Welcome to Wonderbooknow.com, a site that supports Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction.
We’re celebrating the release of the expanded, revised edition! It’s been five years since Wonderbook came out and we’ve heard from so many writers and teachers who’ve found it of use. The outpouring of love for the book has been amazing. We’ve heard from high school students and teachers, colleges, and master’s programs. Creatives in fields other than writing also have used the book.
The new edition includes 11 new images in the main body of the book and two new diagrams. The appendix includes three new modules, one focused on different storytelling perspectives, one on structure, and one on the environment and storytelling. In addition to some new writing exercises. More than 60 pages! A few pages have been retired to make space for new material, but you can find and download them by clicking on the Extras/Web Extras tab at the top of this page.
Major new web extras include material on eco-storytelling and the white deer project.
Wonderbook is the first fully illustrated creative writing guide, with over 250 full-color images, and is meant to be of use to any beginning or intermediate fiction writer–although it should be of use for all creatives and anyone who wants to recharge their imagination. A few features on the book have already run, including a comprehensive interview by Bill Tipper at the Barnes & Noble Review and a peak at text and image over on Fastcocreate.
The primary purpose of the website is to provide all of the supplementary extras promised in Wonderbook, which you can find under the web icon menu feature “Web Extras”. That includes additional writing exercises, discussion of the exercises in the book, additional examples, and much more. Highlights among these web extras include:
- Exercise examples from Peter Straub, Genevieve Valentine, Ekaterina Sedia, Sonya Taaffe, Cat Rambo, and more.
- Description samples from Ursula K. Le Guin, Elizabeth Bear, S.P. Somtow, Lucius Shepard, George R. R. Martin, and Margo Lanagan.
- Essays on drafting strategies and setting as metaphor by Matthew Cheney.
- A Mexican wrestler mono myth interpretation, with discussion of accuracy and distance.
- A Singing Fish by Amal El-Mohtar.
You’ll also find additional useful material. Among the highlights:
- A unique Editors’ Roundtable that features general and specific comments on a promising story from some of the most respected editors in the field: Paula Guran, Ellen Datlow, Gardner Dozois, Liz Gorinsky, James Patrick Kelly, Nick Mamatas, Ann VanderMeer, and Sheila Williams.
- Tor editor Liz Gorinsky’s developmental edit notes on my novel Shriek: An Afterword, giving beginning writers a first-hand look at the process from a professional editor’s point of view.
- A gallery of work-in-progress sketches and other roughs from the two-year process of creating Wonderbook.
- Interviews with a host of amazing writers, including Vandana Singh, Thomas Ligotti, Johanna Sinisalo, Jeffrey Ford, John Crowley, Leena Krohn, David Anthony Durham, and Stephen Graham Jones.
- An index listing writers mentioned or featured in Wonderbook.
Please sign our Guestbook, and take a look around. If you haven’t read the book, there are convenient links on the sidebar. If you want to get in touch, email me at pressinfo at vandermeercreative.com
Many, many thanks to all of the Wonderbook contributors–and special thanks to Luis Rodrigues for designing this site, Jeremy Zerfoss for his art, and Gregory Bossert for creating the Wonderbook video. Also my heartfelt appreciation of Matthew Cheney’s extremely sharp mind and wise counsel as well as John Coulthart’s stabilization of the book’s layout. – Jeff VanderMeer
(Scott Eagle poses his art in Wonderbook with the original…)