George RR Martin on Why He Kills Characters

do you love your characters or do they drive you insane at times or yes both both yeah I do I do love them even even the bad guys even the ones I kill even Ramsay Bolton Ramsay's a misunderstood fellow what do we misunderstanding he had a hard childhood yeah as a good excuse do you like killing your characters no I don't do it so much so it's I do think it needs to be done big fan of death up there okay you know Valar morghulis all men must die I think it's part of life and and art needs to reflect life particularly if you're if you're writing a fantasy novel an epic fantasy you know certainly since the days of Tolkien so many fantasy novels have been about war I mean there's a war at the center Lord of the Rings you know they have Sauron and his great armies of Orcs and and south wings and easterling's and and other Ling's are all moving out and the free man of the West are fighting against them and of course in my in my books there's a considered it will be more complicated war going on but you look at all of the other writers who've been in between and is there's Wars and wars and Wars now I'm not saying you have to write about war there many other interesting things to write about and I've written about some of them I don't have a war in all my books but if I'm gonna write about war if any writer is gonna write about war then I want him to treat war honestly and one thing I I know about war from people who served in Vietnam and served in other Wars is you know it does bring out the beast in men and anybody can die it doesn't matter if you're the hero I think everybody who died in any war thought they were a hero right to the moment that the bullet blew off the top of theirs ago so it irritates me when I when I I'm watching a movie and or reading a book and the hero is going through incredible dangers him and his six buddies and none of them die you know maybe one of them gets wounded at some point but they they will survive pretty much untouched at the end I mean and Tolkien which I read when I was young and and at a pretty formative age I think that book had an immense influence on me and it does have some powerful deaths in it it the death of Boromir still resonates me that was that was a powerful moment the death of Gandalf in the mines of moria when when the Balrog drags him down to the thing and he says live fools and that's enormous ly powerful because you know especially at that point in the book as Gandalf is the candle fits the father figure Gandalf is the guy who has the answers Gandalf is the one who knows what they should do and how they should do it and suddenly he's gone and the you know down the hobbits are on their own with Strider and Boromir and people they don't necessarily trust because their relationships are still fairly new at that point and they're facing untold dangers and they don't have Gandalf to warn them of exactly what's around next turn and Bend that's a hugely powerful moment which I actually if it had been me Gandalf or stayed dead I think you know bringing him back as surprising but it in some ways it undercut the power of that moment and by setting up those moments toki and also set me up for the moment where it seemed like frodo had died you know when when i'm reading the end of the the two towers and shelob's stabs him and he seems to be dead and Sam took takes the ring and then the book is over you know and you have to wait for the next book I really thought Frodo was dead I thought token had earned his stripes with me he'd killed Boromir he had killed frettin now he killed Frodo my god I really don't know what's gonna happen this book anyone can die and it became so much more exciting in that point because anyone could die that peril was real and that's the feeling I want my readers to have that it if you're gonna hear is the feeling you and your rate is to have yes actually you know in a word if you're gonna write about fearful situations I want you to have fear and the right kind of fear I mean we we go on rollercoaster rides and we're scared right that rollercoaster rides are scary supposedly but we're not really scared we know that we're gonna get off the roller coaster after three minutes and however high we go and then we plunge down and there's a certain thrill in a and I guess an adrenaline rush or something like that so we like to be scared in certain senses but that's one kind of fear but there's another kind of fear that you feel when like you're all alone and you're walking in a bad neighborhood and and suddenly you hear footsteps behind you and your turn and you see see some people come in and you don't know who the hell they are and you know that that's a moment or a moment that a soldier or a policeman or any one fears when they're in a situation where their life is on their on the line and that's a that's a much more visceral kind of fear and that's the kind of fear I want to read her to feel I mean I think writing is about strong emotions I want you to to be afraid when I'm putting the characters in a scary situation when a character dies I want you to grieve for that character as you would for a friend or a loved one or a parent and it's an entire you know vicarious experience which is my goal as a writer I want you if I'm gonna describe a feast I don't want to just say yes and then they ate a feast it was delicious I want you to I wanted you to smell the food and taste the food whether it's delicious food or bad food or whatever I smelled the particular things if it's a Gauss I want you to have the excitement of getting caught up and who's going to win the joust if it's a sex scene I want you to get hot and bothered or I want to I want you not just to read my work but to live my work that's I know they're giving away this book bags here that the some of the I guess one with the VIP tickets that says a quote I said a couple years ago about a reader a reader lives a thousand lives before he dies the man who never reads lives only one but I've always felt that I I think reading is about vicarious experience I look back on cocaine which I read I'd go like I said when I was 12 and 13 and I remember things that happened in the book of you know from half a century later as if I live them I don't remember the actual things that I lived at that time I have forgotten who sat behind me in geography class and you know what I was doing that June you know of my 13th year and all that so much of this memory is gone but but the the memory of these great books that I read at that time not just Tolkien but HP Lovecraft probably how Robert a Heinlein some of the books I was reading for school and all that the classics of literature Dickens and so forth Shakespeare those are very much part of me and I think they're part of us all all of us readers we absorb this stuff and it shapes us as much as the real events of our real lives so in that sense it is real so I think for all of us here you've created something that's done that for us so thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: Aegon Targaryen

Views: 1,999,977

Rating: 4.9554949 out of 5

Keywords: game of thrones season 8, george r. r. martin, george rr martin stephen king, george rr martin pov characters, george rr martin favorite scene, ned stark death, oberyn martell death, red wedding, violence game of thrones, george rr martin tolkien, george rr martin winds of winter, george rr martin 2018, george rr martin on writing women, george rr martin childhood

Id: cspPt3-PFjw

Length: 9min 9sec (549 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 15 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Vegoran]

Honestly the thing that bothers me the most is not that they survived, it's the fact that everyone else in the courtyard is dead, you only see the important characters on their feet, so it's like 1000 vs 6, how the hell did they survive??? If it was still a small number people working together i'd be more inclined to believe it

[u/Imported_Thighs]

Knowing what happens in Episode 3 makes everything that happens in Episode 1 and 2 just feel like a waste of time.

Edit: Yes I know that everything in general feels like a waste now. I'm talking specifically about the emotional weight of episodes 1 and 2.

[u/[deleted]]

Exactly. You guys remember that stupid lore breaking crypt scene in which wights (the youngest being 15+ years old, so skeletons) somehow broke out of stone tombs and started attacking the civilians in the crypts purely for shock value and to subvert expectations of the crypts being 'safe'? Not a single one of these unarmed, unarmoured non-fighter main characters in the crypts when this happens dies. What the shit was the point?

Ignoring the fact most of those bodies are in stone tombs, the crypts are probably magic seeing as Brandon the Builder, the same guy who built the Wall and Storms End, built the crypts, and those corpses should be skeletons at best but mostly dust, why? Why do it if not a single main character dies from it? Why not run with it and show people struggling as wights of previous Starks are killing them. Why?

[u/BlueGrayTurquoise]

Randyll and Dickon Tarly got a 10 minute death scene - two guys with a combined presence in the show of about 20 minutes. Littlefinger got about a 5 minute death scene - the mastermind behind the entire “game” of thrones. I have a feeling anyone who dies in the next 3 episodes will not get the departure their character deserves. I imagine if Cercei, Danny, or Jon dies they’ll get a good send off but there are 17 other characters whom, if they die, will just get deleted like a typo. I’m pessimistic about Clegane Bowl these days, too.

[u/[deleted]]

Honestly, yeah, I expected a lot more characters to die in that episode. I mean, Brienne was swarmed not once, but twice. Jaime is left handed and crippled. Pod is... well, Pod. Now we still have 20+ characters and everyone demands their screen time.

[u/[deleted]]

He was probably shaking if he watched episode 3. I damn near developed a twitch because of it.

[u/tylorbourbon]

TWOW will be awesome, guys. It is coming, and it will be awesome.

[u/steaminghotgazpacho]

"You said it brother... wait, YOU said that?"

[u/bakahou]

Time stamped for convenience