When we interviewed A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin at Comic - Con , we decided to drill down and require some intense questions . Like , is this serial only seven books long because some subplots use up over the story ? Are the Dothraki one - dimensional stereotype ? What does he cogitate of Sliders ? Here ’s what he told us .
Warning : Major spoilers for A Feast for Crows and A Dance With Dragon below !
mark : Our George R.R. Martin consultation was too larger-than-life in distance to include in full here . The complete unedited interpretation can be study over here .
https://observationdeck.kinja.com/george-r-r-martin-the-complete-unedited-interview-886117845
Are there scene in the Song of Ice and Fire serial that you dreamed up 20 years ago , that you ’re at last write ? Moments you were frantic to get to at last ?
Yeah . I did n’t know at first , in ‘ 91 — I did n’t bonk quite what I had yet . I did n’t even know whether it was a novel or a novelette , or something , at first . So I sort of found that out . But by the summertime of ‘ 91 , you know , it just came to me out of nowhere , and I commence writing it and keep an eye on where it lead . But by the terminal of that summer I knew I had a big series . Initially , I reckon it was a trilogy , but it ’s grown beyond that . But the size is different , and I ’ve introduced some other elements to the books , but it ’s still the same type , the ‘ 91 characters .
What was the matter that made you realize , in the middle of the first novel , that it had to be more than a trilogy ?
It was quite at the end , it was by ‘ 95 that I make it had to be more than a trilogy , because I had 1,500 Thomas Nelson Page of manuscript [ and ] I was n’t anywhere close to the conclusion of the first book . So I say , “ I know I ca n’t get all this into three books here . I ’m gon na have to break this first book into two books to get it all done . ” Which required a certain amount of restructuring , but I proceed back and I did that , I took out about 300 pages or so , and that became the commencement of the 2nd book . And I moved things around .
You ’ve had these characters and places for 22 years , and that ’s a long time to exist with a particular set of characters . So have you lost interest group in any of those characters during that time ?
You acknowledge , not really — because I have n’t end up the story I need to tell . The story I set out to recite in 1991 is still not done . I think if I finally finish these seven books , or however many it takes , I will be trite of them . I will not inevitably be capable to rejoin to secern more stories about the 1 who survived [ after the end ] .
There you run into a Sherlock Holmes , Reichenbach Falls sort of thing , where [ the writer say ] , “ I ’m queasy of Sherlock Holmes , I never need to write any more storey about him . ”
But I have n’t even [ land up a undivided tale . ] As many books as it is , as many watchword as it is , it ’s still one story . One story that ’s not finished yet . I require to finish tell that story . And then I ’ll worry about that .
You actually say once that you do n’t enjoy writing , you savor having drop a line .
Yeah . Which is not original again with me either . A destiny of writers have say that . But writing is hard . I mean I sit around there and work at it .
Boy , there are days where I get up and say “ Where the hell did my talent go ? Look at this crap that I ’m producing here . This is terrible . Look , I wrote this yesterday . I hate this , I detest this . ” And I can see a picture in my head , and when I strain to get it down in Word on newspaper , the watchword are clunky , the scene is not coming across in good order . So frustrative . And there are days where it keeps flow . open up the floodgate , and there it is . Pages and pages coming . Where the hell does this all come from ? I do n’t know .
I had , very early in my career , even before I was a professional writer — I ’m going back now to my fanzine days in the 60s and 70s — I was very prone to starting stories and never finishing . I ’d have some gravid idea and I would start up a write up , and I ’d write a few pages , five pages , ten page , and it would never be as good as when it was in my head . It was this incredible thing , [ and then ] I put it on newspaper it and it was never as good as I imagined it to be . Then I ’d think of some other idea , and I ’d go , “ Yeah , that one would be really magical . ” And I ’d put apart the half - wind up one .
One of the prominent breakthroughs , I think for me , was read Robert A. Heinlein ’s four linguistic rule of writing , one of which was , “ You must finish what you spell . ” I never had any job with the first one , “ You must pen ” — I was write since I was a kid . But I never finished what write . [ I pull in ] , “ I come ta actually finish these stories . It does me no commodity to have this drawer full of sherd . ” And always be chasing the next melodic theme , which is so much better , so much more beautiful , so much more beguile then the idea that you ’re really knead on .
So , I start finishing things . And I ’m throttle and determined to finish Ice and Fire .
So masses havethis ideathat back when Ice and Fire jump as a trilogy , you had an outline where there was a single line that went , “ And meanwhile , nobles squabble over world power in Westeros . ” And that single line turned into the middle three or four book of the series . Is there any truth to that ?
It ’s a monstrous exaggeration — but there ’s at least a nugget of truth to it , yeah . You insert characters , and sometimes they take on a life sentence of their own .
Some major characters — yes , I always had plans , what Tyrion ’s arc was gon na be through this , what Arya ’s bow was gon na be through this , what Jon Snow ’s arc is gon na be . I knew what the principal last were gon na be , and when they were come . That would be the near affair .
But there would be some petty characters , like Bronn , Tyrion ’s confederate , [ who ] became a such a popular character . He came out of nowhere . [ I was think ] , “ Okay , Tyrion has meets these two sellswords , Bronn and Chiggen . And one ’s live on to oppose for him . Which one is it gon na be ? Okay , we ’ll go with Bronn . ” But as I wrote about him , he develop a personality of his own . And his past is A-one - mysterious , you do n’t live where he ’s born from , where he make out from , but he ’s play to write about . He come into a scene — once he ’s been cat in the TV show , they have a fantastic role player playing him — and he becomes actual .
There are part on the TV show , I feel like , because of the thespian playing them , theyhave an superfluous proportion , does that number back to the novels ? Do you reckon about the actors ? Like Natalie Dormer is amazing as Margaery Tyrell .
She is , she ’s incredible .
Do you now think about what she ’s going to do with the fabric you ’re writing now , as an actor ?
To some extent . You have intercourse , the most extreme example of that is Natalia Tena as Osha . Who is a pretty venial eccentric in the script , has a one - note personality , is really there to bring forward the plot , and fulfill sure plotpoints . And Natalia Tena made it such an interesting and vibrant , alert character , and much different . Natalia is much new and much more attractive than my Osha , who was ten , fifteen years older , weathered , leathery …
There was no ‘ seducing Theon ’ scene .
No . And , with Margaery — my Margaery is young than Loras , not old than Loras . So she ’s really just like a sixteen class honest-to-god kid . And Natalie is brilliant , but she ’s clearly not a sixteen year previous kid . She ’s very chic . She ’s almost what my Margaery will become in ten year .
So these modification have upshot . So there ’s two miss Tyrell brothers in the show . [ The tv set ] Tyrell [ family ] has Margaery and Loras , and there ’s two sure-enough brother , Willas and Garlan in the books . We have the handsome cast in TV , so we ca n’t afford to add more character . I have the vainglorious cast in literature , I think .
There ’s some venture that there might be few extremity of the Martell clan on the TV show .
It ’s potential . They have n’t set about to that . I know they ’re , we ’re bestow in Oberyn this yr , there ’s been that Brobdingnagian Internet controversy about that . So that we will definitely have the Red Viper and his brother Doran at some point . And I think we will have Areo and the Sand Snakes . I do n’t know . I write these Christian Bible , never dream they would film or made . It was almost a reaction to my tenure in Hollywood . “ I ’m just choke to do this as braggart as I want . ”
I ’m obsessed with the five - yr interruption you earlier planned in the middle of the series . How would that have happened ?
Originally , there was not supposed to be any crack . There was just supposed to be a passage of time as the record locomote forward . My original concept back in 1991 was , I would set out with these fibre as kid , and they would get older . If you nibble up Arya at eight , the 2nd chapter would be a dyad months later , and she would be eight and a half and [ then ] she ’d be nine . [ This would occur ] all within the infinite of a book .
But when I actually get into publish them , the event have a certain momentum . So you write a chapter and then in your next chapter , it ca n’t be six months later , because something ’s going to happen the next twenty-four hours . So you have to compose what happens the next day , and then you have to write what happens the hebdomad after that . And the news gets to some other place .
And pretty soon , you ’ve compose hundred of page and a hebdomad has go on , instead of the six month , or the year that you require to go across . So you end a book , and you ’ve had a tremendous amount of events — but they ’ve taken place over a short time frame , and the eight - class - honest-to-god kid is still eight years quondam .
So that really took hold of me for the first three books . When it became apparent that that had taken hold of me , I came up with the idea of the five year break . “ fourth dimension is not passing here as I want it to pass , so I will jump forward five eld in time . ” And I will fare back to these characters when they ’re a little more fully grown up . And that is what I tried to do when I started writing Feast for Crows . So [ the gap ] would have come after A Storm of Swords and before Feast for Crows .
But what I presently discovered — and I struggle with this for a class — [ the gap ] worked well with some eccentric like Arya — who at conclusion the of torm of Swordsas taken off for Braavos . you’re able to come back five years later , and she has had five years of training and all that . Or Bran , who was postulate in by the Children of the Forest and the green ceremony , [ so you could ] come back to him five years later . That ’s honest . act for him .
Other characters , it did n’t run at all . I ’m writing the Cersei chapter in King ’s landing place , and saying , “ Well yeah , in five year , six different guys have served as Hand and there was this cabal four year ago , and this thing happened three yr ago . ” And I ’m presenting all of this in flashbacks , and that was n’t make for . The other choice was [ that ] nothing fall out in those six year , which seemed anticlimactical . The Jon Snow poppycock was even worse , because at the end of Storm he gets elect Lord Commander . I ’m picking up there , and write ‘ Well five class ago , I was elect Lord Commander . Nothing much has happened since then , but now things are starting to encounter again . ” I finally , after a year , said , “ I ca n’t make this work . ”
Was it going to be five years and then Winter was going to arrive or was it give-up the ghost to be during Winter ?
No , it was n’t going to be during Winter . The arriver of Winter which would have been on stage .
So , like another five long time of Fall ?
Yeah . There is plenty of case law for that [ in ] the way I set up the serial . Summer lasted ten years . A five - yr Fall [ is ] nothing much .
I fuck that some of the hooey you wrote for after the five year gap is in the leger , including Dance with flying dragon .
terpsichore with Draco and Feast for Crows . Some of it is in there . Some of it , I ’ve rework . A translation of it is in there , but not the same version is in there . Some of it is just out . It just did n’t work .
So you had to have change it , so that Arya was not as seasoned , Jon Snow not as live as Lord Commander .
I know not all my readers are happy with that , but I think I made the correct decisiveness .
The readers are infelicitous with leaving out the five - class gap ?
Well no — some of the plot line from Feast for Crows . I get complaint sometimes that nothing happens — but they ’re defining “ nothing , ” I suppose , differently than I am . I do n’t cerebrate it all has to be battles and brand fight and assassinations . fictitious character exploitation and [ people ] change is salutary , and there are some tough thing in there that I call up a lot of writer skip over . I ’m happy I did n’t skip over these thing .
And that has been interesting , you know . Jon Snow as Lord Commander . Dany as Queen fight with dominion . So many books do n’t do that . There is a sensation when you ’re publish something in high fantasy , you ’re in a dialogue with all the other gamey fancy writers that have write . And there is always this assumption that if you are a sound humans , you will be a beneficial big businessman . [ Like ] Tolkien — in Return of the King , Aragorn comes back and becomes business leader , and then “ he rule sagely for three hundred years . ” Okay , fine . It is wanton to write that sentence , “ He rule wisely ” .
What does that intend , “ He ruled sagely ? ” What were his tax insurance ? What did he do when two Lord were take a shit war on each other ? Or barbarians were come in from the North ? What was his in-migration insurance ? What about adequate rights for Orcs ? I intend did he just quest after a genocidal policy , “ Let ’s pop all these crashing Orcs who are still left over ” ? Or did he seek to redeem them ? You never actually see the nitty - gritty of opinion .
I venture there is an element of fancy readers that do n’t want to see that . I find that fascinating . attend someone like Dany in reality essay to deal with the vestment of being a queen and [ dealing with ] faction and guilds and the economy . They glow all the playing field [ in Meereen ] . They ’ve pose nothing to import anymore . They ’re not getting any money . I regain this clobber interesting . And fortunately , enough of my lector who make out the leger do as well .
So countenance ’s talk about theinternet controversyabout Oberyn Martell . Do you have any thoughts on that ?
I always pictured the Martells and the salty Dornishman as Mediterraneans , so the casting I think is absolutely appropriate with what I spell in the books . I do empathise . I entail , I realise .
Some people have written me some very dear alphabetic character , and I ’ve tried to respond to them about how they wanted to see someone who look like them in the books , and how they were [ foiled ] . They had word-painting of the Martells look like them , and they were disappointed .
I understand that , but it still was n’t my intention to make … Even the language here is such a land mine . I do n’t even roll in the hay what words to use here “ black-market ” or “ African . ” I used African at one breaker point , sort of like African American . [ But ] if you use “ African ” you are guilty for saying all Africans are the same .
I do n’t do it . I am drawing from story , even though its illusion . I ’ve read a plenty of history , The War of the Roses , The Hundred Years War . The World back then was very various . Culturally it was perhaps more diverse then our world , but locomotion was very unmanageable back then . So even though there might have been many unlike races and ethnicity and peoples , they did n’t necessarily mix a great deal . I ’m puff largely on mediaeval England , medieval Scotland , to some extent medieval France . There was an casual person of color , but certainly not in any great numbers game .
And meanwhile , you ’ve catch Daenerys visit more Eurasian and Middle Eastern cultures .
And that hasgenerated its controversytoo . I resolve that one to in my web log . I jazz some of the people who are coming at this from a political or racial angle just seem to completely brush aside the logistics of the matter here . I babble about what ’s in the books . The books are what I save . What I ’m responsible for .
Daenerys ’ whole storyline on Game of Thrones is mess up
Slavery in the ancient globe , and slavery in the medieval world , was not race - based . You could misplace a war if you were a Spartan , and if you lost a war you could finish up a striver in Athens , or vice versa . You could get in debt , and wind up a slave . And that ’s what I tried to portray , in my books , that variety of slavery .
So the mass that Dany frees in the slaver cities are of many different ethnicities , and that ’s been somewhat explicit in the books . But of course when David [ Benioff ] and Dan [ Weiss ] and his gang are filming that scene [ of Daenerys being carried by freed slave ] , they are filming it in Morocco , and they put out a call for 800 extra . That ’s a quite a little of extra . They hired the people who turn up . Extras do n’t get paid very much . I did an superfluous gig once , and got like $ 40 a day .
It ’s credibly actually less in Morocco , since you do n’t have to pay quite the same rate . If you ’re apply 800 Moroccan 40 sawbuck each , you ’re not going to fly in 100 Irishmen just to balance the racial backcloth here . We had enough problem cope with our budget anyway .
I know for some readers , they do n’t care about this shit . But these thing are about budget and reality , and thing you’re able to actually do . You are shooting the scenery in a day . You do n’t have a lot of metre to [ occupy ] about that , and as someone who has run in television this kind of stuff is very crucial to me . I do n’t know if that is answer or not . I made that solvent , and some people were n’t pleased with that answer , I know . They are very upset about that .
Peoplecomplainthat the Dothraki are this one - dimensional barbarian smart set .
I have n’t had a Dothraki stand character though .
I guess it ’s too tardy to introduce one now .
I could introduce a Dothraki viewpoint character , but I already have like sixteen viewpoint character . I could kill some of my standpoint characters , to get down to the seven or eight I begin with , or some numerical equivalent . The Dothraki are part based on the Huns and the Mongols , some extent the steppe tribes like the Alvars and Magyars . I put in a few elements of the Amerindian knit stitch tribes and those citizenry , and then I threw in some purely phantasy elements . It ’s fantasy .
Are they savage ? Yeah , but the Mongols were , too . Genghis Khan — I just saw an interesting movie about Ghengis Khan , latterly . I ’ve interpret books about Genghis Khan , and he ’s one of history ’s more gripping , charismatic grapheme . The Mongols became very advanced at certain level , but they were certainly not advanced when they started out , and even at the height of their sophistication they were fond of doing thing like giant piles of heading . “ Surrender your city to me , or we will fall in and pour down all the men , spoil all the women and make a giant pile of head word . ” They did that a few clock time , and other metropolis said , “ Surrender is good . We ’ll surrender . We ’ll ante up the taxes . No pile of heads , please . ”
So getting back to something you said before about sentence moving too promptly for character reference to age the means you need them to , do you feel like it was a error to have raven that could send messages more speedily ?
No , I do n’t . I have n’t considered that , really . We could have slowed things down more , I suppose , with just riders . But I want a sealed pep pill to the subject matter - delivery .
Because raven are like the net of Westeros .
They ’re an Internet that ’s open to hacking , with arrows and archers and shooting them down , and people killing the raven , and message not going through . I do examine to ponder that in the books , too . I endeavor to do these little things that instill me from history . One of them is the unreliability of selective information . You know , they did n’t have CNN . So they would get these report of battle that were late and were wrong . And even now you read accounts of the same struggle , and the number of people who participated — and this is real account I ’m talking about — grossly vary from one soul to another .
The Battle of Agincourt was either 4,000 Frenchmen and 5,000 Englishmen , consort to the French , or between 200,000 Frenchman and 7 Englishmen , who were all armed with fruit knife , according to the English version . So I advisedly do that in my numbers of armies and things like that . Which are dissimilar .
I get readers spell me and saying , “ Oh , you were inconsistent here . You say that his US Army only had 20,000 multitude in this chapter , and then in this ulterior chapter you said 30,000 . ” No , I was n’t being inconsistent . I mean , I was being discrepant , but I was being deliberately inconsistent , to show that these things are [ because ] the high society did not have exact information . We still do n’t have accurate information . the great unwashed still jigger these things . demand any newsperson . How many hoi polloi showed up for Occupy Wall Street ? Somehow , the crowds are much bigger at MSNBC then they are on Fox . Tea Party crew are always bountiful on Fox , Occupy Wall Street bunch are always smaller on Fox .
Meanwhile , you have a development deal with HBO . Has anything come of that ?
I ’m working on some theme to pitch them . I ca n’t in reality do a show , I still have the books to write . But I ’m mould with various other writers , producers , partner , and so on . I can create the idea and , as with Game of Thrones , maybe indite one script a class . Kind of oversee it . But other people will have to be the David Benioff and Dan Weiss , the genuine day - to - day showrunners , who are the main guys on it .
They do , but they do n’t evolve well-nigh as much as the program networks , who typically enjoin 20 drama pilot scripts , will make 10 of the 20 hand , will actually shoot them [ and then ] have 10 pilots and put three show on . HBO does n’t do that . When they produce something , they ’re pretty serious about it . And they have some interesting shows in exploitation . American Gods would be cool .
You almost made a show with the same premise as Sliders , and then Sliders came out a twelvemonth later . Do you ever watch Sliders , and what do you remember of it ?
Doorways , which was my [ close ] show , was fundamentally the same mind , but it was better - written , better - cast , comfortably in every regard . The only episode of Sliders I ever saw was the pilot . I did find out the pilot film , and I thought it terrible . But that ’s preconception , I recognize my prejudice . Put that in if you ’re run short to compose about Sliders here , all right ? I take in I do n’t have an nonsubjective consideration of this because I work on that show for over a yr .
But I do get it on a piffling of the subsequent history of Sliders , and it happen to me that I may have circumvent a bullet with Doorways . Because I do n’t mean I would have been able to do as good a show as I wanted to do . The concept of Doorways was this alternate - world show , where they would have go through , and every week they would have gone to a different man and had an adventure there . So we would have seen all of these wonderful alternate worlds . I developed like 40 idea for humankind , and we had six patronage scripts write .
But to really do it right , you have to create a whole Earth . If you ’re in the world where the Roman Empire never fall , which was one of our [ ideas ] , it ’s still 1993 . It ’s not a time - change of location show . So you have to cogitate about it about it , you have to retrieve of the whole smell for the show . That ’s very demanding for the set architect and the costume designers . Okay , it ’s 1993 — how much has technology progressed from the Roman Empire ? Did they have an Industrial Revolution ? What are they wearing now ? Are they still wearing togas , like they wore in 44 BC ? You know , but they ’re not dressed like modern twentieth Century Americans , either , they ’re dressed in some toga - equivalent as it would be 2,000 years later . You have to consider about every issue like that .
But what are they driving ? Well , they ’re not driving Buicks and Chevrolets . They ’re repel – do they have cars ? Do they have machine establish on chariot ? You know , the car would be different , the trains would be dissimilar . You bed , so it need a lot of workplace . But then you have to build that . And at the point where I thought Doorways was gon na go , when I was going to be showrunner , I was look at blueprint budgets , and I was having a ugly feeling that were n’t proceed to be able to do this on that budget . We were go away to have a budget tantamount to any other show on tv at that time , a million and a half per episode . You ca n’t built a whole world for that amount .
And of course , that ’s what happened to Sliders . They did n’t go to a world where the Roman empire never decrease , or any of these public — they went to a lot of existence where , “ Gosh , it ’s just like our world , except that Pete Best is still in the Beatles . ” So the costume were the same and the cars were the same . I know they had a big thing — in one world , the dealings lights were unlike , [ so ] red means go and green agency halt . And that was the big dispute .
And , you know , I sneer at that , because it ’s bad science fable and it ’s unintelligent . You do n’t need to do an alternate - world show , if that ’s the best you may do . But we might have been wedge to do the exact same matter , simply because of budgetary reasons . And then I would have had this show , that would have been a bad show , on my resume . So perchance I skirt a bullet there , by not receive it picked up .
That being said , we had a grand cast . I think our writing would have been better . Our characters were very much better . But we still would have faced the same limit of budget and storytelling . What I was examine to do at that time was say to the meshwork , “ We have to do arc . That ’s the only agency we can make this study . They have to go to papist world , and they have to rest there for six episodes . You ca n’t do a world a workweek . They have to stick around , because then we can amortise the costume and the architecture . ” You have to build bent and have Greek architecture for Romanic world , or Arabian Nights world , or whatever public they ’re going to . But the networks do n’t care to do arcs , especially back in the 90s . Now they ’re more open to them . But back then , they want rigorously occasional shows , where you could run them in any monastic order . You always return to the original [ condition at the remainder of each episode ] .
What ’s plump on with the Wildcards flick ?
Melinda Snodgrass is the scriptwriter on that . She ’s sprain in two drafts . And last I find out , they were talking to directors . So we have to get a director to sign on , and that hopefully will go .
audience transcribe by Katharine Trendacosta and Amanda Yesilbas .
All images from A Song of Ice and Fire calendar , art by Michael Komarck , Ted Nasmith , John Picacio , Marc Simonetti and Gary Gianni .
Booksepic fantasyFantasyGame of ThronesGeorge R.R. Martinsdcc 2013Television
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