Ways to Write a Dinner Scene that Won’t Fail
Ah, the dinner scene (or breakfast or lunch). It’s bound to fail, they say. Guaranteed to result in boredom for the readers, with your novel instantly relegated to the trash heap. It seems like hyperbole, but there’s a strong disdain for these meal scenes – sometimes for good reasons. We’ll look at what these are, how to avoid them, and how to write a dreaded dinner scene so that it’s a success.
I was hoping to write something more personal in this blog post, and this topic certainly fits the bill. It highlights an internal debate I had while working on my upcoming novel. I’ll weave the outcome of my meal-scene-decisions throughout.
But first, what’s the problem?
What’s Wrong with the Dinner Scene?
The characters sit down to eat. They pick up the fork, spear the piece of mutton, and mumble small talk around their masticating jaws. It happens. It’s even realistic. But it’s boring! It bores the readers. And hopefully, it bores us enough to correct it when we rewrite our drafts prior to publishing.
Why are these scenes so often boring?
First of all, the action, by definition, ceases. Since the characters aren’t doing anything, we turn to what they are doing: spearing asparagus, sipping wine, etc. Things that readers will naturally assume and which brings all conflict and tension to a screeching halt.
Further, all of our writer-knowledge about increasing subtext and cutting any unnecessary details and dialogue goes out the window. We seem to believe that at the table, all of those things are suddenly acceptable. Characters can focus on picking out a piece of chicken, wiping their lips, asking each other about their day. Fine. It was fine. How was your day?…Well, I suppose mine was fine too…
Yawn. All is lost.
But there’s a way to write those dreaded meals so that we don’t lose readers. Not only that. If we write them the right way, we can further the plot, character arcs and theme to the same extent as we do in any other scene.
This Meal is Not a Meal
The root of the problem with the meal scene seems to be the meal itself. Unless there’s a significant reason to focus on the food or the act of eating, it shouldn’t feature as anything other than a scarcely-mentioned aspect of the setting.
In my upcoming novel, The Death of Clara Willenheim, I included three scenes in which the characters are eating. Yes, three! I hesitated. I debated. I doubted. But then I included them. Why?
Because they make sense. Not at first, they didn’t (one did, but not the other two), but now they do.
In my story, Clara is a prisoner in her family’s estate. She lives there with her mother and grandmother, her father having just died before the novel opens. Her everyday life would be one of monotony – time with her private tutor and her art instructor and family meals – except that she’s able to move through the hidden passages in the estate, along with the ghost of her long-dead aunt, uncovering the truth behind her family’s dark doings and the criminal underworld in Bavaria.
It makes sense that, for a prisoner who’s rarely allowed outside of her classroom or her personal suite of rooms, her interactions with the family would occur almost exclusively at meal times. But that doesn’t mean that they’d be anything other than boring if I hadn’t revised them based on the principle that the meal is not the meal.
Meaning: the point of the meal is never the meal. Her time at the table is almost entirely focused on something else. [And I eliminated all unnecessary small talk.] I’ll explain what that is as we move through the examples below.
The Meal as Scene
If you’ve studied the craft of writing, you’ve probably heard of the scene-sequel sequence. What that means is that each Scene is comprised of two parts: a scene – an action or a new incident in the character’s life – that’s followed by a sequel – the character’s reflection on or reaction to what just happened. Each of these can be a separate and complete scene, or a short or condensed portion of a scene.
Meals are more often a sequel opportunity, which we’ll get to next, but they can also be the initial scene (the action-packed) segment of the sequence.
[This isn’t the case in my book, so I’ll use a hypothetical example here.]
Let’s say your characters are struggling financially. This is putting a lot of pressure on their marriage. They sit down to a meal. It’s a sad affair. Perhaps you highlight this (briefly) through a reference to what they’re eating, which readers will either immediately associate with hardship (they’re eating Ramen noodles) or will compare with the characters’ prior luxurious dining and will see as such.
But that’s not really what matters. It’s just the backdrop.
Perhaps the wife is suddenly very servile, submissive, interested in her husband’s dinner experience. Her dialogue and demeanor is packed with subtext. She might present her changed response to him as an attempt to reignite their marriage, but you’ve written her dialogue so that readers instantly suspect that something is wrong. (Whether the husband does or not is another matter.)
Of course, that makes sense since she’s poisoning him in an attempt to gain his life insurance.
Not an original plot by any means, but you get what I’m doing here. The meal matters. It’s central to the plot, to the wife’s devolution as a character, and to the story’s theme. Maybe you’ve even prepared a twist: the husband knows and has a counter move prepared in which the wife dies instead.
That’s a meal scene that could be riveting. It could be suspenseful, chalk-full of subtext. And the Ramen noodles have nothing to do with it.
The Meal as Sequel
More often than not, a meal is a great way to give the readers a sequel to the character’s prior scene sequence.
If this scene-sequel talk is confusing, see K.M. Weiland’s articles explaining it: How to Structure Scenes in Your Story (Complete Series).
In my upcoming novel, two of my meal scenes are sequels. What that means is that something pivotal has just happened in the prior scene and the characters are reacting to it. In the first instance, the family has just experienced a terrible séance-gone-wrong. (Don’t they all?) None of the characters, save for the antagonist, wanted to participate in it in the first place. And now that it’s done and over, they’re still reeling from the outcome.
If this was a quick response on the part of the protagonist alone, I could have accomplished it as a one-sentence or one-paragraph reaction. (Sequels don’t have to be a full scene.) But I wanted to do more. By showing a full breakfast scene with all of the family and extended family members present, I reveal several things, including:
- The other characters’ experiences at the séance calls into question the reliability of the protagonist, our narrator for much of the book.
- I reveal some of the characters’ personalities (this scene is in the first quarter of the book in which introductions are crucial to setting the stage). For example, the mother’s skepticism is completely in line with her history as a scientist. This foreshadows her future actions in the story and how they will juxtapose with the supernatural elements.
- The antagonist’s response is surprising for readers. Up until that point, they’ve seen her as a steely bulwark. Now they [should] wonder why she’s so shaken by what apparently happened. The truth behind her response is incredibly important to the future unraveling of the mystery.
- The protagonist who actually witnessed the full extent of the séance and who was required to make a choice at that point, now has to solidify her decision. The ghost who appeared to her has made it clear that she will sacrifice greatly if she goes forward. But that if she doesn’t, her end will be disastrous…and soon. This is the point at which she makes a decision to participate in the conflict.
Hopefully you can see how important a full scene is when it comes to accomplishing this many things by several characters simultaneously. It requires interaction. And dialogue. A meal worked well as a backdrop as it forced them to remain in an environment in which that’s exactly what’s expected (while eating, of course).
A second meal I included came on the heels of a very unexpected (and disturbing to one character in specific) arrival of another character. The meal provided just the opportunity I needed to force them all back into an interaction that brought numerous things to the surface. (I’ll leave it at that and let you discover it when you read the book!)
The Meal as Mood
The meal can also exist simply to set the tone for something more important. This will most likely dictate a shorter scene.
In my case, I have another quasi-breakfast scene. It falls early in the book, at the beginning of a scene in which the family inters the body of Clara’s father. After a terrible premonition, Clara arrives in the dining room where the family and guests are milling around waiting for the priest. No one is really eating much of anything as they wait in awkward silence for an event that will end on a catastrophic note.
As a plot component, it makes sense that they would be at breakfast since the internment is due to commence afterwards. But that wasn’t necessary. I could have held the event at any time of the day. However, I chose breakfast because watching Clara’s grandmother smear her eggs around the plate, and her Uncle Horst chain smoking, and her Aunt Lotte neglecting her unfinished pastry slowly builds the mood of the scene.
It’s ominous. The preceding dream reference foreshadowed something terrible. The mood at breakfast allows that to hang over the readers, albeit not for too long. And outside the window, “…the crooked form of a raven lying on the gravel path, its wing bent back from its body, one beady eye fixed on her,” increases Clara’s [and the readers’] sense of dread.
In this case, the breakfast works, but I kept it very brief – about 200 words or so – as it’s merely meant to set the mood. Anything longer would have been overkill. I would have risked losing readers in a sea of melodrama. But as part of a larger, very dramatic scene, it increases the tension.
Conclusion
All this to say that when we bring our characters to the table, we can’t lose sight of the rules we follow in any other part of the novel. The table scene has to have a very strong purpose. It must further the plot, provide more insight into the characters’ personalities and growth, or (as succinctly as possible) set the tone within a larger context.
Any dialogue that isn’t advancing these things and any actions or setting descriptions that aren’t laden with subtext will usually need to go. Make your dinner scene(s) deeply impactful or risk losing your readers.
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