[Kuiper]

As a fantasy author, I am constantly looking for ways to provide description that engages all five senses. In most fiction, the vast majority of description is focused on what characters see, but if you really want to place the reader in a setting, it needs to feel tactile. When a character walks into a boggy marsh, I don't just want to describe the tepid pools of water; I want to describe the pungent stench of rotting wood, and the texture of the soggy ground underfoot. It's one thing for a character to remark on how hot and humid it is; it's another to describe the feeling of the wet, vaporous air as beads of water are condensing on your skin and coalescing with your sweat.

Food is great at engaging all five senses. Not only is it one of the few places where you get to talk about taste, but food gives off aromas. Eating food is a tactile experience: you can feel the stickiness of a sweet jelly as you lick it off your fingers. Food has a texture that you can feel on your tongue, and it feels different in your mouth depending on whether you allow it to slowly slide down your throat or stuff your cheeks with it. And kitchens are full of sounds that add richness to the setting: you can hear the crackling of a fire, the sizzle of a piece of meat dropped onto an iron cooking surface, the delightful shing of a carving knife being sharpened. You hear things at the dinner table, too: the delightful crunch of biting into a cracker, or the clattering of cutlery on plates. A baked pastry will make different sounds when you bite into it depending on whether it crust is hard or thin and flaky.

Fantasy is often viewed as one of the most immersive genres, largely because it spends so much time on providing detailed description that not only tells you what is happening in the world, but giving you a sense of what it feels like to live in that world. This often means that fantasy novels are longer and slower paced, but one of the reasons that many people enjoy large fantasy tomes is that they enjoy the feeling of being transported and immersed in another world.

[ericsoderstrom]

I usually end up skimming/skipping lengthy food descriptions in fantasy books. They don't add much to character or plot development. I like the idea of 'engaging all five senses' but think there should be more intentionality in it than just engaging senses for the sake of engaging senses, which is often what food descriptions seem like.

[retsibsi]

That's how I feel about visual descriptions in many books. I have a weak visual imagination, so most of it goes straight through me without leaving an impression. I wonder if non-visual sensory description is especially valuable to people like me? I'm not particularly interested in food (or in fantasy for that matter), but the snippets of description in Kuiper's comment helped me to understand why those non-visual sensory elements can make a setting feel real.

[rand_r]

Stephen King’s “On Writing” has an illustration of the opposite approach to this style: being judicious in description and still creating a rich environment in the reader’s mind, with just enough of the important details.

It begins “Look - here’s a table covered with a red cloth.” https://www.google.ca/amp/s/mukundacharan.wordpress.com/2011...

As someone like you who hates too much description, I’m comforted in the idea that judicious description is a skill to be appreciated.

[netzone]

I think you'll just find enjoyment in other non-descriptive genres, that I would likely not enjoy. Personally I can practically see the things I read, and it's colored my reading so much that I almost get bored reading stuff that's not as descriptive. I also theorise that this is the reason I usually dislike movie adaptions - it doesn't fit with the "movie" my brain created.

[pista]

I usually end up skimming/skipping lengthy food descriptions in fantasy books.

My experience with fantasy books is The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I tried LotR first, throwed it away after a few pages and, following advice from an expert, bought The Hobbit, that was a quick and enjoyable read. Then I turned to LotR, much better that time. But the third part was painful, not because the food, but the endless tour into Mordor. I skipped most of it, just scanning through pages to see if someone interesting showed. I guess there's a detail level beyond what regular readers get lost.

[arkh]

Agreed.

I got to the point where I read the first and last lines of a paragraph and if it seems like things happen in the middle I then read it. I don't really need "unoriginal description of a femme fatale" #5666481.

[kaegrwkegu]

> As a fantasy author, I am constantly looking for ways to provide description that engages all five senses.

As a reader, this does nothing for me. Written fiction does not really stimulate any of my senses. I primarily come for the worldbuilding, setting, the plot and the characters, in that order. It might have something to do with aphantasia. Usually I prefer scifi for that reason, but occasionally fantasy parodies get quite serious about taking the setting apart and exploring what consequences the tropes have, which is quite fun to read.

The only thing I remember about lembas is that it is damn useful.

[ComputerGuru]

You did a great job illustrating exactly what you referred to in that comment. Thank you for the sensory journey!

[_0ffh]

You might like to check out Steven Brust's "Vlad Taltos" series. It, and Brust himself, are somewhat known for their slightly foody bend. See, e.g. [1].

[1] http://www.sfwa.org/2013/04/guest-post-the-killer-in-the-kit...

[SubiculumCode]

Sometimes I've found it hard to slow down and read every word, but when I do (and the author is good) the escapism is sublime, and the reading experience becomes more than just turning pages to uncover plot points.

[rimliu]

Engaging all five senses is fine until it becomes the goal itself. Does it add to the story? No? Delete it.

[Rifu]

This has nothing to do with the topic at all but I really enjoyed your comment. I learned something today. Thanks!

[kibwen]

I think it does have to do with the topic, because it answers the headline question "why do fantasy novels have so much food"; I literally came to this comments section to remark that the answer is likely to do with the fact that engaging all of a reader's senses is a common literary trick to make the reader feel like they've been transported into a world. Turns out, eating food is one of the most common ways to engage the sense of taste. :P The author of the OP is probably being a bit narrow in that this isn't something confined to just fantasy, but if one were to somehow prove that this is a trope that's uniquely prevalent in fantasy (which the author doesn't), then the further answer would probably just be, like many other fantasy things, "because Tolkien did it". But really, when Rowling describes a Hogwarts feast it's not because she's trying to check off the I-wrote-a-fantasy-book checklist, it's because eating is a familiar sensation that helps the reader establish a firm relationship with a setting that is often otherwise deliberately alien and mysterious.