Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. ~Ursula K. Le Guin
I haven’t bought a loaf of bread for years now. I have bought a lot of bread flour and whole wheat flour and other ingredients. But you can get spoiled pretty quickly to homemade bread.
Some years ago – I have no idea how many – everybody was passing around sourdough starter with a recipe for feeding the starter and making your own bread. I said I didn’t want to do that. I mean I had lots of other things to do. Not make bread. But when Mom and my sisters made some bread and it was pretty good, I thought why not make a couple of loaves. So I got some starter and I’ve been making bread ever since. The sourdough way was easy for me. I could mix it up in the morning, make the dough that night, form the loaves the next morning and bake it whenever it rose sufficiently. None of it took a lot of time and I do love good bread.
When the grandkids came along they loved making the bread too. They always wanted to do 
some different things. Make pizza or bread sticks. One of them even made some sort of cinnamon cake that was delicious. It was mostly cinnamon bread, but you put a little frosting on it and you can call it cake.
There’s something therapeutic about making bread. It can’t be rushed. It has to be kneaded and kneaded some more. It smells divine when it’s baking. That heel sliced off the end when it comes right out of the oven is the best thing ever with a little butter spread on it. It makes great toast. It makes yummy rolls and even yummier cinnamon rolls. That’s a Christmas time treat.
But you can’t just make one loaf of bread or two and expect to have sandwiches forever. You have to keep feeding that starter. Keep mixing in the extra ingredients. Keep baking more bread.
Writing stories can be something like that too. Stories can’t always be rushed. They might need time to rise. They always need some kind of starter, an idea that sparks a creative response. Sometimes to get the story into the proper shape you may have to knead the idea, work it over until the story forms the way you want it to. To make a good loaf of bread you pummel and punch it. It can be the same with a story as Carolyn Chute says in this quote. Sometimes a manuscript is like bread dough. You have to abuse it.
But it’s good if you can love the process of working the dough of your story. I’m finishing up my work in progress. I’ve worked my story over and over. I’ve cut out over 9,000 of those unnecessary words. I have shaped it the best I can and now I can only hope that it will be baked into a book that will bring readers as much pleasure as that first slice of bread fresh from the oven.
What ingredient do you think is most important in a novel?
Comments 10
Characters that come alive and you either like them or you don’t. The book must grab me first sentence (paragraph) and when the book comes to a close I want more.
Author
Karen, you’re a demanding reader wanting to get grabbed on that first sentence but you’re not alone. Many readers want to get invested in the story in that first bit. That’s why writers work so hard to get that first sentence right. I did a blog once on first sentences. Maybe I’ll do that again. It’s always fun to see those first sentences and see if it pulls you into the story.
I love seeing how the relationships develop between my characters, and most of all, how the characters discover hope, and overcome. So perhaps for my stories, friendships and hope are most important.
Author
I don’t like a story with no hope, Shelia. I’ve been unhappy when I’ve read some very popular best sellers that I thought ended without that hope for the characters’ futures. It doesn’t have to be all tied up in a pretty package with a bow, but it has to have hope for them after I’ve walked a story road through many pages with them.
I love to see the character development right alongside the story each person is a part of! Without the character development, the plot is just flat as pancake.
Author
Fun that you kept with the cooking them in your comment, Maria. A writer definitely doesn’t want their story plot to be flat like a pancake!! It’s those characters that make a story for me.
adding the yummy ingredients – cinnamon, a little spice in the story, yeast – what keeps it rising and me coming back again and again to the book, and flour – that which holds it all together and is woven all through the story
Author
Great comment, Birdie. You explain it well in baking terms how to make that story work. Flour is the binder of the story or the thread that runs through it to make it all tie together.
It’s hard to pin it down to just one element. I think believable, relatable characters. Even in fantasy or sci-fi, they need to have those qualities.
You made me hungry Ann! I remember getting several starters for sourdough. Even from another military couple on Guam when we were in the Navy. How they transported it there? I never did figure that out. Happy baking and writing!
Author
You’re right about what makes a story work being hard to pin down, Paula. In the best stories, you don’t think about any of the elements. You just love the story. But I do agree that characters are what make the story for me. I have to have a character I care about. I’ve heard readers say they didn’t like this or that book because none of the characters were people they could like.
My sourdough bread is good. I’ve got some in the oven right now. I’ll be ready to slice off that heel and enjoy in a little while. Some people make starter from scratch. Maybe that’s what your friends did.