When Martin announced with a heavy heart at the beginning of the year that he had blown the most high profile deadline of his career, it was a huge disappointment to fans. Though there were those who were supportive and told Martin to write at his own pace, we’d read it whenever it came, there were just as many who raged that the books were pointless now. They would be nothing more than that lowest common denominator of fantasy, a novelization of a movie or TV show. There was no more point in waiting for him.
But Martin is a wily storyteller, and even as early as last year, he was hinting that perhaps, as the show passed his written page, and things became set in stone on film, his book world was still far more fluid, and that he had even thought of a twist that the show would be unable to do. Since the beginning, he has always said the books and the show would diverge from one another, comparing it to “the butterfly effect” where one small choice to have a character turn left instead of right would, four seasons on put them in a completely different place in Westeros than they were currently in the books at the same point in the story. In this case the twist he had thought of involved a character who the show had killed off in a definitive manner, while in the novels, said character was still alive and well.
Well, with all the time in the world now to finish The Winds of Winter, since there’s no keeping up with the show anymore, Martin confirmed he has indeed gone with including that twist. Speaking to IGN, when asked about the twist he confirmed: “I have decided to do that. Yes, I have decided to do it. And will you know it? I don’t know.”
Watch the interview below:
Personally, I think this is the smartest thing that Martin could do right about now. Earlier in the interview, he admits that he wishes things we different. He wishes he had been done with the series before now. He wishes the whole thing were set in stone so that his readers would know the ending, and that the show would not be passing him like this. But that’s not how things worked out. He’s a slow writer, he’s always been a slow writer, and TV just cannot move that slowly.
But what this affords him the chance to do, as the creator of the series, is to pull “creator’s prerogative” as it were. After all, whatever some fans may say, these are *not* novelizations of a screenplay someone wrote first and set in stone for him to follow. He is the one in the driver’s seat. He doesn’t have to stick to what the show does just because they got their “first.” And though the show is it’s own thing now, following a basic narrative structure he laid out, all those delightful details that a show can’t take the time to add, and probably would have had to cut even if they had been written first, are his to dally with. And that includes adding in twists with characters he has the ability to keep alive on the page, while the show had to kill them off, for one reason or another, either for simplification, both in visual story telling and in salary, or because early on someone made the choice to turn left instead of right, and this is where everyone wound up.
By forcing the books to diverge completely from the show like this, Martin has now given fans two ways to experience this story–the near term straightforward path of the show, and then a more meandering wandering alternate timeline of the books, where they may tell over all the same story, but certainly not getting there the same way. That’s great news for fans of both version of Westeros: The one in Game of Thrones, and the one in A Song of Ice and Fire. And even though I’m eager to see Season 6, knowing that Martin is determined to tell his own story his own way makes me just as eager for The Winds of Winter, when it’s hopefully announced on schedule in 2017.
Via http://winteriscoming.net/2016/02/25/martin-confirms-winds-of-winter-twist-involves-character-show-killed-off/
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