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“The most disgusting thing is chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven. Like when the chips are all warm and gooey.” And as my cousin said this, she shuddered like the mere thought of it made her sick to her stomach.
The rest of us were like… are you joking? But, no, apparently she actually finds warm fresh-baked chocolate cookies to be one of the most disgusting things she’s ever put in her mouth. She doesn’t really like homemade cookies at all, we later learned, and prefers the store-bought kind. And while just trying to imagine this breaks my brain a little and then makes me decide that I deserve a fresh-baked chocolate cookie right out of the oven which I would find DELICIOUS, it brings up an interesting point.
We’re all different.
As a writer, it’s important to keep that in mind. Because if I wanted to use what, to me, is the quintessential symbol of home and comfort food and deliciousness and I used fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies as my example, sure, many of my readers are going to get the meaning that I was after but anyone who’s like my cousin is going to take away the complete opposite because she finds them disgusting. Conversely, if my cousin, who is also a writer, writes from her experience and describes what, to her, is, you know, that vomit inducing process of eating one of those gross warm fresh-baked cookies, her readers are going to get lost.
Is there any experience to which every person can relate? Of course not. But there are some commonalities to which the majority of us agree and you may not realize if these run contrary to your opinions or experiences. Before we all looked at her bug-eyed, my cousin genuinely had no idea that everyone else in the world wasn’t disgusted by warm chocolate chip cookies. She thought she was sharing a common opinion.
I see this as a challenge to go out and experience as much as possible and to keep an open mind. Just because you hate/love something, don’t assume everyone else in the world does. Writing is hard enough without trying to paint a picture for your readers with the opposite colors they’re expecting.
Where do you stand on fresh, warm, chocolate chip cookies? Vile or yummy? And, if it’s the former, can I have yours?
Hillary DePiano is a playwright, fiction and non-fiction writer who loves writing of all kinds except for writing bios like this.
