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‘I’ve been struggling with it’: George RR Martin on The Winds of Winter

Some highlights:

“I’ve been struggling with it for a few years,” he told the Guardian. “The Winds of Winter is not so much a novel as a dozen novels, each with a different protagonist, each having a different cast of supporting players, antagonists, allies and lovers around them, and all of these weaving together against the march of time in an extremely complex fashion. So it’s very, very challenging. Fire and Blood by contrast was very simple. Not that it’s easy – it still took me years to put together – but it is easier.”

He confirmed that the sixth instalment was his next priority: “The Winds of Winter is next, then I’ll decide what comes after that – whether it’s to go on to A Dream of Spring, the last one, or whether I switch back into Fire and Blood II, do another Dunk and Egg story or two. But I’ll worry about that one thing at a time – that’s too far ahead.”

In the last year, five potential Game of Thrones spin-off shows with HBO have been announced, with only one having been greenlit so far: The Long Night, which will be set 5,000 years before Game of Thrones and written by Jane Goldman. Martin confirmed they were all prequels, but said he did not expect all of them would be made and that he was not writing any of them. “None of them are traditional spin-offs,” he said. “You won’t be seeing the further adventures of Arya, Sansa or Jon Snow, you’ll be going back in time. The other four are all over the map and at least two of them are solidly based on material in Fire and Blood. Those haven’t been greenlit yet.”

‘I’ve been struggling with it’: George RR Martin on The Winds of Winter

asoiafuniversity:

The character I’m probably most like in real life is Samwell Tarly. Good old Sam. And the character I’d want to be? Well who wouldn’t want to be Jon Snow — the brooding, Byronic, romantic hero whom all the girls love. Theon [Greyjoy] is the one I’d fear becoming. Theon wants to be Jon Snow, but he can’t do it. He keeps making the wrong decisions. He keeps giving into to his own selfish, worst impulses.

In some senses, Theon is struggling all the way through to be a hero. They both come out of the same situation: they’re both raised in Winterfell by Eddard Stark, but they’re not part of the real, core family. Theon is a ward, and Jon Snow is a bastard son. So they’re both a little outside, but Jon handles this successfully, and Theon fails to handle this. He is poisoned by his own envy and his sense of not belonging.

–George R.R. Martin, “Fantasy Needs Magic” Interview, August 2017