Guest Post – Fiction Writing workshop for kids – Hank Quense
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Guest Post – Fiction Writing Workshop for Kids
I want to welcome Hank Quense to the blog today. I’m excited to read what he has to share with us.
Writing a story is a tough job, especially for a kid. There’s all that stuff about characters and setting they have to remember. And then there’s the plot. How is a kid supposed to figure that one out?
A few years ago, the Valley Middle School in Oakland NJ asked if I would visit the school and talk to their seventh graders. On visits like this, authors usually talk about their books and read scenes from them. I hate reading scenes! I find it boring and I’m sure I bore the audience with my monotonous voice. Instead of torturing the kids this way, I decided to show them how I create a short story.
The slide talk worked like this: I gave them the overall story idea, one that they would want to write about. After that, I used a handout with a series of text boxes with questions to have the kids come up with ideas on characters, setting and plot.
Finally, I broke the story up into six scenes and showed the students how to use the text box ideas to write each scene.
The talk was wildly successful.
Last week, I spent the day in the Norwood Public School (NJ) with the 7th graders. I attended three 90 minute classes.
The students were in the process of writing a personal memoir and I expanded my talk to include similarities in writing a memoir and a short story. Afterwards, I spent time reading some of the memoirs and suggesting improvements. The memoirs impressed me, as did the experiences the kids wrote about. Many were what you’d expect from studnets this young. One talked about anxiety and nerves in a cheerleading competition. Another about a swimming race and a third about hitting a home run in a playoff game. The ones that stood out to me are: a six-year-old’s first day in the USA after leaving Russia; getting accidentally separated from her parents in Seoul, Korea; getting her hand stuck between elevator doors.
Besides the schools, I’ve given this talk in libraries and expanded the concept to include two more story ideas. While I love doing this, my talks are geographically limited. To remove this limitation, I used these three talks as the basis of a book. It’s an ebook called Fiction Writing Workshop for Kids. Using the advanced technical capabilities of ebooks, the book has graphics, audio and video clips embedded into it. The videos show the text boxes and coaches the kids on how to use each text box to develop the characters, setting and plot. Each story has a final video clip showing the students which text boxes to use in each scene. Finally, there is a set of blank worksheets the kids can use to develop stories on their own.
The suggested audience for the ebook is 4th to 7th graders.
I’ve written a lot of books, but I’m more proud of this one than any of the others.
I have since made a video class for this lecture and you can find it at
https://hankquense.podia.com/featured-product
Thanks so much for joining me today.
Book Details:
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
Content Rating: G
Do you have a story in you?
Do you know how to write it or how to tell it? Creating Stories has the answers. Hank Quense, the author of more than twenty books, tells you how to do it. He believes that stories come from the melding of three elements: getting ideas, story design and story-telling. Ideas have to come from the author. Creating Stories covers the last two. The book concentrates on developing characters including such rarely discussed requirements such as a dominant reader emotion and the character’s biography. Plots are also covered in depth and a number of graphics are included to illustrate complex points. Another topic discusses subplots and how to utilize them and how to nest them within the main plot. A separate chapter discusses the relationship between the plot and the emotional arcs. Other topics covered are: character arcs, scene design, point-of-view, writing voice.
Buy the Book:
Amazon
Add to Goodreads
After Creating Your Story:
Book Title
: Self-Publish a Book in 10 Steps: And Market It by Hank QuenseCategory
: Adult Non-Fiction, 88 pagesGenre: Self Help
Publisher
: Strange Worlds PublishingRelease date: Dec 1, 2021
Content Rating: G
Self-publishing a book is difficult.
This book simplifies it by breaking down a self-publishing and marketing project into 10 steps. This step-by-step process will get your book published and initiate the pre-launch marketing.
Hank Quense has written and self-published over twenty books, both fiction and non-fiction. He is the author of the Author Blueprint Series of books. The Series concentrates on providing valuable guidance on fiction writing, self-publishing and book marketing. Self-publish a Book in 10 Steps is Book 6 in the series.
The book details such vital tasks as developing a compelling book description, building an author platform and getting book reviews to list a few.
Learn the ten-step process that will self-publish and market your book!
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.
Connect with the Author: Website ~ X ~ Facebook ~ Pinterest ~ YouTube ~ BookBub ~ Goodreads
CREATING STORIES Book Tour Giveaway
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