George R. R. Martin Answers Fan Questions

hi well I'm back uh with my friend uh and we're gonna answer a few fan questions that have been uh sent in here uh which of your characters would you most like to have dinner with uh well that would depend in part on uh the purpose of uh the dinner um if I wanted a wit and entertainment uh Tyrion Lannister very few people as uh you know funny or witty as a Tyrion but he's also dangerous too if you uh annoy him he could uh you know send you to the dungeon or cut your head off um if I was simply looking for a wonderful meal uh go to Penthouse and eat with illyrio mopatas he uh he has some marvelous uh feasts uh set before him or I suppose you could go to the uh you know the Inn on the Trident and and see what hot pie was uh whipping up um another character that might be fun to have dinner with would be uh Shea when she was alive but uh probably for reasons that I shouldn't go into um is there a character that you would have liked to explore and write more about but not able to in A Song of Ice and Fire or Fire and Blood uh well yes there are in fact a lot of characters um one of the things uh about fire and blood in particular is its nature as a history meant I was summarizing things and as I as I summarize those things and characters appeared be they major minor there was always part of me the the novelist part in the back of my mind said I could write a whole novel about that that character um oh boy I wish I had time to I could at least write a story about them um and I've been tempted to do that uh many times there are some characters it's hard to explain in some ways why some characters trigger something in me or or fascinate me and others maybe don't but uh um a character like us the the Dragon Knight um this very Gallant one of the greatest knights in in the history of Westeros or um or Nettles um who you know is a is a dragon writer in the dance where does she come from where does she go to what is her life like what is her life like after she Fades from the public sphere um those are interesting um I have thought at various points of writing an entire novel about uh carrot we haven't gotten to you yet aegon the fourth aegoning unworthy he's like the Henry the eighth of uh of West Rose except worse he has all these Mr C's and he's he's not a nice guy but he's an interesting guy and that's that's something that uh you know fascinates me what makes a villain what makes a a hero um are there people who are all good and all evil I don't I don't know but there's a million characters I I just need to live to be you know 150 uh and I can write all of this uh what was one of your favorite scenes to write in a series and one of your least favorite um well one scene I don't know if I could name one favorite scene and one least favorite scene I did generally always like writing about Tyrion the Tyrion chapter seemed to write themselves and I had a very hard time to struggle with writing from bran because bran of all the characters was the one who was most involved in Magic and I think magic and fantasy sorcery the supernatural all of these things have to be handled with a great deal of care or they can overwhelm the uh the story so um I rewrote some of those brand chapters over and over again and I'm still struggling with the new ones that are in uh in The Winds of Winter but uh hopefully we're we're getting there um what's seen from Fire and Blood are you most excited is he brought to the screen uh well yeah the battle over to guard time although that battle that they did in the season finale was pretty uh pretty amazing too um what is your favorite seemingly minor moment that changed the course of uh westeros's history um there are a couple of them um I think uh in in the first in the Hedge night the first Duncan egg story uh the death of Baylor breakspeare who was the uh the heir next in line to the throne and I think would have been a very strong and very competent King who who dies to defend the um the honor of an insignificant hedge knight uh how was Westeros history different if Baylor does not die um that would be very significant and similarly the whole dance with the dragons I mentioned earlier the the air and this air in the spear I mean Harris the Old King had 13 children it seemed a succession was very solid he had the proverbial air and a sphere and two very competent Sons amen and Balon and Eamon was killed while flying on his Dragon to uh Tarth to help defend the Isle against some you know Pirates and mirish people and he was killed by a crossbow well it was not even meant for him there was you know the the even starve Tarth the the Lord was well known to the mirrish and they were determined to take him out and uh crossbowmen didn't even recognize who was this new guy who was walking alongside him but he just missed and suddenly the whole succession was thrown into doubt and in some ways you could say that was one of the first things that caused the dance of the dragons uh when you first imagined characters in A Song of Ice and Fire and Fire and Blood were there any that changed in unexpected ways as the story uh developed yes in fact there were so many that I couldn't even begin to tell you um it's the way I write I've I've talked about this in many interviews and many blog posts two types of writers the architect and a gardener and um the architect plans everything ahead of time but the gardeners just starts to write the story and the characters come alive and they take him in unexpected directions so sometimes it's an unexpected character who pops up and uh captivates you and takes over the story and does take it in unexpected directions I remember one of the First characters to do that was Brawn you know Tyrion is on the road and he he meets at an end he runs into these two cell swords Brawn and chicken and uh then he gets arrested by uh Catelyn Stark and um he has to travel to the irie and he's put on trial and and Braun steps forward uh to defend him um I needed someone it could have easily have been chigging at that stage but no I killed chicken I just just I like to name Braun bitter and the more time Tyrion spent with Braun the more interesting the character became to me I wanted to know who he was and what about him and I liked his dialogue I liked the sound of him he played very well off Tyrion so but that's only one character there are many many other characters that have done the same thing to uh to a greater or less extent in uh in these books um if you could choose a time or place in westerosi history then you could revisit in future stories what would it be uh you know virtually everything in Fire and Blood all the histories there's part of me that would love to uh flesh them out a little more tell the tell the full story in the form of a novella or a novel um and we saw even more of that in the in the TV show I mean it we had 10 episodes um people have said that time jumps were jarring to them and you know raniera's relationship with Harwin strong um she had three children by him but we never even you know we never see them get together for the first time or cast we never have a scene when they first slept with each other we we don't know uh exactly what has happened and how he felt about that and how Lenor felt about him there's a whole story there there's a at least a novella maybe a a novel but um we we simply did not have the time to tell it um and it did not fit the format of my history book so but it's a story and I would love to love to do that um Fire and Blood is strongly informed by the biases of Washington gildane and mushroom well mushroom is only one of gildane's sources there's also Eustis and uh or a while who recount these events do you consider House of dragon to be a companion piece of the book that shows the true nature of events as they actually happened or will only you ever know the truth well how meta do you want to get I mean there is no truth I make all this stuff up uh Archer Mason gildane mushroom all of those things and uh what is the truth uh will we ever know the truth of uh Hannibal uh or Spartacus as in David's novel will we ever know the truth of what happened at the black dinner of Scotland um will we ever know the truth of any of these things truth gets obscured um so I say with Kipling there are 9 and 20 ways of constructing tribal lays and every single one of them is is right are you team black or Team Green well I don't know read the book you have to make your own mind up on that maybe I'm a bit of both teams um what smaller house in Westeros It's the Most Fascinating to you and why um again that's a that's a tough one um I do get interested in the history of uh many of these uh smaller houses obviously House of valerion which was largely very much in the background in A Song of Ice and Fire but is very much in the foreground of Fire and Blood and House of the Dragon um is a house that has engaged me and you know one of the successor shows we're working on is called Nine voyages it's the uh earlier Voyage of Corliss valerion who was the Sinbad the Sailor the Magellan um the Captain Kirk on the water of Westeros and he made these incredible nine voyages to the far ends of the Earth so house valerion is is uh one that's interested in me I've always had a soft spot for house Blackwood which has an interesting history and they're one of the few houses south of the neck that still follows the old gods and has a weary tree and they they have not adopted the faith of the seven that's an interesting to me how did they uh how did they work out some of the houses in Doran interests me a great deal uh you know nymeria how she uh unified all of Dorne all of the petty kingdoms that's fascinating and I hope we hope to tell that story too in one of the successor shows uh 10 000 ships but also how starful which is the ha uh the the house Dane which is headquarters at Starfall and they have the the sword Dawn which is even more potent than the Valerian steel swords it's forged from a full-length star and the man who Wheels it is called a sword of the morning and they have a at least in my head they have a very colorful Rich kind of mysterious interesting background at uh one day I would like to write about there just need to be seven of me and they need to be 37 hours in the day and I need to be 35 years old again but uh sadly none of these things are likely to occur and finally you asked a question I knew I was going to get do you have an update on the Winds of Winter um you know it's the same update I've been giving for a long time I'm I continue to work on it it continues to get longer and longer I mean I was working on it the day before I flew back here for three or four days but I was I was rereading some chapters that I'd written earlier and I didn't like them well enough and uh so I kind of ripped them apart and rewrote them um and I've had some ideas while I've been on this trip I got to get back and and hopefully get to it while the ideas are still fresh in my head um it's a big big book I've said that before it's a challenging book um it's probably going to be a larger book than any of the previous volumes in the series The what the um desert dragons and Storm of Swords are the two largest books in the series they were both about 1500 manuscript pages I think this one is going to be longer than that by the time I finish it and I think I'm about three quarters of the way done maybe um but that's not a hundred percent done so I I have to continue to work on it and of course then there's the issue here of my friends at random house when I deliver this monstrous book that will be as big of this Dragon are they going to try to make me cut it in two or are they going to do something other horrible to me ah no we'll find out about that but first I have to finish it I I have to get it all done and uh I've given up making predictions because people press me and press me when's it going to be done and I make what I think is the best case estimate and then stuff happens and um yeah that's um then everybody gets mad that I lied and I've never lied about these predictions that are best I can make but I guess I overestimate my ability to get stuff done and I underestimate the amount of interruptions and other projects and other demands that will distract me and uh so on and so on but it's in progress I'm working on it um creeping forward but uh one day it will be done and then it will come out and then the next day someone will tweet me when will we see a dream of spring so uh yes I I can see the future I'm a science fiction guy anyway that's all we have for you tonight um so I hope you've enjoyed this talk it was great having David here um I think we could uh we could have talked for another two or three hours um but um he has to get home and get working on the ice dragon um so do um do pick up Fire and Blood do pick up this incredible art book that we have uh rise of the dragons and uh also please do pick up some of my Wild Card books David David is in those along with a lot of other marvelous writers and pick up some of David's own novels his Acacia High fantasy series his books about Hannibal and pride of Carthage um terrific reads and I think you'll really enjoy them if you like historical fiction historical fantasy Epic Fantasy any of these things so thank you and good night

Channel: Penguin Random House

Views: 535,771

Keywords: book, author, write, read, publishing, George R R Martin, GRRM, fan questions, interview, Game of Thrones, A Song of Ice and Fire, Westeros, House of the Dragon, The Winds of Winter

Id: 7R4c_2uaxT8

Length: 17min 40sec (1060 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 28 2022