{"id":318,"date":"2015-08-26T07:00:06","date_gmt":"2015-08-26T12:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/jessicaconoley\/?p=318"},"modified":"2015-08-26T07:00:06","modified_gmt":"2015-08-26T12:00:06","slug":"super-secret-library-day-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/jessicaconoley\/super-secret-library-day-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Super Secret Library Day- Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you missed part 1 click here to catch up.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you balance your editorial brain with your writing brain?\u00a0 Is it symbiotic? Or do you have to mute your editorial brain to finish your first drafts?\u201d\u00a0 I ask.<\/p>\n

George R.R. Martin<\/a> pauses, \u201cNow that\u2019s an interesting question.\u201d<\/p>\n

Interesting.\u00a0 That could be good.\u00a0 It means all my words came out of my mouth, in somewhat of the right order, in a way that made sense.\u00a0 And he\u2019s not answering right away.\u00a0 Maybe that means people don\u2019t ask him this all the time.\u00a0 Maybe that means he thinks I\u2019m not a total blathering imbecile.\u00a0 Maybe that means he might remember me.\u00a0 And he probably wouldn\u2019t remembered me if I\u2019d asked if Arya is going to get her wolf back, or he would of remembered me as the idiot girl who asked if Arya was going to get her wolf back.<\/p>\n

He settles back in his chair a bit and says back in the time of typewriters he had first or second drafts because he hated re-typing.\u00a0 But now, with computers, he has twenty million drafts because he edits as he goes along.\u00a0 For example today, \u201cWhile I was reading, I found ten things I want to change.\u201d Tonight in his hotel room he\u2019ll make the edits and then, tomorrow, when he reads it at the convention he\u2019ll go back and find what worked and what didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to be careful to find the editorial verses creative balance, and don\u2019t<\/em> overdevelop the editorial.\u201d\u00a0 He has friends he\u2019s known since he first started writing, they \u201cwent to too many writers\u2019 conferences, and now they\u2019re so critical. They think every sentence has to be Proust.\u00a0 But we\u2019re not writing War and Peace<\/em>. You just have to get the story down.\u00a0 And remember, there are editors.\u00a0 They get paid to do something. Let them do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

A guy in the front row asks how GRRM feels about killing characters off?<\/p>\n

For those of you who haven\u2019t read his work, GRRM is the best <\/em>at killing characters. I mean you\u2019re just going along page after page getting to know this guy better than your best friend, and whap<\/em>.\u00a0 He\u2019s killed.\u00a0 And there\u2019s nothing you can do about it because that\u2019s what happened, and the world\u2019s never going to be the same again.\u00a0 But, back to the question…<\/p>\n

GRRM said writers write the story they want to read, and he likes stories that surprise you.\u00a0 When he was little, the family would be watching TV and his mom would announce the ends to TV shows as the episode was playing. \u201cNow Lucy\u2019s going to work at the chocolate factory, and the chocolates are just going to come faster and faster…\u201d Because of his mom he started to predict endings too, and he got pretty good at it.\u00a0 \u201cBut then Tolkien came along and Gandalf died! And this was in the sixties, and you couldn\u2019t just run out and buy the next book, because it wasn\u2019t available yet. And Gandalf was dead\u2026\u201d When Gandalf died it put every other character in danger, because when someone important can get killed, it means anyone can get killed.<\/p>\n

He likes to keep the reader off balance.\u00a0 By writing with multiple viewpoints it lets you kill off a viewpoint character.\u00a0 There\u2019s a lot of emotional power in that. And the story can keep on going.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that he likes killing his characters. As a matter of fact he wrote the Red Wedding scene last.\u00a0 (The Red Wedding is officially the worst wedding ever.\u00a0 Complete disaster.\u00a0 The scene is based on The Black Dinner<\/a> and Glencoe Massacre <\/a>from Scottish history.\u00a0 Read up on those two, and the next time you\u2019re at a crappy family dinner it won\u2019t seem so bad.) As he was writing he skipped over the Red Wedding scene because he knew it was going to be hard to write.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re a storyteller you have to kill people for the good of the story.\u00a0 Death should have an emotional impact because that\u2019s what it does in real life. When the writer feels it the reader will too.<\/p>\n

In the 80s he worked on the TV show Beauty & the Beast<\/em>. When writing for TV, death is often an act break that leads into a commercial.\u00a0 In a mystery the first commercial break is the dead body, and then you cut straight to a toilet-paper ad.\u00a0 But death shouldn\u2019t be an act break.\u00a0 It should rip out your guts.<\/p>\n

They killed off the main character on Beauty & the Beast<\/em><\/a>, and the next episode they decided to have the other characters mourn her. The network told them it was a terrible idea.\u00a0 The showed aired, and then the ratings went steadily down. He laughed his creaky laugh and said he learned people don\u2019t want to tune in every week and cry.<\/p>\n

As a writer, he\u2019s drawn to complexity.\u00a0 \u201cReal life is complicated.\u00a0 Fiction\u2019s often too simple.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s when he figures out the endings too fast.\u00a0 He\u2019ll keep reading a book because he wants to know what happens next.\u00a0 But he also knows \u201ccomplicated stories are a bitch to write\u201d.\u00a0 When it comes to Ice and Fire<\/em> <\/a>sometimes he thinks he made it too hard.\u00a0 He\u2019ll be working and think, \u201cFive kingdoms really would have been enough.\u00a0 Did I really need to make seven?\u201d<\/p>\n

Villains play an important role in a complex story.\u00a0 If you kill them early on you need to have a filler. \u201cStories have to have a certain amount of scum\u201d.\u00a0 But the characters he really likes to write are the gray characters.\u00a0 The one\u2019s where you find the basic humanity in them, but they do terrible things\u2014like Theon Greyjoy from Ice & Fire<\/em>.<\/p>\n

He pauses and says, \u201cMy handlers are telling me it\u2019s time to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the fastest hour of my life, and the best super-secret-adventure this girl could have asked for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you missed part 1 click here to catch up. \u201cHow do you balance your editorial brain with your writing brain?\u00a0 Is it symbiotic? Or do you have to mute your editorial brain to finish your first drafts?\u201d\u00a0 I ask. George R.R. Martin pauses, \u201cNow that\u2019s an interesting question.\u201d Interesting.\u00a0 That could be good.\u00a0 It…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6,7],"tags":[2,11,12,4,13,5,8,14,15,10,16],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSuper Secret Library Day- Part 2 - Jessica Conoley<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Kansas City, MO public library hosts an exclusive event featuring George R.R. 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