Do you make sure your characters are eating? | Writer Questions #10

I have a scene where the MC wakes up in her boyfriend's bed. She talks with him for a while then makes an excuse to leave. At some point, I though, "Hm, they didn't even mentioned or ate breakfast." Note: the time is around eight a.m.

In another scene, they meet for a date. In the first draft, they go to a restaurant, but then I changed the location to a library. At some point, I thought, "Hm, they don't eat dinner in the whole date." Note: the time is around seven p.m.

Do you think this is an issue? Or the reader will just assume the characters ate between scenes (or behind scenes)? Or maybe the readers don't care at all?

(Right now, I only make the characters eat when they are in a bar, restaurant, or while they are doing something else like using the computer.)

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Dear Writer,

There are two main ideas to consider. First is "Chekhov's Gun." Anton Chekhov argued that if a gun is present on stage in act I of a play, the gun must go off by act III, otherwise, why was the gun there? His point is that irrelevant narrative elements bog down a story and make your audience ask questions you never intended to answer. They create false expectations in the audience and, depending on the gravity of the element in question, may cause frustration. This is a primary reason many people did not like The Last Jedi. Johnson's attempt at deconstructionism seemed farfetched given the tone of The Force Awakens and many of the elements Jedi discarded amounted to a violation of Chekhov's Gun.

Second is the question of what Kidder & Todd (Good Prose) call "proportion and order." What they mean is that structuring a plot is a balancing act. It is about choosing what details to employ—and to what degree—and what details to ignore altogether; this is proportion. Order concerns the sequence of events. The storyteller's job is to choose the relevant details and then to place them in the best order to tell the best story. If you've ever moved a scene around in your story, you understand the relevance of order.

My question is: Why is it relevant that we see the characters eating? I could just as easily ask you why you aren't showing your characters pooping. It is fine for important events to occur over a meal, but there must be some narrative content the pushes the plot forward, reveals character, or both. Eating for the sake of proving characters' realness is inadvisable; your audience assumes that your characters handle all of life's bare necessities in the scenes we are not reading.

At the extreme least, eating should accompany narrative content, perhaps a conversation.

Best,

DR-M