Let me preface this post with this: I have not read A Game of Thrones by Mr. Martin nor do I plan to. Now that being said some of you will dismiss what I'm about to say out of hand, but alas!
I know Martin is a great storyteller because I've read one or two of his short stories and I've seen some of the shows he's written scripts for, but one thing has always bothered me about
A Game of Thrones (hereafter GoT): the way he starts each and every chapter with the character the chapter is concerning. Now at first I thought it was a rather novel way of dealing with complex multi-character story arcs, and it is, but the more I think about it and now the more I see it being mimicked by other authors (more on that later) the less I like it. Indeed after I met Mr. Martin:
I've decided it isn't so much a clever solution to a problem some authors have, but a rather pretentious outlook on his readers. Don't get me wrong here, I've seen the HBO adaptation of GoT and spoken to more than a fair share of people about the books and series as a whole, and I know it's complex and multi-layered, but come on!
Lord of the Rings,
Dune, Feists
Riftwar Cycle, and many, others have complex multi-character stories. Instead of holding our hands through each chapter and then announcing "Okay reader, I know you're enthralled and into what we just read, but I'm going to go ahead and change perspective.. I know it'll be hard to get used to, but here's the character we're going to be dealing with, I promise you'll be okay after a few pages." they just change perspective and move on. Most authors do this because they have
faith in their readers and more importantly they don't have an over-hyped sense of self worth. I hear your groaning from here "but all authors are a little pompous" and this is true, but my impression of Martin is that he feels himself a Geek God who's stories are so complex and rich that there is just no possible way for us little readers to understand without some sort of hint as to what's going on. Furthermore, his absolute unwillingness to bend from his style hurts GoT more than it helps. By writing each chapter completely separate from the one prior and the one following it, he's losing out on crucial developments. Sometimes a character or perspective needs more than one chapter to fully develop that portion of the plot and
that's okay! The frustrating thing about this point is that he knows this, Martin wrote the big battle episode of Season 2 which only dealt with what was happening at Kings Landing, why? Because there was so much going on and so much that needed to be said, that the only feasible way to get everything across was to dedicate an entire episode to this one perspective.
The other downside to this writing style is that it is very episodic in nature and plot points end up not fitting together as well. From those I've spoken to one common theme that has come across is Martin's frustrating ability to end many chapters (and books for that matter) in horrifying cliffhangers and then not bothering to return to that character for several chapters. Sure this works well at keeping your readers engaged, but doing it too often is frustrating and has made some people skip ahead just to make sure that character appears again. This leads me to one last thing I would like to discuss, and that is, of course, time between books. This has been discussed, argued, defended, and re-argued over and over so I won't waste much time on it, but I'll just throw my two cents in.
Indeed let me direct everyone's attention to Neil Gaiman's blog that includes one of my favorite quotes
"George R. R. Martin is not your bitch". Gaiman is brilliant and, in the end, absolutely right. As frustrating as waiting for a book can be, there is still nothing saying how an author must spend his time. Oh it sucks to see on their twitter, facebook, or blog that they're twiddling their thumbs or writing something non-series related, but if it bothers you so much, don't read their non-published works. I don't completely agree, of course, there is, at least in my opinion, some sort of unspoken rule that states that you shouldn't say something, even in passing, if you aren't going to try your damnedst to do it. If, like Martin, you know you're going to be writing short stories, working on scripts, and otherwise dicking around, you probably shouldn't say "oh hey guys this'll be out sometime in the near future". The real thing I want to mention about the whole scandal, and oh my god have I heard enough bitching from Martin fanboys to call this a scandal, is that there are much better ways to deal with your fans than Martin has. Patrick Rothfuss, for example, has taken his time in writing his trilogy, and while the times in between books haven't been nearly the same scope as Martin, they've been long enough to get people bitching. Instead of disgruntled with his fans, Pat has been very transparent on his blog. Shit happened in his life, he stopped writing, wrote a blog about it with an apology, and took some time to himself. What happened? Every single one of the comments were sympathetic and every one of his fans' hearts went out to him. Hell, he'll write on his blog that he's just not having a good week and hasn't written a scrap, and
that's okay. Like any relationship, and yes the author/reader does constitute as a relationship in my book, communication is the key. For me, if I know you're working on it or why you aren't working on it, then take your time. I'd certainly read a well polished product than some rushed piece of shit, but the key is to talk to us, let us know what's going on. We don't need a huge explanation nor do we technically even deserve an explanation, but it'll keep us satisfied, and honestly reading Pats blogs have been fun and given me an insight to one of my favorite authors that I wouldn't otherwise have. Sure book three doesn't even have a tentative release date, but he's still posting and working, so he can take his time. Oh and cause I have to promote him, here's his blog:
Patrick Rothfuss Author Extraordinaire.
Going back to Martin's style, a rather horrifying thing has started to emerge based on his success.. people are copying him. Indeed the whole reason for this blog is because of this silly phenomenon. Like I said, I have no plans to read GoT until it's finished (this is because I think he may die before he finishes and I don't wanna get blue balled) so his pompous hand holding hasn't had any effect on me or my reading experience, til now. Here in Albuquerque Martin and some other local authors including Daniel Abrahams, Melinda Snodgrass, Walter Jon Williams, and others have a writing group. Indeed it's more than just a writing group, they roleplay together and generally get into mischief. This is where Martin has screwed with me. Daniel Abrahams and Ty Franck (Martin's assistant) collaborated on one of the best space operas I've read called
Leviathan Wakes and guess what?
They totally pulled the "lets name the character at the start of each chapter". This didn't bother me at first, but then I was reading the second book in one of Melinda Snodgrass' ongoing series called The Edge of Ruin and lo and behold she did the same thing! This is when it really bothered me though because in the first book Snodgrass didn't do it, she just had normal perspective changes, but book two she started copying Martin, except half assed. You see Snodgrass doesn't really utilize many characters, indeed she has one main character and then occasionally she'll switch to another just to develop the plot. What she ended up doing was only naming the main characters chapters. The character, named Richard, has the main bulk of the book, but all of his chapters start with "Richard", but NONE of the other characters do. So we'll switch to a whole new, different character with no heads up, but then when it's Richards turn we're suddenly pulled back with that crap. Not only does this serve zero purpose, but it was annoying as all hell. Her story is not nearly complex enough to warrant naming the character, nor does it really work all that well when you only have one main character and a host of side characters.
Both examples come from authors directly associated with Martin so my hope is that it is merely a local trend, but given the success of Martin and now Abrahams and Franck, I would not be surprised if authors, editors, and publishers started leaning toward this style. Authors.. we're not stupid, we don't need and holding, and no matter how complex you think your stories are, we can follow along with the plot. Furthermore, please, please just give the character his due time, don't try and keep it split up, instead if a character needs two, or three, or however many chapters to further the plot, give it to them!
