George R.R. Martin is a master craftsman , whose A Song of Ice and Fire serial publication was a caption even before HBO plough it into a massive hit TV series . His strength include astounding universe - building and an ability to get inside the heads of a wide motley of viewpoint characters , one at a time . How does he do it ? And what can you instruct from him ?
We pored over all of Martin ’s interviews and on-line committal to writing , to distill some of his most fascinating thoughts on writing .
Images viaMarc Simonetti / Song of Ice and Fire Calendar 2013 .
And you should also readLisa Tuttle ’s long account of what it ’s like to collaborate with Martin on a story , which wound up becoming a novel . AndMartin ’s Guest of Honor speechfrom Ambercon 1981 , where he talks about growing up as a world-weary child whose only escape was through books .
Why he writes one aspect detail character at a fourth dimension :
I ’m a solid believer in severalise stories through a modified but very tight third someone point of view . I have used other techniques during my career , like the first person or the omniscient view full point , but I actually hate the omniscient vantage point . None of us have an omniscient viewpoint ; we are alone in the world . We learn what we can hear … we are very limited . If a sheet barge in behind you I would see it but you would n’t . That ’s the means we comprehend the world and I want to put my readers in the head of my characters .
— Adria ’s News
I do n’t care the strictly objective viewpoint [ in which all of the characters ’ action are key in the third person , but we never hear what any of them are thinking . ] Which is much more of a cinematic technique . Something written in third person nonsubjective is what the camera sees . Because unless you ’re doing a voiceover , which is hugely clumsy , you ca n’t hear the ideas of case . For that , we bet on insidious clues that the directors put in and that the actors supply . I can actually write , “ ‘ Yes you could trust me , ’ he lied . ” [ But it ’s good to get inside the reference ’ heads . ]
— Chicon control panel , viaMaureen Ryan / Huffington Post podcast .
On writing many unlike viewpoint characters :
to get inside their peel , I have to identify with them . That includes even the 1 who are concluded bastards , nasty , twisted , deeply flawed human beings with serious psychological problems . Even them . When I get inside their skin and look out through their eye , I have to feel a certain – if not sympathy , surely empathy for them . I have to seek to perceive the world as they do , and that creates a sure amount of affection .
Empire Online , 2011
On tapping into your own animation experiences :
In creative writing classes in college , the professors will say , ‘ Write what you bonk . ’ And that ’s often misunderstand to signify you should write a thinly veiled autobiography . [ Like ] a graduate bookman in English Literature at University , write a account in which the hero is a alumnus scholarly person in English Literature at University . It would seem to , on the surface , disallow skill fabrication and phantasy and so off , since none of us are really barbarians or knights or lords or even peasants . But I recollect you have to interpret ‘ Write what you be intimate ’ much more broadly than that . We ’re talking about emotional trueness here . We ’re talking about reaching in spite of appearance here to make your characters literal . If you ’re going to write about a role witnessing a loved one die , you have to dig into yourself , and say , “ Did you ever commemorate losing a do it one ? ” Even if it ’s only a dog that you loved as a tyke or something . Tap that vein of emotional DOE . In some way , it ’s not abominably different from what method acting actors do … . We observe other people from the exterior . The only person we ever really know inside and out is ourselves , and we have to reach into ourselves to find the power that makes slap-up fiction material .
— question with Peter Orullian , October 2011
On switching between characters :
I do n’t pen the chapters in the ordering that you read them . I do swop . I ’ll get in a Tyrion groove , where I ’ll publish four or five Tyrion chapters , and I hit a fillet point or something like that . Or I ’ll realize that I ’m right smart in front on Tyrion , and I got ta hitch up with the other characters . And I ’ll go back and switch to Arya or Sansa or something like that . It ’s always difficult switching gear , because the characters have very different voices and very different ways of think about the creation . I ’ll be write up a violent storm and doing pages every day , and the minute I switch over to a different character , that first day it ’s like , “ Oh , God , I have to read all these character again . I have Sansa go like Tyrion , and that ’s not good . ” I have to read more of her chapter and immerse myself in Sansa .
— Chicon panel again .
On the two types of writer :
I ’ve always said there are – to oversimplify it – two kinds of writers . There are architects and gardeners . The architect do blueprints before they repel the first nail , they plan the entire house , where the piping are function , and how many rooms there are run to be , how high the roof will be . But the gardener just dig a mess and plant the seed and see what come up . I imagine all writer are partly architects and partially nurseryman , but they tend to one side or another , and I am by all odds more of a gardener . In my Hollywood geezerhood when everything does work on outline , I had to put on my designer ’s clothes and make to be an architect . But my raw inclination , the way I work , is to give my characters the head and to follow them .
Sydney Morning Herald , August 1 , 2011 .
I hate outline . I have a broad mother wit of where the story is going ; I do it the goal , I cognize the end of the principal part , and I know the major turning peak and events from the books , the orgasm for each Christian Bible , but I do n’t needs know each twist and turn along the agency . That ’s something I distinguish in the course of writing and that ’s what makes writing gratifying . I think if I outlined comprehensively and stuck to the outline the actual writing would be slow .
— Empire Magazine Interview
His writing agenda :
I get up every day and work in the morning . I have my coffee tree and get to employment . On good days I look up and it ’s dark outside and the whole day has gone by and I do n’t know where it ’s gone . But there ’s bad days , too . Where I fight and sweat and a half hour weirdy by and I ’ve write three words . And half a day creeps by and I ’ve compose a condemnation and a one-half and then I cease for the twenty-four hours and play computer games . You know , sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you . [ Laughs ]
— Interview inJanuary Magazine , 2001
On spell about sex :
living is very full of sexual urge , or should be . As much as I admire Tolkien — and I do , he was a giant of phantasy and a giant of literature , and I think he wrote a great Good Book that will be read for many years — you do have to wonder where all those Hobbits came from , since you ca n’t reckon Hobbits receive sex activity , can you ? Well , gender is an of import part of who we are . It drives us , it motivate us , it makes us do sometimes very noble things and it makes us do sometimes incredibly stupefied things . go out it out , and you ’ve vex an incomplete man .
— television interview with Grace Dent
On writing battle scenes :
From where I sit down , battle are hard . I ’ve written my share . Sometimes I utilise the private ’s stand , very up tightlipped and personal , shake off the reader right into the middle of the mass murder . That ’s vivid and visceral , but of requisite chaotic , and it is easy to misplace all sense of the battle as a whole . Sometimes I go with the superior general ’s degree of view rather , look down from on eminent , seeing lines and wing and stockpile . That gives a keen sense of the tactics , of how the engagement is won or lost , but can easily skid into generalisation .
— Conversation with Bernard Cromwell on Martin ’s website .
On tightening a ruined novel :
[ After A Dance With Dragons was completed ] I did my elbow grease . That ’s a technique I learned in Hollywood , where my scripts were always too long . “ This is too long , ” the studio apartment would say . “ prune it by eight Thomas Nelson Page . ” But I detest to drop off any good poppycock — scenes , dialogue interchange , bits of activity — so instead I would go through the script trimming and tightening line by cable and Bible by word , cutting out the fat and leave the muscle . I found the mental process so valuable that I ’ve done the same with all my books since leaving LA . It ’s the last stagecoach of the operation . end the book , then go through it , cutting , cutting , cutting . It produces a tighter , stronger text , I feel . In the cause of A DANCE WITH DRAGONS , my sweat — most of it performed after we announced the al-Qur’an ’s publication engagement but before I delivered the final chapters — brought the page count down almost eighty pages all by itself .
— Martin ’s web log , May 2011
On inventing spoken communication :
The same was on-key of Dothraki . Lots of persona mouth the speech of the horselords in my novels , and I did pepper the textbook with a few Dothraki words like khal and arakh … but for the most part I was content just to say , “ They were speaking Dothraki , ” and give the gumption of what was said , playing with the syntax and judgment of conviction rhythms a bit to convey a flavor .
— Martin ’s blog , April 12 , 2010
introductory advice to new writers :
The most important matter for any aspiring author , I think , is to read ! And not just the form of thing you ’re strain to write , be that fantasy , SF , comic Book , whatever . You need to read everything . show fabrication , non - fiction , mag , newspapers . Read story , historical fiction , biography . record secret novels , fantasy , SF , horror , mainstream , literary classic , porno , adventure , sarcasm . Every writer has something to learn you , for good or ill . ( And yes , you may learn from bad books as well as good ones — what not to do )
And indite . Write every day , even if it is only a page or two . The more you compose , the better you ’ll get . But do n’t write in my universe , or Tolkien ’s , or the Marvel universe , or the Star Trek universe , or any other borrowed background . Every author call for to learn to make his own characters , worlds , and preferences . Using someone else ’s earthly concern is the indolent way out . If you do n’t work those “ literary muscles , ” you ’ll never develop them .
Given the realities of today ’s market in science fable and fantasy , I would also hint that any aspiring writer begin with short report . These day , I meet far too many youthful writers who attempt to start off with a novel right off , or a trilogy , or even a nine - book series . That ’s like starting in at stone climbing by tackling Mt. Everest .
— fromthe FAQ on his website .
On the nature of fiction and happy end :
All fiction , if it ’s successful , is kick the bucket to appeal to the emotions . Emotion is really what fiction is all about . That ’s not to say fiction ca n’t be paying attention , or acquaint some interesting or provocative ideas to make us imagine . But if you want to present an cerebral argument , nonfictional prose is a in force tool . you may drive a nail with a horseshoe but a hammer is a sound tool for that . But fiction is about worked up plangency , about make us find things on a primal and visceral level .
These are some complicated ideas we ’re touching on now . I detest to make wholesale statements about fabrication in general . Every author does his own thing . But my own view of the humankind … I do n’t think I ’m a misanthrope , or gloomy . I call back dear and friendship are very important parts of what make life worth go . There is way for felicity . But that having been said , there are some basic truths . One of them is that death waits for all of us at the end . Whether it ’s the Middle Ages or today , preferably or later we are all going to be ashes to ash , and dust to dust . I think that colour things . Any happy conclusion where everything is resolved , and everything is jolly , maybe call simulated because of what is coming for us .
Another thing that is maybe not so big a part of Ice and Fire , but certainly a Brobdingnagian part of my former work , is the existential aloneness that we all abide . While we interact with other human existence , we can never really know them . I think these thing , that we feel on some mystifying instinctual level , make us sense the sonority in fiction . Historically , tragedy has always had more esteem than funniness . I have a great good deal of respectfulness for comedy , and I care to do the occasional laughable prospect , but it does n’t get deference . Even Shakespeare we instruct as tragedy . We enjoyed his comedy , but if you ask what are the great Shakespeare plays , masses are go to talk about Hamlet and Macbeth . They ’re not get going to talk about Midsummer Night ’s Dream or As You Like It . What does that tell us ?
— Sydney Morning Herald , August 1 , 2011 .
Game of ThronesGeorge R.R. Martinwriting advice
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