I’ve slowly been going through all of the writing books at the Orem Library, looking for everything that I can use to hone my craft. Some of them are better than others, and some of the ones that I initially DNFed I’ll probably end up coming back to and trying again. But one of the surprisingly good ones is this recently published anthology, edited by Dan Koboldt.
It’s less of a writing book and more of a random bits of information book. Each chapter is about 4-5 pages, or around 1,000 words, and deals with some incredibly specific issue, such as how Medieval honorifics and titles of nobility (European and Middle Eastern) work, or what sort of horse breeds are best for which tasks, and why. They’re really more like blog articles written by a subject matter expert, most of whom are also writers, who share what they know with the goal of helping you write a more authentic-sounding book.
There are three things that make this book work really well. First, the articles are all very short: you can easily read each one in about fifteen minutes. Second, there are lots and lots of articles to choose from. Third, each article is focused on one very specific topic or problem, going deep rather than broad. If any of those things weren’t true: if the articles were any longer, or if there were fewer of them, or if any of them were about writing more broadly, rather than a specialized nice—the book probably work nearly as well. But the end effect is a useful reference book that is also a pleasure just to read straight through.
I wish I had a dozen writing books just like this one, dealing with all sorts of weird and eclectic topics. Instead of going to the internet for research, I could pull out one of these books and flip through it, picking and choosing the most useful articles for whatever project I happen to be working on. In fact, the table of contents of this book looks a lot like my browser history when I’m on a fantasy project, which is probably why it works so well. But because the articles are curated by a writer and written by subject matter experts, I don’t have to worry as much about things like the weird shenanigans and biases of Wikipedia editors, or trudging through half a dozen crappy clickbait articles to find the information that’s genuinely useful.
Looking on his Amazon page, it seems that Dan Koboldt has done at least one other writing book like this one, for science fiction. That’s definitely going on the wish list.
Putting the Fact in Fantasy: Expert Advice to Bring Authenticity to Your Fantasy Writing, edited by Dan Koboldt
A collection of essays from historians, linguists, martial artists, and other experts to help you write more compelling fantasy by getting the facts right
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