Top 40 K.M. Weiland Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Inspiration may sometimes fail to show up for work in the morning, but determination never does.”

— K.M. Weiland

2. “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

3. “In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower.”

— K.M. Weiland

4. “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

5. “But the world keeps on spinning and people keep on living – through worse things than this.”

— K.M. Weiland

6. “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

7. “The character drives the plot, and the plot molds the character’s arc. They cannot work independently.”

— K.M. Weiland

8. “Good stories are driven by conflict, tension, and high stakes.” – William Landay.”

— K.M. Weiland

9. “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

10. “Stay clear, Master Hardy. My husband is a storm. If you give him the chance, he will engulf you.”

— K.M. Weiland

11. “Consider your First Plot Point, which will be the first major turning point for your characters and, as a result, often the Inciting or Key Event. The setup that occurs prior to these scenes should take no more than a quarter of the book. Anymore than that and you’ll know you’ve begun your story too early and need to do some cutting.”

— K.M. Weiland

12. “A flashback can sometimes function as one of the major plot points, but only if the character’s act of remembering this incident changes his course within the main story and prompts him to react in a decisive and plot-altering way.”

— K.M. Weiland

13. “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

14. “Examine your story. Where does it truly begin? Which event is the first domino in your row of dominoes? Which domino must be knocked over for the rest of the story to happen?”

— K.M. Weiland

15. “Whether your stories are read by two people or two million, your writing is your legacy to the world. Make it worth sharing.”

— K.M. Weiland

16. “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

17. “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

18. “A great first line is the collateral that grants the author a line of intellectual credit from the reader.” – Chuck Wendig.”

— K.M. Weiland

19. “Pitch tugged at Orias’s coat. “Don’t. Don’t do it.” Mactalde set his goblet on a nearby table and rose. The fire lit his face from the bottom up. “You’ve come so far on your quest to save your people. I don’t think you can abandon them now.” And the gut-wrenching truth was... he couldn’t.”

— K.M. Weiland

20. “But as always, the dreams had to stay in the sky. On the ground, there were only cold, hard truths.”

— K.M. Weiland

21. “If you’re ever at a loss as to what to write about, ask yourself to imagine the one story, essay, poem, or book that you’d most like to read. Then write it.”25.”

— K.M. Weiland

22. “Mist cloaked the top, like diaphanous scarves upon ebony shoulders, hiding but not obscuring the city that crowned the summit and spilled down the side of the hill.”

— K.M. Weiland

23. “A story isn’t ready to be written until you’ve been able to add at least two or three layers of juxtaposition.”

— K.M. Weiland

24. “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

25. “Creativity is a delicate and temperamental creature, and it often wilts away under the weight of “the rules” or the carping of our infernal internal editors.”

— K.M. Weiland

26. “In order to have a plot, you have to have a conflict, something bad has to happen.” – Mike Judge.”

— K.M. Weiland

27. “This man pitched women off his deck into the night, kidnapped little boys, and whipped dogs. So help him God, Hitch didn’t need a knife to finish this filth. He’d do it with his bare hand.”

— K.M. Weiland

28. “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

29. “People only believe in heroes when they win.”

— K.M. Weiland

30. “The moment fiction becomes dishonest is the moment it ceases to matter.”

— K.M. Weiland

31. “What he should do was punch himself in his own face.”

— K.M. Weiland

32. “It’s not enough to create a character who does interesting things. He must also do them for interesting reasons.”

— K.M. Weiland

33. “Backstory is there only because something had to come before Chapter One.”

— K.M. Weiland

34. “The thing should have plot and character, beginning, middle and end. Arouse pity and then have a catharsis.” – Anne Rice.”

— K.M. Weiland

35. “THE ART OF fiction is a wide-open sea of possibilities, in which the author is a wave-tossed ship along for the ride. And what a glorious ride it is! On the other hand, the craft of fiction puts that same ship under the expert guidance of a captain who knows how to decipher his chart of those seas and then furl, trim, and jib his sails so his ship will carry him through the story on precisely the right course.”

— K.M. Weiland

36. “Being too easy on their character and their readers.” – Lori Devoti.”

— K.M. Weiland

37. “You have the distinct appearance of a woman in need of something warm and furry.”

— K.M. Weiland

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

— K.M. Weiland

39. “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

40. “Here.” He lifted the jiswar into her arms. “You have the distinct appearance of a woman in need of something warm and furry.” The.”

— K.M. Weiland

41. “Human identity is the most fragile thing that we have, and it’s often only found in moments of truth.” – Alan Rudolph.”

— K.M. Weiland

42. “Don’t dump your backstory into your reader’s lap right away, no matter how vital it is to the plot. How many of us want to hear someone’s life story the moment after we meet him?”

— K.M. Weiland

43. “In any kind of Change Arc, the Want reveals the Lie the Character Believes in action.”

— K.M. Weiland

44. “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” – Flannery O’Connor.”

— K.M. Weiland

45. “You might as well say it. You don’t trust many people, do you?” She hesitated the briefest of seconds. “No, I do not. Trust, faith, hope – they get you killed. They get people you love killed. They’re not facts, they’re fantasies. And I have too much at stake to trust a fantasy.”

— K.M. Weiland

46. “I called you out here to inspire the troops, not to get yourself killed alongside them.” Chris managed a shrug. “Sometimes it’s all the same thing, don’t you think?”

— K.M. Weiland

47. “Kindnesses were dangerous. They shattered defenses and left the receiver naked and vulnerable.”

— K.M. Weiland

48. “Within the character’s inner life, the Lie has created either a hole or a block.”

— K.M. Weiland

49. “Time is short, Master Gifted, so you’ll forgive me if I say what needs to be said without prefacing it with polite nothings.”

— K.M. Weiland