Mealtimes are a rich seam for writing in every genre, and there's a vast menu of possibilities to choose from: state banquets, family gatherings, romantic dinners, takeaways, birthday celebrations, TV dinners, snatched sandwiches at the computer...
Mealtimes may be sociable or solitary affairs. A whole group culture or an individual psyche can be expressed in people's relationships with food.
Choose one of the following tasks.
Memoir
Think about your family mealtimes when you were a child, and how they evolved at different stages in your childhood. Where did you usually eat breakfast? Who was with you?
What about lunch? Did you have school dinners? And teatime?
What was the atmosphere like at family mealtimes?
Choose a period of your life, and the mealtime you'd like to write about, breakfast, lunch, tea or supper. Start by describing a typical occasion, setting it in the background of your family life at the time.
If you can remember one occasion in particular, move on to that, perhaps marking the change of focus with something like: 'But one day...'
Fiction
Someone is offered a food item they don't want to eat. Who? What is the item?
Why don't they want to eat it?
Who is offering it to them?
Where are they?
Who else is present?
What does your protagonist do - accept it but leave it on the plate? Decline? Try and spit it out? How do the people around them respond?
Think about how this little exchange over food, offered and rejected, might reflect the relationship between the characters concerned. Write the scene.
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