Storyville!: An Illustrated Guide to Writing Fiction

by John Dufresne, Evan Wondolowsk (Illustrations)

Whether you are daunted by a blinking cursor or frustrated trying to get the people in your head onto the page, writing stories can be intimidating. It takes passion, tenacity, patience, and a knowledge of—and faith in—the often-digressive writing process. A do-it-yourself manual for the apprentice fiction writer, Storyville! demystifies that process; its bold graphics take you inside the writer’s comfortingly chaotic mind and show you how stories are made.


In Storyville!, seasoned guide John Dufresne—whose approach “will anchor the newbie and entertain the veteran” (San Francisco Chronicle)—provides practical insight into the building blocks of fiction, including how to make the reader see your characters, create a suspenseful plot, and revise, revise, revise. Storyville! is a combination handbook and notebook, with original prompts and exercises crafted with Dufresne’s singular dry wit and Evan Wondolowski’s playful and illuminating graphics on every page.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Graphic Novels, Art

288 pages, Hardcover

Published April 7, 2020

About the author

John Dufresne teaches in the Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing program at Florida International University. He is a French-Canadian born in America.

Reviews

[Dawnelle Wilkie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The other day my kid (16, also a writer) asked me the difference between "practice" and "craft." I explained one refers to the act of writing, the other refers to literally EVERYTHING else (how you think, read, write, look, live, exist, interact, observe, explain, one million verbs but yes, also: how you write).

Z: But isn't there, like, a shit-ton of crossover?
Me: Absolutely.
Z: Is there a book that explains that without getting too esoteric?
Me: What? Like, you want pictures?
Z: ...well, I mean... it'd be nice.

I thought it was a stretch but nope! Two days and a LOT of browsing later: a book WITH PICTURES that explains the difference without getting too esoteric but with the proper amount of "less thinking about writing, MORE WRITING." (although truthfully, I needed the reminder far more than she does)

It also contains multiple, extremely generative writing prompts so even if you think you've read enough "craft books" (thanks, grad school!), give it a go. I was sparked.

[Nina Romano · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Dufresne's newest book: Storyville! is an illustrated guide to demystifying writing! It's for the newbie for sure, but also for old seasoned writers like me who met John back in 1991 when he became my mentor! As soon as I got the book in my hands I went to p. 122 PLOT I read to p. 135 BEGINNINGS, and lo & behold--kazam! magic! Like all of Dufresne's books on writing this one held the wondrous key I'd been searching for in writing my new WIP! So even though I do the skipping around to see what I want to read about first and foremost, and this is the kind of book that allows you to do so--YES, I read everything this fabulous author/professor has to say on writing. While the book is educational, it is a also a joy-- original, funny, delightful, witty, charming, and it's especially enhanced by the illustrations of Evan Wondolowski! If you're a writer, even if you only dabble a bit, you owe it to yourself to buy this book! Super congrats on writing a fantastic guide to help authors attain literary greatness!

[Poetic Diva504 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would recommend this book to anybody who writes, whether it’s their first or their thousandth. This put a lot of things into perspective as far as the tedious, extensive writing process. People read books in only a short amount of time without an inkling as to what it took for the author to get those words out. Authors have a responsibility to go as slow as possible so that the reader’s eyes can quickly zoom through the text. If you’re not prepared to spend several months to several years in the revision stage of the process, don’t bother writing a book. That’s the most solid advice given in this book that I will take with me to my grave. I am definitely going to read more books by this author.

[Lance Lumley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this book at a library book sale and glad I did. This was a fun read with writing tips filled with illustrations and writing prompts (with several pages to write in a journal format).
Writing books tend to be the author saying "Don't Do This ," but since writing has changed throughout the years, most rules are, there are not any rules. But the author here gives some good advice that haven't changed.
Writing my first novella The Cassette, I found this to be a helpful tool if I ever do another. The easy to read sections help as well where the reader can go straight to the sections, as opposed to reading a normal formatted book.
I recommend this for writers.

[Shalene · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is kind of a 3.5 for me. I really liked some of the more vague advice, but disagreed with a lot of the concrete advice. Brandon Sanderson lectures are always going to be more technical while allowing for flexibility in style and story type. Regardless, this book was really fun and I especially loved the unique graphic design approach.

[Allen Madding · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book I will be re-reading several times. Very thought provoking. I found myself rewriting my current WIP as I read it.

[Demetri · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Dufresne’s “Storyville!: An Illustrated Guide to Writing Fiction” arrives with the disarming confidence of a book that doesn’t need to threaten you into improvement. It doesn’t bark. It doesn’t posture. It doesn’t drag a ruler across your knuckles for using an adverb. Instead it opens a door, waves you inside, and says: look around. Sit down. Let’s talk. If you’ve read enough writing advice to develop an allergic reaction to bullet-point certainty, this book will feel like cool water. If you’re new to the enterprise and secretly worried you are not the kind of person who gets to call themselves a writer, it offers a gentler kind of authority: not the authority of rules, but the authority of lived practice.

The “illustrated guide” promise is not a decorative gimmick, nor a concession to shrinking attention spans. The visual element functions as temperament. The drawings and design cues operate like the well-timed aside of a teacher who knows when the classroom is about to seize up with anxiety. “Storyville!” is invested in the idea that learning craft should not require self-hatred. It respects ambition, but it distrusts the crueler myths that have attached themselves to ambition, especially the notion that serious work must feel like punishment to be real. Dufresne is serious, but never severe. He is a craftsman who refuses to pretend craft is an altar. It is a bench. It is a table. It is, at its best, a place you return to.

The book is organized into four major sections, and the structure matters: “The Fiction Writer,” “The Fiction Writing,” “The Plot,” and “The Revision.” Even in this skeleton you can see Dufresne’s values. He begins not with plot diagrams or character questionnaires but with the psychology of making art: temperament, fear, permission. He understands that the first obstacle to writing is not ignorance of technique but resistance to the self. Many guides insist you must conquer the work. Dufresne suggests you must first become someone who can live with it.

“The Fiction Writer” takes up the old question of who gets to write and answers it in a deliberately unglamorous way: anyone willing to look closely and keep looking. The writer, for Dufresne, is an attentive creature, not a mystical one. Talent is not dismissed, but it is deprived of its tyrannical power. The book keeps leaning toward what can be practiced: noticing, listening, returning, failing and returning again. There is a generosity here that does not collapse into cheerleading. Dufresne doesn’t deny that writing is hard. He denies that hardness is proof of your inadequacy. The difficulty belongs to the task itself, the way weather belongs to the sea.

This first section is also where Dufresne performs his most important service to a reader: he grants permission without making it sentimental. He gives you the right to write badly, which is not the same as the right to stay bad. There is a difference, and Dufresne knows it. Bad drafts are not defended as art. They are defended as necessary. In an age when “productivity” has become a kind of moral theater, “Storyville!” quietly reasserts a more useful ethic: you cannot revise what you refuse to draft. If the blank page is a shrine, you will hesitate to touch it. If it is a workspace, you will begin.

“The Fiction Writing,” the second section, moves from mindset to method, but without the mechanical switch many guides make when they graduate from “inspiration” to “instruction.” Dufresne’s instruction is rooted in experience. He is always steering you away from explanation and toward enactment. Fiction is not a report of ideas but an arrangement of events. He treats the scene as fiction’s basic unit of meaning, a small stage on which desire meets resistance and something changes. This emphasis feels old-fashioned in the best sense: it reclaims the primacy of the lived moment. Not theme. Not message. Not the self-administered lecture disguised as narrative. A human being in a place, pressured by time, making a choice they will have to live with.

If you’ve ever been bullied by the phrase “show, don’t tell,” you will appreciate Dufresne’s refusal to turn that maxim into a cudgel. “Storyville!” respects the complexity of technique. Showing and telling are not moral categories, they are instruments. Telling can be elegant. Telling can be merciful. Telling can compress time in a way that honors the reader’s attention. The sin is not telling but laziness – the habit of substituting explanation for experience when the scene demands risk. Dufresne’s approach feels like that of a teacher who has read real manuscripts: he is less interested in purity than in effect. He wants your fiction to work.uth not because it follows a rule but because it does what it must do.

That phrase – what it must do – hovers behind the book’s advice. Dufresne is not a high priest of any single aesthetic, but he has a preference for necessity. He values details that are charged rather than merely decorative, sentences that move rather than preen, images that deepen the story rather than perform for it. He encourages the writer to resist ornamentation for its own sake, but he doesn’t prescribe drabness either. His ideal style is controlled, not colorless. The book’s voice – conversational, wry, occasionally aphoristic – enacts that control. It is easy to read without being simplistic, inviting without being sloppy. It feels like someone talking to you in a way that assumes you can handle difficult truths, provided they’re delivered without contempt.

Dialogue, in Dufresne’s view, is not a string of realistic noises but a form of action. Characters speak to get something, to avoid something, to win something, to hide something. The book repeatedly nudges you toward subtext: what is said to conceal what cannot be said. This is familiar territory for anyone who has studied fiction seriously, but “Storyville!” makes it approachable in a way that is often missing from heavier, more academic craft texts. Dufresne doesn’t drown you in terminology. He gives you a lens. Try looking through it. See what changes.

Then comes “The Plot,” which is where many writing guides transform into architecture manuals, and where many writers either surrender to formula or recoil from it. Dufresne chooses a third way. He neither worships structure nor dismisses it. Plot, for him, is consequence. It is what happens because someone wanted something and acted. If that sounds obvious, it is worth remembering how often plot is treated as a prepackaged highway the writer must build before the characters are allowed to drive. Dufresne is more interested in pressure than planning. He believes that desire generates motion and that conflict, broadly understood, is the means by which fiction reveals character. Conflict does not require explosions. It requires stakes. It requires a situation that cannot remain the same.

What’s striking about Dufresne’s plot philosophy is its moral clarity. He does not urge writers to manufacture drama, but to honor the drama that already lives in choice. The story, in this view, is not a spectacle but a test. Not a test of the reader’s endurance, but a test of the character’s capacity to live with themselves. This is why “Storyville!” feels aligned with literary fiction even when it avoids literary pretension. Its sense of plot is not the sense of plot as amusement park, but plot as pressure cooker. The question is not “what happens next?” but “what happens now that this happened?” Consequence is the story’s bloodstream.

When Dufresne discusses beginnings and endings, he does so without promising a cheat code. Beginnings establish disturbance, tone, and attention. Endings close the circuit of pressure. He is wary of over-explaining and sentimental sealing. An ending should feel complete without feeling exhausted. It should reverberate, not lecture. Here, again, the book’s tone is both instructive and humane: it understands the writer’s desire to “finish” in a way that comforts the writer, not necessarily the story. Dufresne wants the story to finish on its own terms, which can be a more unsettling, more honest thing.

“The Revision,” the final section, is where “Storyville!” earns its keep. Many craft books praise revision as a virtue and then treat it like an afterthought, as if the real work is drafting and revision is merely bathing the manuscript afterward. Dufresne refuses this. Revision is not hygiene. Revision is writing. It is the moment when intention is forced to confront effect. It is where the writer’s first, most flattering beliefs about the draft are tested against what is actually on the page.

Dufresne frames revision as a process of discovery rather than punishment, and this framing is crucial. If revision is framed as correction, the writer approaches it defensively: hunting for errors, applying fixes, tightening bolts. If revision is framed as discovery, the writer approaches it with curiosity: what is this story trying to be? What does it want? What is in the draft that I did not know was there? That curiosity changes everything. It turns revision from a scolding into an act of listening.

The book’s strongest revision advice has to do with cutting. Dufresne treats cutting as respect – respect for the reader, respect for the story, respect for the line of attention you are asking someone to follow. Cutting is not only about reducing length. It is about removing the author’s anxiety from the prose. Too much writing advice can be boiled down to: add more. More description, more backstory, more context, more voice. Dufresne makes a complementary case: take away what you wrote to reassure yourself. The reader doesn’t need your protective padding. The reader needs the charged moment, the precise gesture, the sentence that does not betray its own doubt.

There is also a quiet insistence in this section on judgment – the cultivated ability to decide what belongs. This is where “Storyville!” is at once comforting and demanding. It tells you that confusion is normal, but it also tells you that clarity is your responsibility. It does not flatter the writer by pretending every impulse is sacred. It asks you to interrogate each scene: why is it here? What changes? What pressure does it apply? Scenes that merely decorate the story, or repeat what has already been established, are not harmless. They are drags. They dilute. They teach the reader to stop trusting your choices.

Dufresne’s insistence on trusting the reader returns here with a kind of stern tenderness. Revision is where you remove the lines that spell out what you have already dramatized. It is where you stop grabbing the reader by the collar and allow them to walk beside you. The book understands how difficult this is. Writers fear being misunderstood. We are tempted to over-clarify, to paste labels over emotion, to announce theme like a headline. Dufresne’s revision ethos suggests that misunderstanding is the price of subtlety and that over-explaining is often the price of fear. Fiction, he implies, is an art of controlled risk.

So where does this leave the book as a whole? “Storyville!” is not a comprehensive encyclopedia of craft, nor does it pretend to be. You will not find a rigid system you can “follow” to produce a story in thirty days. You will not find the satisfactions of pseudo-science, the illusion that art can be engineered if you just apply enough numbered steps. What you will find is a guide that takes the writer seriously enough to avoid selling them lies. Dufresne offers principles, not formulas; orientation, not guarantee.

That choice has consequences. The book’s practicality is real, but it is not always procedural. Writers who crave diagnostic checklists and granular troubleshooting may feel, at times, that “Storyville!” is more companion than manual. It teaches you how to think, how to see, how to revise your relationship to your own work. It may not, for some readers, feel like it gives you a marching order. But perhaps that is the point. A book that treats writing as an art cannot responsibly pretend to replace the writer’s judgment. It can only help cultivate it.

What makes “Storyville!” particularly effective is that its ethos is enacted, not merely preached. The book is playful in presentation without being unserious in content. It is instructive without being authoritarian. It is encouraging without being sentimental. Dufresne’s voice is that of someone who loves fiction enough to want it made well, and who loves writers enough not to bully them into making it. He respects the reader’s intelligence. He also respects the reader’s fear.

If you read “Storyville!” straight through, you may feel as if you’ve had a long, generous conversation with a teacher who occasionally hands you a tool, occasionally hands you a mirror, and occasionally – when you are about to lie to yourself – clears his throat and waits. The book does not insist you become a different person. It asks you to become more attentive to the person you already are, and more responsible for what you place on the page.

For a writing guide, that is a quietly radical thing: it assumes that the writer’s deepest problem is not ignorance, but the desire to be spared the humiliation of making something imperfect. Dufresne does not spare you. He consoles you. He invites you to endure. He keeps reminding you that endurance is not glamour, but it is the hidden engine of every book you’ve ever loved.

My rating for “Storyville!: An Illustrated Guide to Writing Fiction” is 75/100 – not because it lacks wisdom, but because its wisdom is offered in a deliberately un-dogmatic form that will feel liberating to some and insufficiently directive to others. Its true accomplishment is not that it teaches tricks, but that it restores a certain steadiness: the sense that writing is not a performance of genius, but a practice of attention, undertaken with patience, revised with courage, and sustained by the stubborn willingness to return.

[Regina D. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This looked like such a fun book, but what a disappointment. I actually DNFed about 3/4 of the way through because it just wasn’t worth slogging through the rest.

Take every piece of cliche writing advice you’ve ever heard - “write what you know” and “show don’t tell” - and then drag it out for page after page after page, and that’s the book.

If you were an absolute, complete beginner there might be something useful here. Otherwise, no.

And honestly, I wouldn’t even recommend it for a beginner. Too much BS about what you must and must not do.

My biggest beef, however, lies in this in this paragraph:

“Don’t go to therapy for anxiety. Bring the anxiety to the page where it’ll do you and your characters some good. A therapist’s job is to help you tell your story. Writing a story will serve be same purpose.”

This is such an appalling statement, and I’m frankly disgusted with the author for making it. Writing is not a substitute for actual mental healthcare.

The chapter about “Plot” was especially useless. No actual advice for plotting a book, just the author essentially writing a story as an example, occasionally noting that “we might edit this later” and “here we need to decide what the character will do next.” Essentially, the “Plot” chapter is a rambling example of an author “pantsing” their way through a story. Oh, the irony.

The “exercises” aren’t particularly useful either, unless you have literally never written anything. And even then, there are far better exercises to be found. They all basically fall into two categories: “write something about your own life” or “write about this very specific plot the author has dreamed up and gifted to you instead of writing it himself.”

In the end, this book was just full of itself and empty of real, useful writing advice. If you’re an absolute beginner and someone gives you a copy for free, it might be worth skimming. But there are many far better writing books out there that won’t advise you to sacrifice your mental health for the sake of your craft.

[Hasan Abidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very thought provoking. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I always liked to write fiction. I remember I wrote my first story when i was twelve years old; it was in Hindi. As I grew up, English fascinated me alot, I used to finish all my literature books before getting taught by the teacher in school , I understood or not, that's a different matter, lol. What else can u except from a child.

So yeah, its my one of the biggest desire to write a book. A book of my dreams, my thoughts, my ability, my disability, my imagination, my fascination. A book of fiction, mystery, fantasy and thriller, all concocted together.

But, there two types of people in World. One who wants to write, and the other who actually writes. I consider myself somewhere in between. I write but not persistently, i don't get bored though but gets hit by alot of negative thoughts, e.g, no one gonna read this book, story isn't appealing, words used should be more dramatic, etc.

I truly needed some appreciation, and encouragement, which I got from my friends, especially from my classmate Amreen, who always manages to spare sometime to read whatever shit I write, lol. Though, she always appreciate, but idk if its just to motivate me.

After reading this masterpiece by John , I am sure, someday I am gonna fulfill my desire to write a book. He doesn't gives some magical charm to you, but tells us how stupid the ones are who review their own book before even finishing it. He says , no story is shitty, it all depends on the taste of reader, or his liking. If u want to write, u have to think as reader and decide, what you wrote will be liked by them or not.

From the beginning to end, this book taught me alot, a true guide to start writing and keep it in the direction the way a reader would want to indulge in the book. Reread, rewrite, but don't quit.

Godd! I am so so glad that I read this book.

[Arwen Baggins · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was ok.
It had some interesting information and some things to consider when writing a story.
It wasn't extremly ground-breaking for me, but there was the occasional part that I will keep in mind, for instance some advise about writing from different points of view.

One thing I didn't like was the illustration under a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche about choosing good writing equipment. It was someone texting on a phone, and the text said "God is dead. LOL."
I didn't like that, and thought it was extremely uncalled for, as it had nothing to do with the quote.

Another thing that I found weird was that in the section about drawing from your own expieriences and values for writing a story, it gave this example: "Maybe you're a liberal and a feminist and believe in a woman's right to choose, but you're not sure what you'd do if you were confronted with an unexpected pregnancy."
I just thought that was a kind of strange example to choose.

One of the stories that he summarizes to illustrate different writing techniques is about a man trying to leave his wife for his new girlfriend (in the end, the two possible endings are that he runs off with the girlfriend, or that his wife just barely manages to salvage their marriage) and another short story is about a murdered woman, with some kind of gross sentences about her being killed by a blunt object to the head.

Over all, though it wasn't mind-blowing or anything I did think that there were some useful tidbits scattered throughout, but there were also some parts of it that I didn't reallly like.

[Nicole Clarkson · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're only looking for classic, well-structured, and to-the-point writing advice, it's here. If you've never read a book on writing or taken a course on it, this is probably a good place to start. However, I have read many books on writing, taken multiple courses, and formed a community of writers both online and in-person. I learned nothing from this book that I didn't already know from all of that experience. It was just reiterated in fancy type and its broadcasted "illustrations" (they're not all that elaborate or mind-blowing). It's not a book I'm going to go recommending from rooftops.

[Marissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

It doesn't really bode well for a book when the most trenchant parts of it are the one-liner quotes the author pulls from more famous authors.

Other problems about this book involve ignoring all genres other than "North American cishet white people with their annoying problems"; not putting in enough good examples of concepts from a broad swath of literature; and taking up big bunches of pages with empty lines for writing exercises. (C'mon, that's just padding. No one is hurting for legal pads.)

They've got some reasonably good basic tenets in here, but it's nothing special.

[Janet Moulton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been an off and on writer since I learned to write. This is one of the best books I've encountered for giving writing direction. I checked it out of my local library and am now considering purchasing a copy. I recommend this book to anyone interested in writing. If you are an avid reader with the romantic idealism of aspiring to become an author try this book.

[Leanne Albillar · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is thoroughly convinced that there’s only one right approach to writing. I ditched it halfway through, not worth the time.

[Ene Sepp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mitmed kirjutamise käsiraamatud on sellised, et jõuad viimaste lehekülgedeni ja nendid, et said teada, mis sinu jaoks üldse ei toimi. Mõned on sellised, kust saad välja kirjutada ühe idee või mõtte, mida katsetada ja näha, kuidas see töötada võiks. Ja siis on sellised, kus ahmid terve teose sisse ja saad nii palju häid mõtteid, et ei jõua ära oodata, et see kõik praktikasse rakendada. Käesolev teos kuulub muidugi viimasesse kategooriasse.

Häid kohti ja mõtteid oli nii palju, et pidin lausa visuaalse lugemispäeviku tegema, siis on hea mingeid asju üle vaadata ja meelde tuletada. Aga siis veel TOP3 asja, mille eraldi välja tooks:

1. Ei oska kuidagi edasi minna? Võta sõnaraamat, ava suvaliselt kohalt, pane sõrm selle sõna peale ning kasuta seda sõna/tähendust järgmises stseenis.
2. Kirjanik peab kirjutama palju rohkem kui see, mida lugeja hiljem loeb. Ja tegu ei ole mõttetu tööga. Ei. Kõik see kirjutatu (ja mõnikord kustutatu) toetab seda, mis lõpuks lugejani jõuab.
3. Kirjutamisblokk on vabandus, miks mitte kirjutada, mitte mingi imetabame neuroloogiline haigus. Suikumine on osa kirjutamisprotsessist, aga ei saa selle taha pugeda. Sa oled täiskasvanu. Kui tahad, siis saad kirjutada, isegi kui kirjutad kaks minutit või kümme sõna või kirjutad sellest, mis takistab kirjutada. Tõsi, ega see ei takista mul tulevikus virisemast, et "Mul on selline kirjutamisblokk peal" :D Aga hea meeldetuletus siiski.

[Louis Lowy · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s especially pleasing to read a book on writing by John Dufresne because he is so passionate about the subject, which he breaks down to four key elements: The Fiction Writer, The Fiction Writing, The Plot, and The Revision.

It’s full of useful advice to get you from beginning to end, and to guide you through the bumpy roads that come with it. He also isn’t afraid to let the reader know there are no magical wands or fairy dust approaches to writing a story. It takes work. As he puts it, writing is not only a labor of love, but it also requires a love of labor.

Dufresne emphasizes that with those loves come rewards such as the discovery of truth through fiction, self-awareness and understanding, and a deeper connection with the world around us.

The book is not only inspirational, but easy to look at thanks to Evan Wondolowski’s illustrations. He somehow manages to capture the essence of Dufresne’s lessons, anecdotes and tips in a deceptively simple manner.

If you’ve ever had the desire to write a book, or have started one, but fell short of completing it, this is a great source to get you started, or to get you back on track.

[Susan Olesen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unexpected treasure. Yeah, after 14 novels and umpteen short stories, I still take every opportunity to learn something new about the craft. While this book is a wonderful guide for beginners, there are a few nuggets of wisdom even the practiced writer will find useful. I think it's now my second-favorite book on writing (after Stein on Writing. Go read that.).

The book is unconventional in that it uses all sorts of drawings, wild print, illustrations, illuminations, and practice bits to get its points across and make them clear. For my ADHD heart, it was a blessing. Every time I started to get bogged down in a paragraph, Bam! Here came something to break it up. It made the book fun, something you WANTED to read.

Bravo!

The information remains solid advice. It will help you in your pursuit of better writing, and give you a guidemap of what to do and what not to do. Obviously it can't spank your wrist and tell you to go take a class in grammar and basic writing, but it will help teach you how to make your drafts workable and keep your editor from crying as hard. This one is worth it! And painless, too.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

This was okay. Some of it was helpful, and some of it I've heard before. I did like some of the tips, and they actually helped me develop my story and characters more when I was struggling. I skipped doing the exercises though because that's not what I was reading this for, and I've done things like that before in my creative writing classes. This also seems to be aimed more at people who write realistic fiction, and it doesn't really address writing other genres. Overall I felt the advice was sound, though there were a few small things I disagreed with.

[Sara]

Yes I did spend a month reading and taking notes on this like it was a textbook, and I really loved it! The advice was very useful and I found the style to be easily digested and oftentimes entertaining. A really great springboard if you're an aspiring writer looking for the basics or just someone who wants to improve their writing skills! Also thank you to my library for having this so readily available because I really used it!

[Summer Stark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Illustrations: 5-stars. They were lovely, fun, and a joy to discover throughout the book. Same with the book design! The page layouts and contrasting large dark pages were lovely.

Book content: This was a good read. I think this is the perfect spot for someone who doesn't know a thing about writing to start. I would start here, and then read Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, instead of flipped like I did.

[Dom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read to gain a deeper understanding of being a dungeon master for D&D and dipping toes into writing more fiction in general. cis het focused, with the classic unnecessary rules found in many how-tos written by cis men. However, there are still some good tips and exercises. Worth skimming, you're bound to find something useful.

[T. H. Jay · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is light on written content and heavy on illustration, giving more of a general overview of fiction writing. There are some good thoughts and prompts, but there are better books with more substance.

[Tats · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is honest, goes to the point and explains in such practical way the real structure of a story. If you want to start writing but doubt your skills or don’t know how to start (or even if you are stuck) this is the perfect book.

[Cari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed this fun, illustrated guide. For some writers, it may be too rudimentary, but it's perfect for newbies. And I do think I will refer back to it! Look for my review in Booklist.

[Alessandro · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read guide to budding fiction writers.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read in digital format, probably would have enjoyed more in paper.

[Maya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of fun little gems. I did skim over a few places.

[Brooke Dilling · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few good nuggets helpful to my writing process. The author seems very focused on relationships gone awry and cheating husbands in his story examples…

[Chris DiLeo · Rating 5 out of 5]

An ideal book for beginning writers, and a wonderfully engaging and inspiring book for writers at all stages.

[SJ Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes a writer shouldn’t write about writing.