Read ‘Wonderbook’–A Fantastic Guide to Writing Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Surrealistic Stories
A writer’s guide that shows while it tells us what to do!
A new story percolates just below the surface in my mind. Kinda like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, it’s got a noir~spoof foundation. My villain is a shapeshifting unicorn so it’s urban fantasy as well. All brand new genres for me.
Where and how the heck to start?
Wonderbook to the rescue!
Written by Jeff VanderMeer and illustrated~designed by Jeremy Zerfos, It lives up to its subtitle: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction.
And boy is it illustrated!
Starting with an amazing cover depicting a city on an island that’s really the back of a giant whale-ish leviathan, the book is chock full of fantastical and surreal images.
Some are paintings and illustrations evocative of sci-fi, and fantastical worlds of all stripes, particularly the dark, dystopian, or subterranean.
Mythical beasts and alien cartoon characters guide the reader through this book. Fire-breathing dragon’s tongues sport inspiring quotes down the margins. A Myster Odd, with a bird skull straight out of a Georgia O’Keefe painting for a head, appears in spicy sidebars in every chapter.
You’ve heard the expression: The medium is the message.
Wonderbook literally illustrates Marshall McCuller’s principle. It uses fantastical images to teach us how to write fantastical stories.
In addition to the illustrations, there are lots of charts, maps, and diagrams.
Take plotting for instance.
Jeff Vandermeer blows open the traditional approach to plotting.
In fact, he suggests we replace the term plot with structure or even narrative design, which presents way more possibilities for story skeletons. And doesn’t it make sense that highly imaginative fiction might need or want a highly imaginative structure for its scaffolding?
A structure can underlie our stories, support their blood and guts–literally or figuratively–inviting us to flesh them out with the same inventive flair that goes into our characters and world-building.
Exotic is as exotic does.
There’s a surrealistic ink drawing that Nnedi Okorafor explains is the structure of her novel, Remote Control. There’s a photo looking up into the multi-vaulted ceiling of Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia architectural marvel, that could easily be a set piece for one of these imaginative stories. Between these two images, VanderMeer shares his take on plot:
Although there may be several classic plots and variations, each story can have a unique structure. Structure appeals as much to the technical imagination as that initial adrenaline rush of inspiration appeals to the creative imagination–perhaps because structure feels as if it can be infinite in its variations, whereas plot does not. And because structure is so individual, an unusual structure isn’t necessarily experimentation for its own sake, but more often just a healthy exploration of the perfect way to tell a certain kind of story.
He then goes on to discuss the unusual structures of three innovative stories, complete with diagrams to illustrate his points.
By way of example:
Iain M. Bank’s novel, Use of Weapons does some crazy things with time.
So Zerfos offers the image of a double set of wormholes to illustrate how the author starts at the beginning and moves forward in time and starts at the end and moves backward in time.
This structure allows the reader to experience the climactic events at the beginning of the story and understand how they affect the characters towards the end of their lives simultaneously.
A more conventional narrative might not have the same emotional power. Bank’s convoluted structure allows him to dive deep into his themes of memory, guilt, redemption, and history.
In other words, the way the story is told serves the story being told to maximum effect. The medium IS the message.
Back to Beginnings
Now with that open-ended invitation, how do we know where to begin our stories?
See how I’m playing with structure here? I started with the bomb exploding and now I’m cycling back to setting the fuse in motion. So my medium can be my message, too.
Writers of imaginative stories have the challenge of introducing not just the character(s), their foibles, and their troubles, but the world in which they live and how it works. Or at least enough of each of these so they don’t get lost. A pretty tall order if you ask me.
VanderMeer writes: A good piece of fiction teaches the reader how to read the narrative from the first paragraph. Think of a beginning as a kind of beneficial restriction or constraint. At the start, more than anywhere else, the reader stares through a telescope focused close in on some particular object, person, setting, or other element….By the very nature of how words work, the reader cannot receive all of the possible information at once….And the more your story diverges from reality, the more important it is to get those words right because you are reimagining The Real in the reader’s head.
No pressure, right?
VanderMeer sorts through some of the conventional ways we’re taught to begin our stories and points out their pitfalls. Why they’re not the best choices we could make.
We’re told over and over to hook our readers by grabbing their attention on the first page with something active and dramatic. Explosions come to mind. But according to VanderMeer, a beginning needs to be more than a hook. It needs to lure, be alluring, and be an anchor all at the same time.
Spending too much time on the hook may rob the book of its allure, he says. And of course, this is illustrated with a lovely two-page spread diagram of an angler fish with its prologuey jaws opening to swallow a lure that protrudes from its own head. Its eye is the Point of View, and it’s about to swallow its little reader fish whole!
My favorite part comes next.
VanderMeer gives us the synopsis of his 2009 noir/fantasy novel, Finch. Since it has similar elements to my idea, I paid close attention. He walks us through three possible openings and explains why they’re close but no cigar.
FInch opens with the detective character about to enter an apartment where a murder took place. He’s suspicious of the alien Police Chief in charge and even more so of this dude’s henchman, waiting inside. So he hesitates just outside that door.
And that’s the opening moment. The skillful way it’s written packs a lot of backstory and subtextual punch. Amazing how much is compacted into three paragraphs. Read the book to find out more.
Who are these guys, anyway?
Being new to these genres I hadn’t heard of either of them. But I’m guessing many of you have.
Jeff VanderMeer’s a three-time winner of the World Fantasy Award. His books have made the year’s best lists from Publishers Weekly, The Washington Post, Amazon, and The San Francisco Chronicle to name a few. He co-founded Shared Worlds, a unique sci-fi/fantasy writing camp for teens, and teaches around the world.
His books include The Steampunk Bible, The Big Book of Modern Fantasy, The Big Book of Science Fiction. He’s written several fantasy novels and series including The Southern Reach Trilogy and The Ambergris Trilogy.
VanderMeer’s only half of the magic.
Jeremy Zerfos is the artist~designer who provided many of the charts and diagrams and found the amazing and fantastical photos, paintings, and drawings illustrating this book. He’s the inventor of the characters and beasty guides through this subterranean underworld.
Nuggets carouse on every page.
Along with images to stimulate, percolate, and irritate every fiber of your imagination. So wander your way over to Wonderbook. And prepare for the ride of your writerly life!
Marilyn Flower writes humor to laugh the changes she wants to see and make. She’s the author of Creative Blogging: Ninja Writers Guide to Character Development and Bucket Listers, Get Your Brave On. Clowning and improvisation strengthen her resolve during these crazy times. Stay in touch!