If George R.R. Martin were in 'Game of Thrones,' this is how he'd die
Author George R.R. Martin talks to members of the media Sunday at Comic-Con.
(David Brooks)
By Matthew T. Hall
July 28, 2014 12:30 PM PT
If acclaimed author George R.R. Martin were a character in his epic, unpredictable seven-novel "A Song of Ice and Fire" fantasy series, the bloody heart upon which the HBO TV show "Game of Thrones" is based, he knows just how he'd write his own death: Much less gruesomely than many of the memorable characters he has killed to lend his sword-and-sex-and-sorcery books their sense of vicious verisimilitude.
Martin would go out the way his most popular character, Tyrion, hopes to die.
"He's asked this very question in one of the books, and it's also in the show," Martin told a crowd outside San Diego Comic-Con Sunday. "Anyone under the age of 14 here, please cover your ears. When one of the Hill tribe says, 'Tyrion, son of Tywin, how would you like to die?' he answers, 'At the age of 90 with a bellyful of wine and a girl's mouth around my...."
You don't need to have read the books or seen the shows to know what Tyrion and Martin said next.
Author George R. R. Martin (left) and actor Peter Dinklage (right). Dinklage plays Tyrion Lannister on "Game of Thrones," the hit HBO show based on Martin's epic fantasy series.
( / Nick Briggs.)
Martin has long said he loves all his characters but that Tyrion, his shortest, is his favorite. Sunday, he called Tyrion the "easiest to write" but admitted it takes him "days and sometimes weeks" to perfect the one-liners the dwarf just dashes off.
So if Martin were on the show, which character would he be?
"I would probably be Samwell Tarly. I love Sam, too. He's a great character," he said. "Tyrion might be who I want to be, but Sam is probably closer to who I actually am. The fat kid who likes to read books and doesn't like to go up a lot of stairs."
In a loud and lengthy public interview and a quieter media Q-and-A that followed, Martin shared a series of insights into his characters and his own character Sunday. Here are the highlights, including several thoughtful answers on how he perceives the differences between his books and the HBO show. And yes, the last question is worth the Martin-like slog through these words, especially if you're a fan of Martin, his world of Westeros and/or wine. [Editor's note: Thanks to all who suggested questions before my interview with Martin. Where I asked them, I've linked to your tweets and Facebook comments.]
Q: "Batman or Superman?"
A: "Spiderman."
Q: "Star Trek or Star Wars?"
A: "Forbidden Planet."
Q: "Superpower: Flying or invisibility?"
A: "When I was a kid, the power I wanted was Green Lantern's. Just finding this magic ring would be really cool. What frustrated me about Green Lantern is like all he could think was to make giant green fists. I could think of better things."
Q: "When did you know that you wanted to be a writer and you had a passion for writing? What is something since you were a kid?"
A: "That's really two different answers. I had a passion for writing as long as I can remember. Even when I was a little kid I wrote little monster stories and sold them to other kids in the neighborhood."
Q: "How much would a story go for in those days?"
A: "A nickel. If I sold two stories, I could get a comic book. They were 10 cents in those days, and that's what they still should be."
Q: "So you probably when you made the deal with HBO were looking at a quarter or 50 cents?"
A: "Right, it really went up from inflation. But even when I was writing those stories and selling them, I didn't really think I'd be a writer. I thought I'd be an astronaut or maybe a super hero. But I kept failing to get super powers. So that was a real drawback. I did consider going the Batman or Green Arrow route. I took archery once, figuring I could be Green Arrow but I couldn't hit the target, so that was a drawback. That was not working. So at some point I gave up on being a super hero and/or an astronaut and decided I'm probably better writing about this stuff than actually trying to live it. So I started writing it and sending it to comic fanzines initially. I was there right at the birth of comic fanzines."
Q: "When did that process [of writing 'A Game of Thrones'] begin and you start to move into that world and those characters? Do you remember the original moments of starting to create that story?"
A: "Yeah, that was 1991, the summer of 1991. I remember it very precisely. I had already been a writer for 20 years at that point. I'd had a career in television and film, working on shows like 'Twilight Zone' and 'Beauty and the Beast.' I'd published four novels. I'd won major awards. And in 1991, I was still right in the middle of my Hollywood years, as it was said, but I didn't have a plum assignment so I thought, well, it's been four or five years since I did my last novel. Let me do a novel. And I started this science fiction novel that I had been planning for some time and I was writing very well and then one day the idea of what would be the first chapter of 'Game of Thrones' just came to me. It just came to me so vividly that I just knew I had to write it. So I put the other book aside, in a drawer. It's been there ever since. And I wrote this chapter which I knew wasn't part of what I was working on. I didn't know what it was a part of. But it's the chapter where they find the dire wolf pups in the summer snow. And I knew it was the summer snow. I didn't know a lot about it. So where did that come from? I don't know. Sometimes the hardest question you can ask any writer is where you get the ideas because there is no answer to it. They come from the subconscious, from the left brain, right brain, whatever, from some brain. Or maybe from a muse if you're in ancient Greece. But it's just like one day there is no idea and then suddenly there is an idea. And where the hell did it come from? Who knows? But it's there and it's a good idea and if you're smart, you'll follow it."
Q: "You got any regrets about the books, having seen the TV shows, people reacting to various characters? Would you have changed anything? It's got to be tough to write a seven-book series, far in as you are, and not be able to go back and revisit some of those earlier ones?
A: "When I lived in Chicago, I was in a workshop with a number of other writers, including the great Gene Wolfe, a marvelous writer who wrote 'The Shadow of the Torturer' series, 'The Book of the New Son' as it's called, a trilogy that ultimately ran to four books. And Gene had a full-time job as an editor and was able to write all four of those books in first draft and then go back and start revising them, and he didn't give any to his publisher until the final series was finished. And then he could revise the first book, knowing what had happened in the last book. He could take out things, he could put in things, he could rewrite things. That's the perfect way to do a series, but it's contingent on having another source of income during the decade it takes you to do that. And unless ... I had a spouse or a trust fund that was paying my mortgage, that was not an option that was available to me. So I look back and there are mistakes in the books, certainly. My fans are eagle-eyed and point that out. I have a horse that changes sex. I'm notorious for getting eye color wrong. And there are a few more major things that I might not have done quite the same way, but it still irritates me.
Q: "What major things?"
A: "Ideally, I would prefer that the books be perfect, and partly that's not only a general desire for perfection but because I also use from time to time the literary device of the unreliable narrator. So a character will remember something, since I'm in people's heads, a character will remember something that did not actually happen, and the subtle readers, the sharp readers, pick up on that. But it confuses the issue when there are real mistakes and they're confusing the character's mistakes with the stupid author's mistakes. Some of these I can actually correct in later editions, like the horse sex and eye color but not necessarily all."
Q: "In your early days, did you ever feel like you were quote-unquote the struggling writer? Did you have moments where you thought you couldn't do it?
A: "Yes, certainly. I had a whole first decade of uh.... I sold my first story in '71. I didn't go full time until '79. I was a rising writer. I was publishing more and more, but I still wasn't making enough money to live on so the first thing was am I ever going to be a full-time writer or do I have to be a teacher or someone who writes on the side or a journalist who writes on the side? And if you look at the history of science fiction, even some of the giants of the golden age never worked full time. Asimov ultimately was able to go full-time, and Bradbury I think mostly did, but people like Clifford Simak, for example, one of the great grandmasters of science fiction, spent his entire life as a small-town journalist for newspapers. He didn't go full time until he retired. Gene Wolfe, whom I had mentioned earlier, was a magazine editor first. He didn't go full time until he retired. So there was that. And then the other thing is in this business you're only as hot as your latest book, and I was a rising star in the '70s and early '80s and then in 1984 I published a novel called 'The Armageddon Rag,' which was nominated for a World Fantasy Award and got great reviews and nobody bought it. And suddenly my career as a novelist was over. I couldn't get a publisher to buy my next novel. Nobody wanted to know my name. They looked at the sales totals. I often tell young writers this is not an occupation for someone who values security. It's all ups and downs, and the ground can just disappear underneath your feet at any moment. So I've had my ups and downs but thankfully, lately, it's mostly been up."
Q: "Speaking of ups, has there been a blurring of the lines with the success of the TV show? Has that changed how you're going to approach the future of the books?"
A: "No. I started the books in 1991. We had the first meeting about the TV show in 2007, so I have 16 more years solidly rooted in my brain about who these characters are, what this world is like and where I'm going with it. I recognize for other people when they think of Tyrion they're always going to see Peter Dinklage, when they think of Arya, they're always going to see Maisie Williams. And much as I love Peter and Maisie, that's not true for me. My characters have 16 years over them. The books are the books and the show is the show. And the video games are the video games. And the comic books are the comic books. And the replica swords are the replica swords. The books are the thing that's important to me."
Q: "How do you keep it all straight? I'm envisioning you like Carrie in 'Homeland,' right, with the pictures and the lines with all the characters and the storylines. How do you keep it straight? Do you have a room like that in your house or is it all in your head?"
A: "I have a computer. I have files on the computer. I have charts and genealogies. I certainly have a lot of crudely drawn maps. I have print files where I've printed out things. But that being said, I have much less of all this than most people would assume. It is in my head. And I've often joked at functions like this, that there is something wrong with me. I have almost a photographic memory for some character who played a brief scene. You want to talk about Ser Colen of Greenpools, who appeared in 'A Clash of Kings' for one scene with Catelyn Stark? I could tell you about Ser Colen of Greepools. But if I meet any of you tomorrow, I won't know who the hell any of you are. The synapses in the brain that other people use for real life I seem to be devoting to Westeros."
Q: "Can you say which elements in the series have most closely mirrored your own ideas of your creations and which ones have deviated the most?"
A: "It's never going to be exact because 16 years.... When you're casting actors or something like that, you're looking for talent not how closely do they represent that. And I've never wanted that. We do a wonderful calendar every year, 'The Song of Ice and Fire' calendar, with great artists. .... And I never look over those calendars and say no, no, no this is what Jaime should look like. I welcome the artist to do their own interpretations. Unless they make an actual factual error, give him a third eye or something like that or fail to notice that one of his hands has been cut off at the appropriate point, I welcome the interpretations. And this is especially true of television, which is a collaborative medium. You get wonderful costume designs by a very creative costume designer. You don't want me in there saying, 'No, no, no, this is how I described it in the books.' And all of that is true, so I prefer just to try to park myself with the most talented people possible and then let them do their own thing."
Q: "A follow up to how you said you wanted to die with a bellyful of wine. Arbor gold or Dornish red?"
A: "Red, I think. I'm a red guy."
George R.R. Martin attends the "Game of Thrones" panel on Day 2 of Comic-Con International on Friday, July 25, 2014, in San Diego. Looking on from left are Sophie Turner, Kit Harington, Rose Leslie and John Bradley. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
(The Associated Press)
Matthew T. Hall
Opinion: The real world was too much, so I escaped into other worlds this year
Opinion: Clearly labeling opinion journalism is essential. We're making sure to do so on social media.
Opinion: I will never know if he could hear me say I loved him at the end
Matthew T. Hall: 2020 was the year of other people's voices
Matthew T. Hall: Protesters have pushed for racial justice. Athletes are making sure you don't look away.
How the coronavirus pandemic has changed The San Diego Union-Tribune's Opinion section
Get Weekend Opinion on Sunday mornings
Editorials, Commentary, Reader Reaction and a touch of Steve Breen delivered every Sunday.
Most read opinion stories
Opinion: As mayor of Chula Vista, I'm considering dumping Republic Services
Opinion: Republic Services told workers we were family. Strike negotiations proved otherwise.
Opinion: Dear restaurants, please stop over-salting our food
Opinion: The pandemic isn't going away any time soon. Here's how SDSU has adapted.
Opinion: San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore's decision to retire is a relief