Recent George RR Martin Interview

[Ankari]

I'm reading the lastest George RR Martin interview and came upon a few nuggets that I felt needed to be shared. You can find the entire interview here.

Do you use to write the story chronologically?

I do not write the chapters in the order you read them. Each of the point of view characters has its own voice and vocabulary. It’s difficult for me to shift from one to another, so I use to write consecutively two, three or four chapters of the same character. Then, I stop because I have gone too far or because I don’t know what will happen next. For me, changing from a Tyrion chapter to a Daenerys one, to put an example, is very exhausting. It demands a lot from me.

I'm impressed by the forethought put into the following technique and the implications therein.

From the fourth book you have been uncovering some chapters with nicknames, like ‘The Prophet’ or ‘The Kraken’s Daughter’. Why do you do that?

Well… [Thinks for a long time with an enigmatic smile] I don’t know if you know Gene Wolfe, one of the best science fiction and fantasy writers, in my opinion. Well, his work is full of puzzles and enigmas and you have to put a lot of attention on what he is saying. I remember one day I asked him: “Why do you use that? Is there a deeper reason beyond?” And he didn’t say anything at the beginning. He just smiled me ironically and said to me: “What do you think it means?” And I told him my theories. Then, he answered: “Interesting…” [Laughs]. That’s all you wanna get out of me, but I have to say this is not an accident [Laughs].

This gives insight to how he writes. He doesn't do a first draft. He writes in chunks then revises them. Also, this gives you a release date (year) for Winds of Winter. I like his final sentence.

How many pages have you already written of The Winds of Winter?

I’ve already written 400 pages of my sixth book. However, of these 400 pages, only 200 are really finished because I still have to revise the other 200 pages, which are in a rough version and I still have to work on them a lot. But you have to keep in mind that the last book, Dance with Dragons, was 1.500 pages long and this one will be more or less the same extension, so I have a lot of work. I hope after this tour I can go back home in order to write as a possessed man. But the sixth volume won’t be released in 2012 or in 2013. I really look forward to publishing it in 2014, but I am really bad for predictions, you may know it. And then, there is another fact: when I finish this saga I will be judged for the quality of the books, not for the speed of my writing.

This advice has been repeated here, but the wisdom is too substantial not to be reposted.

You know that the ending won’t please everyone, don’t you?

Of course I will disappoint some of my fans because they are making theories about who will finally take the throne: who would live, who would die… and they even imagine romantic pairings. But I have already experienced that phenomenon with Feast for Crows and again with Dance with Dragons, and repeating the words of Rick Nelson: “You can’t please anyone, so you’ve got to please yourself”. So I will write the two last books as good as I am capable of and I think the great majority of my readers would be happy with it. Trying to please everyone is a horrible mistake; I don’t say you should annoy your readers but art isn’t a democracy and should never be a democracy. It’s my story and those people who get annoyed should go out and write their own stories; the stories they wanna read.

I've said this before and agree 100%

You are an evil writer because you kill a lot of the main characters. How do you manage with that?

Well… I want my readers to be emotionally involved in what they read. I don’t like to read from the distance and I want them to be really involved, and if scary stuff is gonna happen; I want them to be scared. Beyond the way to do that I want to state that everybody can die. Mine is not a predictable book like so many others, where you know the hero is safe. No matter how much trouble the hero gets in, what odds he seems to be facing; he’s gonna come through, cause he... he is John Carter, he is the hero. That’s not the way in real life and I want to be realistic in my books, so no one is safe in the books. My goal as a writer has always been to create a strong fiction stories. I want my readers to remember my books and the great time they had while they were sitting in a comfortable armchair.

I know it looks like I'm posting the entire interview, but I'm not. Play with the reader's expectations!

So you always want to frustrate our expectations, am I right?

Yes, it was always my intention: to play with the reader’s expectations. Before I was a writer I was a voracious reader and I am still, and I have read many, many books with very predictable plots. As a reader, what I seek is a book that delights and surprises me. I want to not know what is gonna happen. For me, that’s the essence of storytelling and for this reason I want my readers to turn the pages with increasing fever: to know what happens next. There are a lot of expectations, mainly in the fantasy genre, which you have the hero and he is the chosen one, and he is always protected by his destiny. I didn’t want it for my books.

On the way fantasy portrays women

One of the strongest female characters is Catelyn Stark, in my point of view.

Well, I wanted to make a strong mother character. The portrayal women in epic fantasy have been problematical for a long time. These books are largely written by men but women also read them in great, great numbers. And the women in fantasy tend to be very atypical women… They tend to be the woman warrior or the spunky princess who wouldn’t accept what her father lays down, and I have those archetypes in my books as well. However, with Catelyn there is something reset for the Eleanor of Aquitaine, the figure of the woman who accepted her role and functions with a narrow society and, nonetheless, achieves considerable influence and power and authority despite accepting the risks and limitations of this society. She is also a mother… Then, a tendency you can see in a lot of other fantasies is to kill the mother or to get her off the stage. She’s usually dead before the story opens… Nobody wants to hear about King Arthur’s mother and what she thought or what she was doing, so they get her off the stage and I wanted it too. And that’s Catelyn.

 

[Steerpike]

All very interesting. I'm glad he mentioned Gene Wolfe, who is great. I'll comment more when not on my phone

 

[Sheilawisz]

I like to think that my Fantasy stories have few archetypes and are more original than others, but this point about the missing or dead mothers can be found in my first series:

It's about two Mage cities that are in war with each other, but there are a young Princess and a Queen that are friends in secret and want to stop the war... The Princess (heiress to the crown of her city) lost her mother years ago when she was killed in battle, and the mother of the other city's Queen one day simply flew towards the starry sky and was never seen again.

It's very true that you cannot write an ending that will please everyone, and my own endings tend to be rather bittersweet and heartbreaking instead of a sad or a happy way to end the story.

 

[Leif Notae]

I will say I have given up on the series and moved on. I've stopped at book three and that's where it will stay for me.

I agree with the first concept, stop writing in order. If you want to do something amazing, don't write the way you read.

Good interview snippets though, advice galore for people that need it.

 

[BWFoster78]

I agree with the first concept, stop writing in order. If you want to do something amazing, don't write the way you read.

Leif,

I remember you saying that before, and never did quite understand the benefit.

Would you mind expounding on why you believe this to be the case/outlining the positives to the approach?

Thanks.

 

[Leif Notae]

Leif,

I remember you saying that before, and never did quite understand the benefit.

Would you mind expounding on why you believe this to be the case/outlining the positives to the approach?

Thanks.

I'd be happy to. It is easy for a writer to discourage themselves by writing in order than out of order. When you write in order, you deny the flexibility when other scenes come to you. Because the ideas might (or might not) be fleeting, you should write them out as they come.

You want to respond and react to the things in your mind, not stay lockstep with how you read.

It is easier to cobble together scenes through events and actions because you will have clarity and better directions. It is hard to write from beginning to end when your story road might be leading off a cliff or into a brick wall.