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hyperdontiia 's review for:
Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction
by Jeff VanderMeer
This book fucks.
I can't tell you how useful it is YET, or to a single project, but this is one of those volumes that could easily shape or re-shape an author's entire ethos on writing. It's kind of a grimy, biotic approach to storytelling, with its own sense of humor and internal consistency, a book which is telling you stories, with stories, and then also a lot of drawings, hells interviews, bunches of personal anecdotes... I don't think there's anything this doesn't have. It's even got a little RPG in there. I mean, if you want to talk RPGs. Not to mention the thing was so damn expansive that it has a website dedicated to all the outtakes they couldn't cram into the mouth of this thing proper. I'm not going to claim it's the best writing book ever, or even that it might appeal to you, especially if you are an incredibly dry and serious writer, but Wonderbook is definitely a place you can sit in for long periods of time and hope that its juices compel you to write.
Personally I like the diagrams. The prose styles one might be one of the best in the book, if reductive.
I can't tell you how useful it is YET, or to a single project, but this is one of those volumes that could easily shape or re-shape an author's entire ethos on writing. It's kind of a grimy, biotic approach to storytelling, with its own sense of humor and internal consistency, a book which is telling you stories, with stories, and then also a lot of drawings, hells interviews, bunches of personal anecdotes... I don't think there's anything this doesn't have. It's even got a little RPG in there. I mean, if you want to talk RPGs. Not to mention the thing was so damn expansive that it has a website dedicated to all the outtakes they couldn't cram into the mouth of this thing proper. I'm not going to claim it's the best writing book ever, or even that it might appeal to you, especially if you are an incredibly dry and serious writer, but Wonderbook is definitely a place you can sit in for long periods of time and hope that its juices compel you to write.
Personally I like the diagrams. The prose styles one might be one of the best in the book, if reductive.