How to Season Your Sentences and Avoid Serving Bland Prose

Hello there, you glorious ink-slinging kitchen catastrophes and literary chefs. October is National Cookbook Month (yes, that exists - the world is serious about recipes, apparently), and it’s the perfect excuse to stir a little culinary magic into your writer’s life. Consider this your permission slip to metaphorically throw flour around and, who knows, maybe even physically do it once or twice (you deserve a break from words).

This post is for the writers and readers who love language, stories, and the messy, delicious overlap between cooking and crafting prose. Pull up a stool, sharpen your pencils (or preheat your oven, your choice), and let’s get into it.

Why Cookbooks, Exactly?

Cookbooks are weird little hybrids. They’re instruction manuals, memoirs, cultural artefacts, and scrapbooks wrapped into one. They teach technique, yes, but they also tell stories: the grandma who taught you how to roll pasta, the immigrant mother who adjusted spices to map home, the farm-to-table ethos of a restaurant owner. They are part how-to, part narrative, part photograph porn (that crisp crust! that glossy glaze!).

If you’re a writer, that's like getting a backstage pass to your craft. Cookbooks remind us that instruction can entertain. That you can teach with voice. That you can slip in anecdotes, mistakes, elegance, flair. So here’s how we writers can rip off (I mean, be inspired by) cookbooks for our creative practices.

1. Recipes as Micro-Structures for Scenes

Think of your scene like a recipe. It has ingredients, a method, and a desired outcome (simmered tension, rising emotion, the dramatic reveal). If you start with raw eggs and flour, follow the steps, you should get cake (or scrambled eggs, depending on you). Scenes are like that.

• Ingredients: characters, setting, conflict, subtext

• Method: dialogue, action, description, pacing

• Timing: when to stir (reveal), when to let rest (pause), when to knead (intensify), when to fold (back off)

When you plan a scene, write a ‘recipe card’ first: list the elements you absolutely need. Think: ‘I need Hero’s doubt, Villain’s taunt, and a reveal about the secret letter.’ That’s your ingredient list. Then roughly sketch the steps: open at confrontation, simmer with subtext, finish with a twist. You don’t have to follow rigidly, but having that ‘recipe’ helps you avoid a soggy mush of muddled intent.

2. Ingredient Substitution = Genre Bending

In recipes, sometimes the cookbook says, If you don’t have sour cream, you can substitute Greek yogurt + lemon juice.’ In writing, you can substitute conventions too.

Say you’re writing a sneaky spy thriller. Swap in a culinary element: maybe your protagonist is a pastry chef who moonlights as a secret courier. Or use the structure of a cooking show (countdown, judge, twist) in a heist scene. The mundane becomes the novel. Use the cookbook mentality: your ‘recipe’ is your genre template; substitute in unexpected ingredients for freshness.

3. Taste Testing = Draft Feedback (and Self-Edit Sampling)

A cookbook author doesn’t just give you the perfect recipe and disappear. They often include tasting notes: ‘if you like it spicier, try cayenne; if milder, reduce chilli; try it after it rests overnight.’

In writing, this translates to tasting notes for drafts. Try different ‘seasonings’ - extra scene, shorter paragraph, a flashback — and see what changes. Let your beta readers sample versions with and without a subplot. Encourage them to say ‘I’d have liked more heat (drama)’ or ‘this is too bland (thin on stakes).’

Self-edit in ‘tasting sessions’: print a chapter, read it out loud, mark what’s ‘too sweet (sentimental), too salty (grinding conflict), or undercooked (underdeveloped).’ Then adjust.

4. Your Cooking Journal = Writer’s Journal

Every cookbook worth its salt often comes from years of scribbled margins, failed experiments, notes from guests, flavour tweaks. You need that too. Keep a writer’s journal (separate from your novel journal). Drop in:

• Pithy lines overheard in cafes

• A memorable tasting - the smoky char on a steak, or the unexpected acidity of a tomato

• Disasters: burnt risottos, collapsed soufflés - and what you learned

• Metaphors that pop: ‘the sentence jumped out like a seared scallop’

Over time, that journal becomes your flavour store. When you’re writing, sometimes you fish a note from your journal and say, “Ah yes - that lemon-sharp tension” and smuggle it into a paragraph.

5. The Mise en Place Mindset = Pre-Writing Prep

Professional cooks swear by mise en place (everything in place). Chop, measure, assemble before the fire. In writing: prewriting is your mise en place.

• Outline major beats (or a loose skeleton)

• Research, world-build, backstory, side threads

• Character ‘flavour sheets’ (not just physical, but emotional habits, idioms, favourite food)

• Scenes you know you’ll include (even if they’ll change)

Then when you sit to write, you’re not rummaging in the fridge mid-meal. You’re executing with confidence. (Yes, there will be improvisation - but you won’t be hunting for last-minute spices when an audience is starving for your next sentence.)

6. Layering Flavours = Writing Subtext & Theme

A good dish is rarely about one flavour. The chef layers salt, acid, sweetness, bitterness to dance together. In writing, you layer:

• Theme: what’s this story about, beyond the plot?

• Subtext: what’s unsaid, simmering beneath the surface?

• Symbolism & motifs: recurring images (food, candour, fire, water) that echo the emotional arc.

Don’t slam in ‘The Theme—Friendship & Betrayal’ in bold capitals. Instead, drip it in, garnish it. Let the plot be the main dish; let the theme be the sauce that seeps and stains.

7. Include Recipes (Metaphorical or Literal)

If you like, insert a real (or fictional) mini-recipe in your writing. It’s a fun twist and forces specificity (which betters your descriptive muscle). Example:

“She whisked 2 eggs, ¼ cup sugar, and a spoonful of dare. In moments the batter was running thin. She remembered - add patience, fold in hope, bake at 180°. In stories, you never omit patience.”

It’s playful, surprising, and deepens connection between action and metaphor.

Be careful: if your readership is mostly non-cooking, keep it short. No one wants a five-page souffle tutorial unless they asked for cookbook mode.

8. Show the Kitchen Disasters - Honesty & Vulnerability

Cookbooks increasingly include failure stories: “I over baked, burnt the bottom, tried again.” Be that in your writing life. Share your flops, rejections, scenes you scrapped. That authenticity builds trust.

You could do a Substack post: “When Stories Drop In: What Sunday Lunch Taught Me About Writing” - pair your worst recipe with your worst draft. Show how you picked yourself up, adjusted, baked (or cooked) again.

Writers love the glitch. They love seeing that the Great Authors failed too (sometimes repeatedly) before the soufflé rose.

9. The Audience as Diners: Know Who You’re Cooking/ Writing For

A chef needs to know: who’s eating this? A toddler, a vegan, a steak-obsessed carnivore? That determines seasoning, portions, presentation. Same with your reader (diner):

• What does your ideal reader crave? Tension? Romance? Spiritual epiphanies?

• What’s too spicy (too much shock)? Too bland (too lifeless)?

• What medium do they prefer: short punchy essays, epistolary, illustrated stories?

Once you know your diners, you adjust your ‘menu.’ A strong manuscript without knowing who’ll devour it is like cooking a fancy duck à l’orange for someone who only eats peanut butter toast.

10. Menus = Table of Contents / Blurbs

Menus in restaurants tease you: ‘Seared scallops, saffron broth, pea shoots.’ That’s marketing, pacing, order. Your table of contents, chapter titles, blurbs, and jacket copy are your menu. They should tingle curiosity, not give away the main course (spoilers are for critics, not diners).

If your TOC is ‘Chapter 1: The Beginning; Chapter 2: Something Happens; Chapter 3: More Something’ - bland. Instead, think menu logic: progression of appetites, lead with what tempts, end with something that lingers.

11. The Seasonal Cookbook = Contextualising Your Writing

Cookbook authors often do seasonal editions (autumn stews, summer salads). You can season your writing too. Use the calendar - Halloween, solstice, harvest, migration - to spark themes, motifs, titles. October? Pumpkins, root vegetables, hearth, twilight, gathering. Use your environment.

If your writing room overlooks a tree losing leaves, mirror that in tone. Don’t just transport your story to your head - ground it in what’s around you. Seasonality helps readers breathe in a shared world.

12. Publishing Is Like Opening a Restaurant

You can cook all you like, but if no one comes in, no one tastes. Publishing (Substack, small press, Flame Tree Publishing) is your front door, your reviews are diners’ feedback, your marketing is table ambiance (menus, website, social media, a good lighting).

You don’t fix everything at once. You start with the core dish (the manuscript), then adjust service (editing, design), then ambiance (cover, blurbs, launch), then guest experience (readers, engagement). Sometimes a dish fails on opening night; you tweak the next night.

13. A Sample ‘Cookbook Month’ Prompt for Writers

If you’re looking for a challenge, here’s a prompt you can use or share:

• Write a micro-recipe (100–200 words) that describes an emotional transformation (fear, love, loss) as though it’s a recipe. Use cooking verbs: whisk, fold, simmer, overcook, rest

• Or, write a scene where your protagonist prepares a meal under emotional stress. Let the cooking reflect the internal struggle

• Bonus: swap one ingredient for a metaphorical one (e.g. ‘one cup of regret,’ ‘a dash of forgiveness’) and see what happens.

14. Kitchen to Keyboard: My Own Messy Example

I once attempted a ‘lavender-lemon cake’ for a writing retreat. The cake collapsed. The lavender overpowered. A disaster. But I scribbled down the failures, and later used that in an essay: ‘Even when the cake falls flat, the flavour lingers - like abandoned drafts still whisper possibilities.’

I turned bungled batter into a piece about imperfection in art. That’s the point: let your writing and cooking intertwine, so that one failure feeds the other.

Final Thought (with a Dash of Sass)

Writers, you are more like chefs than you think. You take raw ingredients (ideas, emotions, conflicts), you stir, marinate, heat, freeze, knead, fold - you might scorch a bit, but you aspire to delight a palate. October is National Cookbook Month, so let your manuscripts don aprons, let your metaphors simmer, let your voice be the seasoning that makes readers come back for seconds.

Don’t write bland food. Don’t serve stale clichés. Spice it. Burn it (a little). Taste it, remake it, share it with messy pride.

And if your draft is half-cooked? Just call it ‘rustic.’ The next version will be Michelin.

Now go - chop onions (or words), season your sentences, and serve something unforgettable.