Hank Quense's Blog: Hank Quense's Blog, page 16

Character Drift

Has this ever happened to you while writing your novel? 

One of your characters starts off as a nasty young man, but somewhere in the middle of the story, he slowly changes into an indifferent one when he should still be nasty.  I call this character drift.  It happens a lot for a variety of reasons and it’s real problem, especially, the nasty character has to be nasty at the climax.  If this character is no longer nasty, the climax has the potential to fail.

I created a character spreadsheet to help prevent this drift. The more characters the story has, the more valuable this aid is.  The spreadsheet is much larger than what is shown in the graphic below.

Check it out here: http://hankquense.org/wp/writers-and-authors-resource-center/guides-and-checklists/

 

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Five Star Review For My Latest Book

This review just showed up on Amazon.uk

5.0 out of 5 stars PRACTICAL, METHODICAL, INTEGRATED

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 July 2020

I’m a writer who finds it relatively easy to write – creative ideas flow without much effort required. But when it came to self-publishing and marketing my first book it was a radically different story. It was so hard and my brain felt blocked when it came to the marketing. If you are anything like me then I think you will find How to Self-publish and Market a Book by Hank Quense extremely useful. I wish I had had a guide like this one.

Based on his own experience he has come up with a practical, methodical, integrated approach that helps writers cope with the important stages that come after the book is written – if you want to have people to actually read your oeuvre.

It contains some ideas you would no doubt have thought of yourself, but I guarantee there will be useful tips that would not have occurred to you. If the thought of self-publishing and marketing your lovely book makes you feel queasy, then this comprehensive guide is just the ticket.

Available in print and ebook editions

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

and many other book sellers

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Mapping Your Fictional World

Many stories require the writer to draw maps of the area involved in the action.

This is especially true for fantasy and sci-fi novels in which an entire now world is created for the characters to romp around in. In these instances, the author can hand-draw the map or he can utilize software.  The output of the software programs allow the maps to be inserted into the book.  This way the reader can use the map to follow the action.

That’s the theory anyway.  I have to admit the maps in some novels I’ve read confuse me more than they have enlighten me.

Below are links to four such programs.  They are listed without comments from me since I haven’t used any of them.

https://inkscape.org/

https://www.profantasy.com/products/cc3.asp

https://watabou.itch.io/

https://inkarnate.com/

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Self-publishing and marketing tools

Here are a few tools to simplify your life.

Marketing a book while the book is still getting self-published makes for a complicated project. This is especially true if the author is self-publishing for the first time. My book How to Self-publish and Market a Book address this situation by integrating the publishing and marketing tasks into a single unified project. Despite all the directions in the book, I felt the project need additional ways to control and manage it. For this purpose I constructed a spreadsheet that offers a way to just that. You can find more information about this tool at http://hankquense.org/wp/writers-and-authors-resource-center/guides-and-checklists/

 

 

But spreadsheets aren’t for everyone. That fact led me to develop another tool that will appeal to some. It’s a Kanban style project board template. It has every publishing and marketing task stacked into two separate columns. When you start a task, you can drag it into a “In progress” column and then into a “Completed: column when the task is finished. Thus you have a visual indication of the project’s progress. Kanban boards such as this can’t be inserted into a WordPress website. Consequently. I had to develop the tool on the Notion.so website. To use the board, you’ll have to get a Notion account, but that is free. Once you have the account, you can duplicate my template and paste it into your own Notion workspace.  Here is a screen shot of the template:

 

You can view the template by following this link. https://www.notion.so/cdc1bdaf557744dca4efe951002bb9f8?v=09e5ff9ad3bc45e5a6ec91521fa3403b

 

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Sampler: Creating Stories

The sampler for my book on fiction writing is now available.

 

You can find the page by following this link.

 

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WritersARC Organization Chart

In the graphic, you can see how the Writers and Authors Resource Center is organized.

The content is aimed at specific groups:

Fiction writers looking for help.
Authors struggling to get an understanding of self-publishing.
Authors trying to market their book, whether self-published or traditional published.

Not all the content in the graphic is yet available.  Additional material will be constantly added.  Visit the home page for more details and content links.

The Notion Website is an auxiliary website for the types of material not suitable for a WordPress site. Kanban style boards and databases are examples

 

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Writers and Authors Resource Center

I’ve been writing fiction for over twenty years, I’ve been self-publishing for more than ten and I’ve been lecturing for at least ten years.

During that time, I have gathered a lot of experience, and gained some expertise in fiction writing and publishing. I’ve also accumulated a lot of material relevant to fiction writing, self-publishing and book marketing.

I have often thought about creating a library of some sort and collect all his articles, lectures, books, videos and other material under on a website where writers and authors looking for help could find.

I’ve finally done it!

I created a separate section on his website for all this material. It’s called Writers & Authors Resource Center. The main page is at http://hankquense.org/wp/writers-and-authors-resource-center/. It has links to all the other pages.

Check it out and see if there is something you need.  You may want to bookmark this page because more content will soon be added.

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Webinars

I’ve started a new project: webinars.

 

Using the EZTalk website and software, I’ll be presenting live webinars about once a month.  The first topic is How to Self-publish and Market a Book.  It will be a free 2-part lecture.  The details are:

Part 1: June 23: 1:00PM  Click here to register

Part 2: June 25: 1:00PM Click here to register

Future webinars will cover:

Writing satire

Mind-mapping a novel

Converting a manuscript to an ebook

Book marketing fundamentals

and other topics

 

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Hoarding? Or Surviving?

I know a lot of people are upset about the empty supermarket shelves and have complained abut hoarding by a few shoppers.  I don’t see it as hoarding.

Normally, many people go shopping a few times a week to restock food and supplies.  With most, if not all of us, facing a two week quarantine, it is necessary to stockpile food and supples in order to make it through the quarantine period.  So it isn’t hoarding that is going on, it’s simply getting prepared for an extended quarantine period.  

If our incompetent government hadn’t told us “everything is fine, nothing to worry about”, suppliers would have time to ramp up production to meet the quarantine supply situation. 

In time, the supply situation will work out but not before all of us have a quarantine stockpile of food and supplies.

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Excellent Comprehensive Guide on Self-publishing and Book Marketing

My latest book How to Self-publish and Market a Book received a new five star review
Dani Camarena wrote “This guide is amazing. As a brand new author diving into self-publishing I found this book to

be thorough and well laid out. Breaking tasks down in a timeline fashion makes the journey of self-publishing and marketing not as daunting. I appreciate the extra care Hank took to provide support and resource links as well as calling out scams to avoid. I’ve flagged so many pages and highlighted a bunch of passages. This is a book I’ll refer back to over and over. As a bonus, Hank will send a spreadsheet version of the task list if you request via the email address within the guide. What a fabulous personal touch! And as a data nerd, I was thrilled to get the spreadsheet. I highly recommend this book to those beginning self-publishing and those with years under their belt because there is a lot of superb information in this comprehensive little gem.”

This is the 15th five star review received by the book.
How to Self-publish and Market a Book is available in both ebook and print editions.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

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