George R.R. Martin

George R.R. Martin's best-selling fantasy series "A Song of Ice and Fire" is the basis for the HBO series Game of Thrones.

From his Q & A with Charlie Jane Anders for io9:

One of the things that strikes me in the recent books is, there'll be a major turning point for a character, and then you realize it's been building for hundreds of pages. Do you always plan these huge events and then find ways to build up to them, or do you sometimes write a character's journey and then realize that it's been leading to a huge turning point?

All the major things have been planned since the beginning, since the early 90s, the major deaths and the general direction of things. Obviously, the details and the minor things have been things that I've discovered along the way, part of the fun of writing the books is making these discoveries along the journey. But the general structure of the books has been in my head all along.

It's always a tightrope, writing — you do have to set things up. You don't want them to come out of nowhere, out of left field. You do want to foreshadow them. But you don't want the developments to seem predictable. If everybody knows what's coming two books before it comes, then it loses all its impact. That's the tough part. There's no easy answer to that. You just do what you can.

Your books, especially recently, are full of women trying to exert power in a male dominated world who have to compromise themselves along the way. Are you trying to make a feminist statement?

You could certainly interpret it that way. I don't presume to say I'm making a statement of this type or that type. But it is certainly a patriarchal society, I am trying to explore some of the ramifications of that. I try to write women as people, just as I try to write any other characters. Strong and weak, and brave and cowardly, and noble and selfish. It has been very gratifying to me how many women read my work and how much they like at least some of...[read on]

See George R.R. Martin's list of 5 novels that should have won the Hugo Award.

Learn about Martin's biggest worry about the TV show as it gets deeper into the story.

--Marshal Zeringue