Reddit reviews Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction
We found 12 Reddit comments about Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
ABRAMS
We found 12 Reddit comments about Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
It’s a bit eccentric, but Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer is a fun read and has a ton of great writing advice geared towards fantasy and speculative fiction.
Wonderbook is fantastic and seems like exactly what you're looking for. It's less about the mechanics of writing than jumpstarting creativity, and thinking of really wild things that will resonate with imaginative readers.
Or, another step removed, flip through books on myth or architecture or geography and find one with a lot of really wild photos that make you think of ideas. That's what I've been doing lately.
I got this a while ago. I talks about worldbuilding, but also a load of other things.
The chapters are:
It's 360 pages and features loads of different perspectives and guest writers who give their opinion on topics and their way of handling them. There is also a lot of artwork. Almost every page has art on it to support the subject at hand. I think it's really good.
Wonder book
Something you want: The Wildwood Tarot
Something you need: A cat scratcher lounge thing, because my couch is looking pretty sad
Something to wear: Gloves for my poor frozen hands
Something to read: Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction, by Jeff VanderMeer
Something to watch: Season 1 of Hana Yori Dango
Something to listen to: Sonic Highways by the Foo Fighters
I can't decide between two of the items, so here's two riddle haiku (riddle-ku?).
First: Fingers hide in sleeves / But the cold makes them clumsy / Wrap them up in wool
Second: Evoking nature / Divining secret meanings / Tell me my fortune
Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction by Jeff Vandermeer is a fantastic read and cannot be recommended enough.
It really gets the creative juices flowing and the input Vandermeer has gotten from other authors (there are tens of essays/comments/workshops from authors including Neil Gaiman, GRRM, Joe Abercrombie, and Lev Grossman) is quite insightful. Also, it doesn't read like a textbook, as many other books in the instructive writing genre tend to do.
Feedback is so important, so I love to hear it. But of course I reserve the right to respectfully ignore it at times :)
I have not read Shape of Stories but I did read Wonderbook (https://www.amazon.com/Wonderbook-Illustrated-Creating-Imaginative-Fiction/dp/1419704427) which I found to be very helpful as I was starting out.
I'm a plotter so I have definite thoughts at the outset what the beginning and end of each story is. Then I come up with the characters and what I want their arcs to be like. And then I plot out the major way points from beginning to end. And if the events don't move the plot forward then they don't make the book. But I also like to think about what has happened to the characters off the page. So, that's how I came up with the idea of having these collections of short stories so I could tell different kinds of stories, explore existing and new characters, create more threads for the reader to pick up on, without encumbering the plot too much.
You mentioned that Kingshold could have done with a longer page count, but 500 page books already put some people off, and when you're a new unknown author you want to limit the reasons for why someone won't read your book. So instead I'm releasing a 300 page collection of short stories :). It will be interesting to see if this works or is publishing suicide. And that comes back to reader feedback too; if folks don't want to buy Tales of Kingshold then I'll rethink this approach.
Fun, thanks for hosting the scavenger hunt!
Edit: Finished! I love scavenger hunts; it always reminds me what a weirdo I am.
The Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide To Creating Imaginative Fiction had some great tips, and keeps you engaged in reading it. There were a lot of things pointed out to me that I've never noticed before and it helped me find what I think is my current level of writing. Worth the read.
A nice carpal tunnel glove? =D
I'm only sort of kidding.
What does she like to write on? People always seem to default to pens and notebooks, but really, a quality bluetooth keyboard might be even better. If she has a tablet, she can take it to B&N and write on it without having to deal with that awful screen-tapping.
A novel in her preferred genre that she hasn't read yet: also nice.
Or even a book about writing, or worldbuilding. I found this one quite inspirational. But I don't know what sort of thing she likes to write.
Ohhhh, I now see you wanted a workbook about filmmaking, sorry!
I don't know, but if you don't find any then you should make one! Something like Wonderbook for film :)
Okay, so I'm not home so these are the few off the top of my head that I can remember I've read and loved.
I hope one of these can help out!