George RR Martin Reveals New Locations in Winds of Winter

hydrogen's my name's Matt you mentioned earlier that you wrote mainly to explore and discover new worlds and Westeros in the world of song and ice and fire is so rich so I'm wondering with what's left in the books how much of Westeros do we have left to discover and how much do you write because it's necessary for the story or do you write mainly because oh hey this is a cool place to tell a story you know the story takes over the story makes its own demands there are other parts of Westeros that you will see in the last last few books I mean I haven't I haven't board a action to de Casterly Rock yet you've never seen Casterly Rock you've never seen Highgarden I think both of those locations will will play key roles and in the books to come but there is a lot of them and you know I may do when I'm going years ahead now so who the hell knows what will happen but the world that I've created there is rich enough to sustain many stories and the Song of Ice and Fire is only one of those stories so if I finish these last two books that will be the end of the story but not necessarily the end of the world I think I would probably want to do something else after I finish that something very different and maybe some short stories or maybe a science fiction novel or or a horror novel I've been thinking of some time but eventually if assuming that of course I live long enough and keep writing I might return and tell all the stories set in Westeros at different parts of Westeros different historical epics or different continents and geography so that might be fun hey George big fan of yours and on your right side so I just wanted to ask you in terms of writing Renly a lot of people were taken aback in terms of that one scene that had shown up near the end of the season and I guess they weren't necessarily picking up on a lot of the subtle hints that you had written in the series so I was wondering if you had wondered in terms of what fan reaction would have been at the earlier stages of the series towards reading a more explicit scene like was seen between Renly and the native flowers and how that might have played out differently if you had written it earlier in the series in other words if I'd had a explicit scene in the books is what you're saying yeah well I don't know I don't know what the reaction would have been you know I I do like to do certain things I don't know subtly I think subtlety is is a virtue there there are things in there that that some of my readers pick up on and that other readers miss until it's pointed out to them one of the things of course that's changed in recent decades with the advent of the Internet is that the readers are sharing their reading experiences so if if there's something there and some readers pick up on it and other readers don't the readers who missed it soon become aware of it by reading the blogs and bulletin boards and and the people were trotting out their theories and showing all the hints and things like that so that changes things but I like to I like to reward the readers who are reading closely and paying attention because there there are a lot of thing I like to write the books to reward rereading you know I think the first time you read a book you're reading for plot you read what happens next it's my hero is where the guy gonna live or die or something like that and but then if you go back and you reread the book you may pick up things on a second reading or even a third reading that you missed the first time and you and you see oh my god look what he's doing here they look at his piece for shadowing or look at this he said this and I didn't notice it the first time but it's R it's right there etc you know neither Renly nor Loras is a viewpoint character and since I'm a very strict structure of seeing everything through the eyes only of the viewpoint characters there was really no way to present explicit details of their of their relationship without having someone like walk in on them when when which is sort of a I suppose I could have done but it's a it's a clumsy technique but a television show is is a very different animal and doesn't doesn't have to have the restrictions the camera is your viewpoint there and that viewpoint can be pointed anywhere on any character it doesn't have to necessarily just follow your six or seven designated viewpoint characters the major change of course is really around perspective because the books do change perspective and that the show does not as much but it's it's all through well I mean as a novelist you have certain tools at your disposal to tell a story with and these tools are not available to a filmmaker I mean as a novelist you are you know you have internal monologue you can you can do exposition simply as part of the the narrative you know you have access to the character's thoughts you can do unreliable narrators where you you really can't do any of this as a filmmaker or a television director your external you're never inside the character I mean yeah you could try to be there are those occasional experimental films where you're looking out through someone's eyes and there's a voiceover telling you their thoughts they're mostly terrible and don't work very well you know the voiceover in film is is a usually a technique that says something really doesn't working here and we're having to patch it over with this clumsy voiceover technique and it's frequently added at a later point like the famous voiceovers in Blade Runner in wood shop I think really detract from the from that film and weren't necessary but but you have other techniques that make up for that as as a filmmaker or television writer you have you have tricks that are not available to anomalous you can you can bring in music to heighten suspense or to build up the emotional impact of the of the scene you you can do things with lighting and of course you can your actors can bring a tremendous amount to it with just a just a look just the expression on their faces I mean they the scene we showed last night when I referred to in the comments afterwards where King Robert is arriving in Winterfell and he officer off his horse and walks up to Ned and you know looks at Ned and says you've got fat and Shaun being just sort of raises his eyes and looks I'm up and down and the whole audience hell's with laughter because of where this Robert has really gotten fat that was something that the two of them two of them did I doubt it was even in the script I bet it was I don't know some by play of the of the actors but maybe it was in the script but I certainly could not have done that in prose I mean imagine trying to write that in prose and how would it go you know Ned you've got fat Robert said Ned flicked his eyebrows they'd raised his head up and dad doesn't have the same impact that's actually seeing Shaun beans face as he does that does that little trick so you have to always be aware of what medium you're working in and and what things will work in it and what things don't work in hi George how difficult do you think it is for a new science fiction or fantasy writer to break into the industry it's actually if you're good of course that's always the purvey so you have to have half that talent it's pretty easy to break in actually you know I always advise new writers young writers to to break in with short stories that was the way I did it in the in the 70s and that's still the best way I mean we're fortunate that science fiction/fantasy still has half a dozen magazines they're looking for new material every month and therefore have to read their slush pile in a fairly timely manner to find the contents you know the established writers there's there's not much money in short fiction you're not gonna get rich writing short fiction by any means and the result is that most established writers don't do very much short fiction past a point with certain point in their career they switch to novels which is where you can actually make a living so as a result there's a lot of openings for new talent in in the pages of analog and the magazine of fantasy and science fiction and Asimov's magazine and even nuit magazines things like Lightspeed and toward calm and and so forth and my mind a good career path still as it was in the 70s is to is to write a whole bunch of short stories and sell as many of them as you can and build a name for yourself in the world of short fiction because science fiction readers and fantasy readers will will notice these stories and then when you finally do write your first novel and it hits the stands it's not just gonna be the the first novel by some new person that you've never heard of in your life and why should you pick up their novel when you don't know who they are it's going to be the long-awaited first novel by this person who's published twenty short stories and you know you've been seeing their name in all the magazines and you kind of like what they did so it gives you a it gives you a leg up when you do move to the to the world of novels and that's a that's a good way to start

Channel: Aegon Targaryen

Views: 195,854

Keywords: stephen king, a dream of spring, 2019, new, video, fire and blood, blood moon, prequel, the long night, throws shade, david and dan, jrr tolkien, finale, ending, inspiration, littlefinger, casterly rock, highgarden, jon snow, daenarys targaryen, history and lore, season 8, cast

Id: x_lI2mIxRyU

Length: 10min 28sec (628 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 10 2019