I want my character to get food poisoning on the first few pages. I won’t be graphic and it would help build characterization the way I want to do it. Any thoughts on how much this shows my love for sickfics? (Basically on my the first page my character eats some cake batter and then by the time it turns out she’s the star goddex’s helper and they’re with the star goddex and the goddex’s daughter on Neptune, she’s sick. Another character tells
her she’ll get sick but she kind of ignores her.) am I just too much of a sucker for characters getting sick or is this ok?
I guess it depends on whether or not it derails from the plot, how time consuming it is, the overall tone of your book and whether or not a small thing like this fits in well, etc.
Writing is sort of something you can do however you want. You just do stuff and make things happen. It is true that some things are more plot relevant than others, but only you can really determine that based on your style of writing. A scene like this wouldn't fit in my book, but that doesn't mean it couldn't work somehow in yours.
You could always write it, write the whole story, and then kind of look back over and it and see whether it seems silly and unnecessary. If it does, you can try to find another way to build characterization and get the same point across, but in a way that fits into your story.
