Image Credit: HBO
After six years, George R.R. Martin’s
eagerly anticipated A Dance With Dragons has arrived to glowing reviews. EW met with the author at his Santa Fe office for an in-depth conversation about his wildly popular Song of Ice and Fire series. Below he discusses why Book 5 took so long, his feelings about HBO’s Game of Thrones and his thoughts on killing beloved characters, among other topics. For more, see next week’s EW print edition featuring a profile of Martin that answers some burning fan questions. [Note: There are no Dance spoilers below, but there are spoilers from the previous four books].
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You’ve said before that the first book, Game of Thrones, was partly a reaction to the sort of storytelling you couldn’t do as a TV writer in the 1980s. What was the actual moment that inspired Thrones?
Martin: I just wanted to make it big. For so long [in TV], I heard, “It’s too big, it’s too expensive, lose characters and lose the settings.” Going back to prose, I could make it as big as I wanted, as big as my imagination. It really came out of nowhere. I knew in a general sense I wanted to write an epic fantasy since I loved [J.R.R.] Tolkien since I was a kid. But I didn’t have any specific ideas for it. In the summer of 1991 I was in Hollywood but I had no TV deal. Suddenly I just got the first chapter where they found the direwolf pups — it was just there. I knew I had to write it.
This may be a silly question, but: When you think of the world you’ve created, where seasons last for years, where is it? It is another planet?
It’s what Tolkien wrote was “the secondary world.” It’s not another planet. It’s Earth. But it’s not our Earth. If you wanted to do a science fiction approach, you could call it an alternate world, but that sounds too science fictional. Tolkien really pioneered that with Middle Earth. He put in some vague things about tying it to our past, but that doesn’t really hold up. I have people constantly writing me with science fiction theories about the seasons — “It’s a double star system with a black dwarf and that would explain–” It’s fantasy, man, it’s magic.
Do you find it fun to write?
I do. Yeah. To the extent that anything is fun to write. I’m one of those writers who say “I’ve enjoy having written.” There are days I really enjoy writing and there are days I f–king hate it. I can see it in my head and the words won’t come. I try to put it on the page and it feels stiff and wooden and it’s stupid. Writing is hard work.
On your blog you say you throw a lot away.
I do. Maybe more than I should, especially with these books, especially as we go deeper. I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older, or the series is getting more complicated. I think I’ve been influenced by my own good reviews. I’ve had so many people say this is the greatest fantasy since Tolkien or even greater. It’s awoken in me a desire not to blow it.
Is there anything you regret in the series? READ FULL STORY »
Back in 2005, George R.R. Martin released A Feast for Crows, the fourth book in his fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire (the basis for HBO’s hit show Game of Thrones). Despite its almost-800-page length, Crows was only half a novel, really. The author admitted that the sheer size of his ambitious narrative had forced him to split one planned book in two. What’s more, many of his most beloved characters were absent from Crows.
