Game Of Thrones writer George R.R. Martin has opened up about writing the ‘Red Wedding’ chapter of his novels in a new interview.
Martin said the chapter, which was later turned into a notorious episode of the Game Of Thrones television series that saw several major characters killed at once, was one of the most difficult he’s ever written.
“I finished the entire book, except for the Red Wedding [chapter],” Martin told The Independent. “That was such a painful chapter for me to write, losing some characters that I had come to know and love. Nine years I’d been with these characters, and now I was going to kill them horribly! That was difficult.”
“It’s a horrible chapter, and it upsets people,” he continued. “It makes people angry, it makes people sad. People throw the book against the wall or into the fireplace. When it was on TV, it had the same effect on tens of thousands, if not millions, of people. To my mind, that’s good. We’re talking about death here!”
Martin went on to say that he thinks death should be difficult to write about.
“We all in our real lives have experienced death,” he says. “Your parents die. Your best friend dies. Sometimes, in a really tragic situation, your children die or your wife or husband dies. It’s terrible. It affects you. It makes you angry, it makes you sad. In our entertainment, television, film, books, over the centuries as it’s evolved, death is often treated very cavalierly. Somebody is dead, we’ve got a mystery, and the detective has to figure out who did it.
“We never consider who the corpse is, or what his life was like… what it’s going to be like without him. If I’m going to write a death scene, particularly for major characters, I want to make the reader feel it. That’s what the Red Wedding, I think, successfully accomplished. People felt that death.”
Meanwhile, the forthcoming Game Of Thrones prequel series House Of The Dragon recently confirmed a summer release date.
The series, taking place 200 years before the events of the flagship HBO show, is set to premiere on August 21 via HBO Max in the US and will be simulcast on Sky Atlantic/NOW in the UK in the early hours of August 22.
House Of The Dragon is based on George R.R. Martin’s novel Fire & Blood. It will focus on the House Targaryen and will star Paddy Considine, Olivia Cooke, Matt Smith and Rhys Ifans, among others.
The post ‘Game Of Thrones’ writer George R.R. Martin opens up about writing ‘The Red Wedding’ appeared first on NME.
