Playwright with point about river and wasteland (10)
I believe the answer is:
wilderness
'wasteland' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'playwright with point about river' is the wordplay.
'playwright' becomes 'wildness' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'with' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'point' becomes 'E' (compass point).
'about' is an insertion indicator.
'river' becomes 'r' (abbreviation for river).
'wildness' going around 'e' is 'wildeness'.
'wildeness' going around 'r' is 'WILDERNESS'.
'and' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for wilderness that I've seen before include "for a time unrecognised" , "Inhospitable region" .)