Creating Stories by Hank Quense (Fiction Writing, Book 1 | Book Review ~ 2-Book Giveaway | #HowTo #SelfHelp #Writing @iReadBookTours @hanque99
A book blog tour from iRead Book Tours.
Thank you to the author, publisher, & Lauren at iRead for providing me with the information for this tour. 
Book Details
Creating Stories by Hank Quense
Series: Fiction Writing #1
Published by Strange Worlds Publishing on 04/01/2017
Genres: Adult Non-Fiction 18+, Educational, How-To, Writing, Self-help
Pages: 150
Source: iRead Book ToursThis book has everything I've learned about creating stories over a twenty year career. Here is the book blurb.
Do you want to write fiction, but don’t know how to go about it? Puzzled by creating characters and creating plots? Creating Stories has the answers. Hank Quense, an author of more than twenty books, tells you how to do it. He demystifies fiction writing.
Quense believes that stories come from the melding of three creating stories processes: getting ideas, story design and story-telling. Ideas have to come from the author. Creating Stories covers the last two.
Indie Reader said: CREATING STORIES is a useful resource for new writers who have a terrific story idea but aren't sure how to go about turning that into a functional, readable, enjoyable novel.
Other authors said:Mary Blowers: author and blogger: Hank Quense has penned a masterpiece in Creating Stories.
Joylene Butler: Author of Matowak Women Who Cries: This book is a true treasure and needs to be in the library of every writer worldwide.
Emily-Jane Hills Orford: Readers Favorite: For the wannabe writer who doesn't know where to start, this is the book for you
Sheila Crosby: Author of The Sear’s Stone: One of the best writing books I've read for ages.
Pat Garcia: Book Reviewer: Creating Stories is a precious jewel, which shows the beginner writer what he or she needs to have to write a novel.
Frumious Reads: Book Reviewer: This book was filled to the brim with humor, as well as a refreshing new way to approach writing.
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Purchase Links for Creating Stories
Amazon-OneLink for all countries BookShop/IndieBound
Creating Stories (FIction W...Shop on Amazon
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My Thoughts on Creating Stories
“Creating Stories” by Hank Quense, the first book in his Fiction Writing series is a valuable resource for aspiring writers. Quense, an author with over twenty books to his name, offers practical advice on the art of storytelling. The book focuses on two essential elements of storytelling: story design and story-telling, leaving the generation of ideas to the author.
Quense covers character development in depth, including overlooked aspects such as evoking dominant reader emotions and crafting character biographies. He also delves into the intricacies of plot development, supported by helpful graphics to clarify complex concepts. Subplots and their integration within the main plot and the relationship between the plot and emotional arcs are explored. Additionally, the book touches on character arcs, scene design, point-of-view, and writing voice.
What sets this book apart is its accessible and friendly style. Quense’s engaging writing is peppered with personal anecdotes and humor, making it far from a dry, tedious presentation of non-fiction material. Aspiring writers will find practical techniques like character sheets, scene sketches, story outlines, and more to aid their creative process.
In summary, “Creating Stories” is a must-read for anyone with a desire to write novels, short stories, or any form of creative storytelling. Hank Quense’s book provides a comprehensive and enjoyable guide to the essential elements of crafting compelling narratives.
I received a copy of the book for the tour. This review is my honest, unbiased opinion.
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I love to read books through my Amazon Kindle Unlimited subscription.
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About Hank Quense
Hank Quense has self-published his books for over 12 years. His non-fiction books cover fiction writing (Creating Stories), self-publishing (How to Self-publish and Market a Book, Self-publish a Book in 10 Steps), marketing (Book Marketing Fundamentals) and author business (Business Basics for Authors).
He also lectures on these subjects in schools, libraries and on webinars.
Hank recently started https://hankquense.podia.com/ The site provides solutions to pain points (problems) for fiction writers, self-publishing authors and authors who are trying to market their books.
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Guest Post
How to Write Really Bad Fiction and Enjoy the Benefits of Rapid Rejection
(Originally published by Writing-World.com March 2011)
I’m an author of more than 25 books and over 40 short stories along with a number of fiction writing articles. From my experience, I’ve learned a number of important lessons and I want to pass them onto others. One important lesson involves getting a book published; it changes your life. No longer can you sit in your office and spend your time writing more fiction. Once you become a published author, you also become the book’s marketing manager and its sales manager, a terrifying situation if you’re not prepared for it. It’s enough to force some people to go get a real job instead of writing.
To protect others from the trauma of this situation, I’ve put together a list of fiction writing techniques that will guarantee non-publication. Following them will ensure a rapid reply from editors who will use a preprinted form or a terse email. This rapid reply method will allow you to maximize the rejections you receive in a given period of time.
Here is the list in no particular order:
Always use adverbs! Lots and lots of adverbs. One of your writing objectives should be to use an adverb to modify at least fifty percent of your verbs. And don’t forget about using them in dialog tags. Why show the reader a woman shredding a paper tissue? Make it easy on the poor readers. Tell them the woman is nervous. Thus, “He’s making me so fidgety,” she said nervously.
A naked noun is evil! Adjectives exist to be used. Their primary purpose is to modify a noun, so make use of this most excellent writing technique. Load up your nouns with modifiers so the reader will have no doubts about the noun. “The skinny, ugly guy wore a hideous, ripped t-shirt, dirty, baggy pants and shredded sneakers.” Here’s an even better example of clever adjective usage: “The scrawny boy used his undersized biceps to try to pick up the clumsy weight and place it in the old-fashioned truck before the foul-mouthed old man became aware of his clever trickery.” Get the idea? Remember, a naked noun is e-v-i-l!
Use conversation. Don’t limit yourself to dialog. Conversation is the stuff of life. Don’t allow your characters to be stuck inside the story by restricting them to dialog that moves the story forward. Make your characters more life-like by letting them engage in idle conversation just like real people do.
“ How you doing?”
“I’m cool. What’s up?”
“I’m good. Couldn’t be better. Watching the Yankees tonight?
“Who they playing? . . . Yada, yada, yada.
This stuff doesn’t move the story along like dialog does, but it shows the characters are just as boring as real folk.
Character motivation is overdone. To properly show motivation requires a lot of creativity, time and words. It is much better to skip over that part and get right into the action. So what if the guy disarming the ticking bomb is only doing it because his shift doesn’t end for two hours and he doesn’t have anything better to do. The character doesn’t have any motivation, but who cares; it keeps the story moving and doesn’t slow it down with a lot of words explaining the motivation.
Don’t worry about Point of View rules. POV is perhaps the most technical of all aspects of writing and handling it correctly is time-consuming and requires advanced planning. Who needs all that extra work when there is another scene to write or another crisis to defuse. Most of the readers will figure it out and sort of follow the story.
It’s wise to develop writing habits such as peppering the page with -ing words. This technique will give your writing a pleasing sing-song effect. “Opening the door and running down the corridor while waving her hand, she tried shouting, calling attention to her life-threatening situation.” Doesn’t that sentence make you want to hum along from all the -ing words?
Use empty words. Very, really, ever, still, just and others are words with no meaning but they do fill up sentences and make them look more impressive. Fiction writing is filled with opportunities to use these words and titillate the readers. With a bit of imagination, you can also use these words to punctuate the sentence.
Why bother with multiple-dimensional characters? Flat characters work just as well. Flat characters can fight, love and die just as well as the more complicated ones, but take considerably less work to create. The simple approach gives you more time to write still more stories to be rejected.
Character Voice. This attribute allows the reader to identify the characters from their dialog “voices.” What nonsense. That’s what names are for. Just use the names in all the lines of dialog and the readers will be able to keep the characters straight.
Keep this list near your keyboard and refer to it frequently. Within a short time, your friends and family will be impressed by the huge stack of rejection notices you’ve accumulated. Soon you’ll be able to claim that you are an “Internationally rejected author.”
A side benefit is that your family will know you’re really doing something in your office. Right now, they probably think you’re goofing off and playing computer games.
If you chose to ignore this excellent advice, there are alternatives listed in my book, Creating Stories. Note that following the advice in that book can significantly increase the response time from editors.
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Purchase Creating Stories online from your local bookstore.
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Easy Amazon Links
Amazon-OneLink for all countries
If the above link does not take you to your country, here are a few more:
Please send me a note if your country isn’t listed and you would like to purchase using my links. Using my link does not change the price you pay. Amazon pays me a minimal amount out of their share.
Creating Stories (FIction W...Shop on Amazon
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Giveaway!
Win signed copies of Creating Stories and Self-publish a Book in 10 Steps: And Market It by Hank Quense (one winner) (USA only) (ends Oct 19)
Please visit more stops on the tour for extra chances to win!
Official Tour Page for Creating Stories
Full Tour Schedule:
Sep 25 – Liese’s Blog – books spotlight
Sep 25 – fundinmental – book review of CREATING STORIES / giveaway
Sep 26 – Casia’s Corner – book review of CREATING STORIES
Sep 27 – Locks, Hooks and Books – book review of CREATING STORIES / author interview / giveaway
Sep 28 – What the Book! – book review of SELF-PUBLISH A BOOK I 10 STEPS: AND MARKET IT / giveaway
Sep 28 – Stephanie Jane – books spotlight / giveaway
Sep 28 – Novels Alive – book review of CREATING STORIES / giveaway
Sep 29 – fundinmental – book review of SELF-PUBLISH A BOOK I 10 STEPS: AND MARKET IT / giveaway
Oct 2 – Locks, Hooks and Books – book review of SELF-PUBLISH A BOOK I 10 STEPS: AND MARKET IT / giveaway
Oct 2 – The Sexy Nerd Revue – books spotlight
Oct 2– FUONLYKNEW – books spotlight / author interview / giveaway
Oct 3 – Casia’s Corner – book review of SELF-PUBLISH A BOOK I 10 STEPS: AND MARKET IT
Oct 4 – Splashes of Joy – book review of CREATING STORIES / author interview / giveaway
Oct 4 – Library Lady’s Kid Lit – book spotlight of CREATING STORIES / guest post / giveaway
Oct 4 – Library Lady’s Kid Lit – book review of CREATING STORIES / giveaway
Oct 5 – Fur Everywhere – book review of CREATING STORIES / giveaway
Oct 5 – Library Lady’s Kid Lit – book review of SELF-PUBLISH A BOOK I 10 STEPS: AND MARKET IT / giveaway
Oct 6 – Novels Alive – book review of SELF-PUBLISH A BOOK I 10 STEPS: AND MARKET IT / giveaway
Oct 6 – Splashes of Joy – book review of SELF-PUBLISH A BOOK I 10 STEPS: AND MARKET IT / giveaway
Oct 9 – Bizwings Book Blog – book review of CREATING STORIES / giveaway
Oct 10 – Diane’s Book Journal – books spotlight / giveaway
Oct 10 – Faith And Books – book review of CREATING STORIES / guest post / giveaway
Oct 10 – Book Corner News and Reviews – book review of CREATING STORIES / giveaway
Oct 11 – What the Book! – book review of CREATING STORIES / guest post / giveaway
Oct 11 – Gina Rae Mitchell – book review of CREATING STORIES / guest post / giveaway
Oct 11 – Book Corner News and Reviews – book review of SELF-PUBLISH A BOOK I 10 STEPS: AND MARKET IT / author interview / giveaway
Oct 12 –Faith And Books – book review of SELF-PUBLISH A BOOK I 10 STEPS: AND MARKET IT / giveaway
Oct 12 – Fur Everywhere – book review of SELF-PUBLISH A BOOK IN 10 STEPS: AND MARKET IT / giveaway
Oct 12 – Gina Rae Mitchell – book review of SELF-PUBLISH A BOOK IN 10 STEPS: AND MARKET IT / giveaway
CREATING STORIES Book Tour Giveaway
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Book Title: Creating Stories by Hank Quense
Category: Adult Non-Fiction, 106 pages
Genre: Self-Help,
Publisher: Strange Worlds Publishing
Release date: April 1, 2017
Format available for review: e-book (MOBI FILE (FOR KINDLE), EPUB, PDF)
Tour dates: Sep 25 to Oct 12
Content Rating: G
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