Kevin Whately Quotes

There's something really satisfying if you've created a bunch of characters that have withstood 25 episodes.

Whenever you can manoeuvre your characters into a situation where they both have a good argument to make, you're on the right track.

I usually start with an ending, then outline high points of things that happen, and kind of make up the rest as I go along. Occasionally, the characters surprise me, and I wonder how we got here. Other times, the characters are stubborn and won't do something I want them to in the story.

People have to respond to the characters and respond to the situations that they're in. That said, it still has to be a compelling narrative that drives along and keeps people coming back week after week. So really, with any successful show you could name, there has to be a mysterious blend of both of those.

I don't plot my novels - I move along with my characters.

Jeff Eastin is good in that he'll tell me a plot twist that's coming up if he thinks it would be something Peter would know ahead of time, and if it's something that would be a surprise to Peter, I'll tell Jeff, 'Oh, don't tell me. I don't want to know.' And then it's exciting to read it and exciting to play it.

All TV shows are basically part of the same storyline.

'Breaking Bad' and 'The Shield' were planned right from the start so that their narrative trajectory would come down in a blaze of fireworks.

Characters develop as the book progresses, but any that start to bore me end up in the wastepaper basket. In real life, we may have to put up with tedious people, but not in novels.

I start drawing, and eventually the characters involve themselves in a situation. Then in the end, I go back and try to cut out most of the preachments.

I do novels a bit backward. I look for a situation, a milieu first, and then I wait to see who walks into it.

It's a challenge every year with a TV series. You want to keep evolving and keep it going. That's part of the fun.

Show me a novel that's not comic, and I'll show you a novel that's not doing its job.

It was a high-class problem burden, but it was still a burden on 'The Vampire Diaries,' in which we had this group of characters that we loved writing for so much and who had so much available story to tell.

Sitcom writing is difficult because it's not just about writing jokes - there's a very fine balance between characters, plot, and comedy, that if you get one thing wrong, the whole castle comes falling down.

I think every character is important in every film - be it small, primary, or lead - because they are adding something to the story, taking it forward.

I have always believed that if a film has only two characters, but they do not make any sense, then the film's meaningless.

The liveliest effusions of wit and humour are simply what the reader of a novel has a right to expect.

The characters are the plot. What they do and say and the things that happen to them are, in a sense, what the plot is. You can't take character and plot apart from each other, really.

Any plot you impose on your characters will be onomatopoetic: PLOT. I say don't worry about plot. Worry about the characters. Let what they say or do reveal who they are, and be involved in their lives, and keep asking yourself, Now what happens? The development of relationship creates plot.

We always wanted to do a children's book of some form or another.

Honestly, the life of a serial character on television, I'd love to write an essay about it.

If your characters are two-dimensional and your plot uncompelling, it won't matter how incredibly detailed and believable your fantasy world might be.

It doesn't matter if these characters are supposed to be together forever: if their chemistry gets stale, you want somebody to die, you want to put somebody in a coma, you want to write them off the show - anything to save you.

You don't idea your way into a plot but plot your way into an idea.