It is going to be very strange to go back to a world where Daenerys Targaryen is still alive. Where we know who is going to sit on the throne. Where Jon Snow’s parents aren’t as important as we thought (or hoped). Where there are numerous important storylines that do not appear at all in the HBO adaptation. Most notably an entire major plotline about another potential Targaryen heir. Fans are hoping Book 6 will appear next year, most likely before World Con 2020 in New Zealand.
George RR Martin has been under fire from some impatient fans to hurry up and finish Book 6, let alone start Book 7, A Dream of Spring. He gave a major interview recently when he received the Chicago Public Library Foundation’s Carl Sandburg Literary Award.
The author admitted part of the problem may be that he has no clear and comprehensive fixed plan for many of his characters and plotlines.
Many fans and critics worry that the books may be slightly getting away from the author as he keeps creating new plotlines and goes off on tangents with new characters.
Asked if he was able to keep on top of it all, he confessed: “With increasing difficulty.”
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The Game of Thrones creator said some authors are like “architects.”
Martin described an architect author: “He draws a blueprint, and he knows what they’re going to be made of, and how many stories there are going to be, where the bathrooms will be, and how they’ll be heated, and what the roof will be made of — everything before they even dig the foundation. That’s the way the architect writers work.
“They plan the novels out in advance, what’s going to be everywhere, every turn, every twist, everything, they have these very detailed outlines.”
Martin then described the other type of author, like himself, as being a “gardener.”
Martin said: “And then there are the gardeners, who dig a hole, and they plant a seed and they water it — in the case of writers, with their blood and their tears and their sweat — and they hope that something comes up.
“And they have a general idea — they know whether they planted an acorn or a tomato plant. But there’s lots of surprises. Sometimes it doesn’t come up at all, or it comes up and dies. And sometimes it gets very wild.
“And that’s me, I’m much more a gardener than an architect. In that way, I’m like JRR Tolkien and others. It’s not the most efficient method of writing… but it’s worked for me all my life, so I’m probably going to keep continuing doing it that way.”
Fans know there are some fixed points in the ending, which Martin shared withe the HBO team, but there are still likely to be some big surprises to come.
