K.M. Weiland > Quotes

“Most authors would be the first to admit the best of their writing is beyond even them. It comes from someplace outside the conscious realm.”
― K.M. Weiland, Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success

“The Resolution is not just the ending of this story, but also the beginning of the story the characters will live in after readers have closed the back cover.”
― K.M. Weiland, Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story

“You have the distinct appearance of a woman in need of something warm and furry.”
― K.M. Weiland, Dreamlander

“Most stories aren’t meant to tell every detail of a character’s life. A story is just a snapshot, a set period of time chosen and extracted from a character’s life because it offers the necessary dramatic arc.”
― K.M. Weiland, Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story

“Character and change. That’s what story is all about. We take a person and we force him onto a journey that will change him forever, usually for the better.”
― K.M. Weiland, Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story

“…the ending is the last chance you have to impress your reader before they pick up your next book. Do you want to wow them or [leave] them feeling dissatisfied?” —Christa Rucker”
― K.M. Weiland, Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story

“Apathy is a tide pool that drowns its victims.”
― K.M. Weiland, Dreamlander

“The moment fiction becomes dishonest is the moment it ceases to matter.”
― K.M. Weiland, Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story

“If we turn too much of our backstory into the story or illustrate too much of it via detailed flashbacks (either at the beginning of our stories or in subsequent chapters), we rob our readers of the sense of weight given by the 9/10 of the iceberg floating under the water of our stories.”
― K.M. Weiland, Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story

“The thing should have plot and character, beginning, middle and end. Arouse pity and then have a catharsis.” —Anne Rice”
― K.M. Weiland, Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story

“If your characters don’t have a response—in speech, in thought, or in action—to the events happening to them, they haven’t been touched by those events, and the reader will likewise remain untouched and uninvolved.” —Beth Hill”
― K.M. Weiland, Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story

“Once you understand how plot, character, and theme all work together, chances are good that, if you get one of them right, you’ll get all three right.”
― K.M. Weiland, Creating Character Arcs: The Masterful Author's Guide to Uniting Story Structure, Plot, and Character Development

“In order to have a plot, you have to have a conflict, something bad has to happen.” —Mike Judge”
― K.M. Weiland, Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story

“If you hadn’t wanted out of here so bad, you wouldn’t have let yourself believe the lies. But you’re here now just like us. You’re tied up just like us. And unlike some of us, it’s your fault. So whyn’t you think on that for a bit.”
― K.M. Weiland, Dreamlander

“People only believe in heroes when they win.”
― K.M. Weiland, Dreamlander

“What I’ve learned over the years is that the folks telling you to trust them are usually the last people who deserve it.”
― K.M. Weiland, Storming

“• Tell your left brain to zip it for a while. Your left brain can be a pushy character. When he’s telling you he thinks he knows best how to write this story, tell him to stow it for a bit, so his chatter doesn’t distract you from the offerings of your right brain. Your left brain will get his chance later.”
― K.M. Weiland, Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success

“Conflict” and “tension” are often used interchangeably, not so much because they’re the same thing—because they’re not—but because they’re kissing cousins that fulfill similar functions within the story.”
― K.M. Weiland, Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story

“But as always, the dreams had to stay in the sky. On the ground, there were only cold, hard truths.”
― K.M. Weiland, Storming

“Once you understand how plot, character, and theme all work together, chances are good that, if you get one of them right, you’ll get all three right.   The”
― K.M. Weiland, Creating Character Arcs: The Masterful Author's Guide to Uniting Story Structure, Plot, and Character Development

“A TELEPHONE YOWLED in Chris’s ear, and he scrabbled at his side for a sword that wasn’t there.”
― K.M. Weiland, Dreamlander

“A strong dilemma section will drive home to readers that your characters are realistic, thinking human beings. Just as importantly, it will provide a solid bridge between the previous scene’s disaster and the following scene’s goal.”
― K.M. Weiland, Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story

“You should write something happy,” people tell me, and I don’t understand. Happy like Anna Karenina? Happy like The Grapes of Wrath? Happy like ... Catch-22 or ... Hamlet?28”
― K.M. Weiland, Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story

“It’s not enough to create a character who does interesting things. He must also do them for interesting reasons.”
― K.M. Weiland, Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success

“The magic ingredient in fiction is that special something that socks readers right in the gut and leaves them breathless with joy or sorrow”
― K.M. Weiland, Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success

“Few of us would want to subsist on a steady diet of tragedy, but all of us are better for having cleansed our reading palate with the astringent bite of these unflinching portrayals of bittersweet truth.”
― K.M. Weiland, Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story

“A great first line is the collateral that grants the author a line of intellectual credit from the reader.” —Chuck Wendig”
― K.M. Weiland, Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story

“Creativity needs some quiet time. For a few minutes every day, take yourself for long walks, stare out a window, or just curl up on the couch with the cat and a cup of coffee—and let the dreams spin their webs in your head.”
― K.M. Weiland, Conquering Writer's Block and Summoning Inspiration: Learn to Nurture a Lifestyle of Creativity

“Is that what we’re doing when we write sad stories? Are we squelching hope, beauty, and wonder? Or are we perhaps exploring the opposite side of the same coin? Life is just as full of sadness as it is of happiness. To ignore that fact is to limit both our personal experience of the human existence and our ability to write about it truthfully. To cap every story with a happy ending is dishonesty to both ourselves and our readers. The moment fiction becomes dishonest is the moment it ceases to matter.”
― K.M. Weiland, Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story

“Inspiration may sometimes fail to show up for work in the morning, but determination never does.”
― K.M. Weiland, Conquering Writer's Block and Summoning Inspiration: Learn to Nurture a Lifestyle of Creativity