. The mom n' pop cafe downtown may have some
of the best omelets you've ever tasted, but how are you supposed to sell an
article if everyone in town already eats at that cafe every Friday night?
Consider selling your articles to regional magazines. The Department of
Transportation in several US states often publishes a monthly magazine about
regional news. The editors of these magazines often look at local restaurant
reviews as a source of human interest, or a way of boosting out-of-state
tourism to non-traditional destinations.
Additionally, you might try
writing sample copy for cookbooks, press releases for food suppliers, or ads
for food companies. Companies and book publishers hire good food writers to
help market anything from new varieties of pasta sauce to gourmet steak dishes.
Even a nearby supermarket might be willing to pay for copy in weekly ad flyers.
Unfortunately for rural types, full-time food writing is more often
than not an urban game. For urban types, food is one of the products that won't
ever stop being popular, especially when it's offered as part of a good
restaurant experience. Thus food writing means job security, and more
importantly than that: it's just outright enjoyable writing. So get to it!
© B.
Scott
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brian Scott has been
a professional freelance writer for more than a decade. He is an active forum moderator at Writing Answers, a vibrant community of writers helping writers.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
1)
Will Write for Food: The Complete Guide to Writing Cookbooks,
Restaurant Reviews, Articles, Memoir, Fiction and More by Dianne Jacob
2)
Resource Guide for Food Writers by Gary
Allen
3)
Fab Job Guide to Become a FOOD WRITER by Pamela
White
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