William Kent Krueger Quotes

You won't have a story unless you have conflict, which means if there's no conflict in a situation, people look for a way to make some.

I think conflict is one of the things that makes for a good story.

The roles I'm interested in or have been interested in, you know, it's going to get down to conflict. Drama is conflict - conflict of interests.

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

As a writer, I challenge myself not to tell the same story - to tackle different characters with different issues.

What I have in advance are people I want to write about and a problem or problems that I see those people encountering and that I want to explore - it all proceeds sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and scene by scene.

It certainly seems as though a great majority of genre is conflict-focused and, not only that, but focused on large physical conflicts.

I could make up characters till the cows came home. Plot's what hard. Very hard.

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

There's conflict in every story.

Sometimes, I have themes that interest me or that touch on larger issues but, really, I'm just trying to figure out the plot, or how the characters work. I'm trying to make the best story I possibly can.

For storytelling purposes, there has to be conflict, but that doesn't mean the people have to be mean. I've never liked mean-spirited comedy.

It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

You can throw a novel into focus with one overheard line.

There are two questions that you ask yourself as a writer, and one of them is, 'But why?' The question that takes the book forward is, 'What if? What if x y or z happened? How would those characters react?'

I suppose with any good writing and interesting characters, you can have that awfully overused word: a journey.

What I do is put my characters into situations that are so precarious there is no way to get out. And then I figure how to get them out.

Settings are obviously important - and as a writer, you have to respect what was real at the time of the story you're writing. But the real key to success lies in finding the right characters to carry that story.

At the heart of every story is conflict - whether external or internal, make it a good one, and remember that this problem is going to shape your character, leaving her forever changed.

'For Whom the Bell Tolls' was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

I spent ages figuring out things like viewpoint, how you tell the story, and so on.

No, you don't have to start your play with a premise. You can start with a character or an incident, or even a simple thought. This thought or incident grows, and the story slowly unfolds itself. You have time to find your premise in the mass of your material later. The important thing is to find it.

I don't really approach stories to make them different from other stuff I've seen, I just try to get into the character, into his or her head. Try to make it as funny, as scary or as wild as I can so that I really like it.

A page a day means I need to focus on a gag a day, and that's great for laughs but bad for plot, and I'm primarily a plot guy.

A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into.