George R. R. Martin Interview Teaser

Hi there!

As you know, since I was granted permission to do this interview with GRRM to coincide with the paperback release of A Feast for Crows in the UK, I cannot post the whole Q&A until next month. But here is a teaser, just so you can patiently wait for the full interview.

Enjoy!:-)

-----------------------

What do you feel is your strength as a writer/storyteller?

Characters. Mind you, I don't discount the importance of style and plot and the other ingredients of fiction, but for me, the people will always be the heart of the matter. I want my characters to be as real to my readers as the guy next door... but more interesting.

What extensive research did the writing of the A song of Ice and Fire entail?

I've filled up several bookcases with books about medieval history. Feasts and fools and tournaments, warfare and women, various popular histories of the Hundred Years War, the Crusades, the Albigensian Crusade, the Wars of the Roses, etc. You can't read too much. You never know what information you may need.

Honestly, do you believe that the fantasy genre will ever come to be recognized as veritable literature? Truth be told, in my opinion there has never been this many good books/series as we have right now, and yet there is still very little respect (not to say none) associated with the genre.

There's still resistance, but it seems to me that J.R.R. Tolkien is finally being accepted into the canon, however grudgingly, and that creates hope for the rest of us. In the end, though, only time will tell. Will today's bestselling fantasies still be read twenty years from now? Fifty? One hundred?

Have the plotlines diverged much since you began writing the series, or did you have the entire plot more or less figured out from the very beginning? Were any characters added or further fleshed out beyond your original intention? Have you made any changes to your initial plans during the course of the writing of the series?

I won't say the plotlines have diverged, but the process of getting from here to there has taken more time and more pages than I initially estimated... perhaps because I found the places and people I encountered along the way so interesting. The secondary and tertiary characters are largely to blame, the spearcarriers who keep insisting that they're human too, when all I want them to do is stand there and be quiet and hold that spear. Yes, some of my initial plans have changed along the way. If they hadn't, I would just be connecting the dots, and that would drive me mad. Some writers are architects and some are gardeners, and I am in the second camp. The tale takes on a life of its own in the writing.

Is a series like A Song of Ice and Fire something you've always yearned to write, or was it something you came up with in the latter part of your writing career?

I've always loved fantasy, since I first encountered Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien in my high school days. I was writing sword & sorcery even in my fanzine days in the 60s, along with SF and horror and superhero yarns. Truth is, I like all the flavors of fantastic fiction, and for me it has never been a big deal to move from one genre to another.

How would you like to be remembered as an author? What is the legacy you'll leave behind?

Hell, all writers dream of immortality, of being remembered beside Homer and Shakespeare and Dickens in the storytellers' pantheon. That's a determination that only posterity can make, however, and there's no point in dwelling on it. All you can do is try to write the best books that you possibly can, one page at a time.