George R.R. Martin, Brandon Sanderson, and the Art of Creative Control

The following contains spoilers for George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire, its television adaptation Game of Thrones, the currently airing House of the Dragon, and its source material Fire & Blood.

Huge news dropped this week that Brandon Sanderson had inked a major overall deal with Apple TV to produce his vast sprawling fantasy universe the Cosmere. Mistborn movies. Stormlight Archive TV show. Sanderson writing, producing, overseeing… final approvals on everything. Sanderson himself is taking the next five months out of his busy schedule to do the first draft of the first Mistborn film. He claims none of this development will impact or derail his current plans/timeline for his two-to-three decades of novel writing. The article goes on to say that Sanderson’s creative control in this deal is beyond even what J.K. Rowling1 has with Harry Potter.

Meanwhile…

On the eve of the new Game of Thrones series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Westeros creator George R.R. Martin did a check-in with James Hibberd of The Hollywood Reporter to see how his career is going. Three series in (with more on the way), Martin’s fantasy world is the standard bearer for fantasy television. Game of Thrones is to television what Star Wars was to film and Harry Potter was to books. The internet has spilled a lot of ink on Martin, but the portrait of the article is both hilarious and deeply sad, as the guy seems to have gotten what he wanted (live action Westeros) and still finds himself in horrible situations of his own making (because he doesn’t really have a say in how it’s going).

Martin’s is a cautionary tale. Sanderson’s is the bright optimism of something that… if it works will be absolutely breathtaking. Together, they’re a spectrum of how adaptation can go.

The life of a gardener

Since Game of Thrones’s first season, George R.R. Martin has been one of the most high-profile writers on the planet. This has meant lots of interviews and process shop talk. It won’t take much research to learn that he writes all of his books on an old MS-DOS computer without internet connection or that he considers himself a “gardener” rather than an “architect.” He likes to let his characters grow organically and to let the stories overrun into incredible flights of fancy. He views himself as a dude who prunes here and there and maybe put up a trellis when necessary.

Mostly though, he feels like a dude without control.

Of all the things that damn George R.R. Martin is the way his flagship series A Song of Ice and Fire has more or less collapsed over the past decade and a half. The first book, A Game of Thrones, came out in 1996, with A Clash of Kings out in 1998 and A Storm of Swords out in 2000. The fourth book (A Feast For Crows) came out in 2005 (a longer window of time for the first three’s release). The fifth, A Dance With Dragons followed in 2011, coinciding with the release of the first season of the television adaptation.

Since then, no A Song of Ice and Fire books have come out.

This wouldn’t… be a problem. Sorta. Books take time, and Martin’s have gotten so sprawling that the next book would certainly need a lot of work, especially if he wants to start bringing the series in for a landing.

Unfortunately for him, there’s a million things that have gone wrong.

The first is that Martin’s “gardening” has resulted in outrageous scope creep metastasization that makes any sort of reasonable wrapping up impossible. A Song of Ice and Fire was supposed to be a trilogy. Then Martin cut off Ned Stark’s head. And… sure. Maybe a trilogy was possible. But then he opened A Clash of Kings with Ser Davos Seaworth and painted a full picture of the “War of the Five Kings”. The economy of multiple POVs exploded into the sprawl of a vast web. The prologue alone kept A Song of Ice & Fire from being anything less than five books.

Then he did the Red Wedding, further destabilizing the core of his narrative. At the ostensible end of the originally planned trilogy, Martin created a situation where he needed at least four more books to wrap everything up. It got worse: by books 4 & 5 his narrative had gotten so diffuse that he bifurcated his characters so the two volumes function together as one giant novel covering the same span of time.

The best part of this check-in with the Hollywood Reporter is where Martin opines how difficult it’s been to write The Winds of Winter, his planned sixth book in the series. In the lead up to Game of Thrones’s sixth season, there was a lot of discussion about trying to get the volume out before it aired. It was a critical moment, the point at which the TV series would outstrip his books, and he blogged about the work he needed to buckle down and finish and the deadlines to hit for a timely release (that is, before April 2016). Based on what he said in early 2016, when he looked at what he had in early 2015, this sounded feasible. As the year dragged on, however, this looked less and less promising. By January 2016 he conceded that it just wasn’t going to happen.

Ten years later…. it doesn’t seem like he’s any closer.

Which, I’m sorry, but that’s insane. It’s insane that he thought in 2015 he could have the book done in a year when ten times that long still hasn’t seen the book come out.

Given the series’ ending and the resultant backlash, it’s easy to see Martin finding it a total damper on his spirits. From the beginning, he’s planned for Daenerys to go nuts and firebomb King’s Landing. Seeing showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss fail to pull it off must have created a sense of both resolve (“yeah but they did it wrong and I know how to do it”) and trepidation (“was this really a good idea?”). Unfortunately for him, if Martin doesn’t finish writing the series (because he dies), that sour ending is going to end up being its lasting legacy. He’s steadfastly refused to let anyone else finish in his absence.

Instead of A Song of Ice and Fire, he’s put out a couple of novellas and a history of the Targaryens called Fire & Blood. HBO, desperate to keep milking their most signature show since The Sopranos released an adaptation of that story called House of the Dragon. Showrun by Ryan Condal, Martin was enthusiastic and involved in the first season, though with the third season on the way later this year, he’s been very open about how Condal has basically gone off to do his own thing. Martin has had no real input in anything past that first season.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (currently airing), has more Martin involvement, and tries to minimize all the heavy special effects work of House of the Dragon. HBO based this new series on novellas Martin’s written called Tales of Dunk and Egg. Only… the article points out the problem.

Writerly analysis paralysis

There’s certain levels of hate that Martin truly doesn’t deserve. People have been speculating and predicting his death for over a decade at this point. Before anyone starts thinking I’m looking down on any of these people, I should mention my partner and I still have a standing bet from 2013 about whether or not the last A Song of Ice and Fire book will come out before he dies2.

But telling a man he’s going to die is shitty. Lord knows I’m as guilty of it as anyone (and what is this section of this post if it’s not about the guy’s ever-approaching death), but Martin has also put himself in a situation where that death really does matter to people. A decade and a half since any material progress in A Song of Ice and Fire combined with Martin’s narcissism demanding that the books die with him, leaves it hardly surprising that fans are deeply cynical they’ll ever get a reasonable ending to their beloved series.

Martin’s death will be painful, especially if he never finishes his work. And it will absolutely hurt scores of fans who will have to die in the same dissatisfied misery as him.

But is this all necessary?

In talking about A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the author is quick to point out a major problem in the near future:

“The big issue is that I have only written three novellas, and I have a lot more stories about Dunk and Egg in my fucking head.”

He then goes on to talk about a couple of those stories in the vague abstract via their setting. None of which he’s actually written.

Now, pair that quote with this one about his difficulties in writing The Winds of Winter:

“I wrote a Tyrion chapter I just loved… Then I looked at it and said: ‘I can’t do this, it will change the whole book. I’ll make this into a series of dreams. No! That doesn’t work either …'”

Bro.

So here’s the thing. Martin can do whatever he wants. It’s his life. He doesn’t owe anyone anything. He could never put out anything again and it would be totally fine. It would upset probably millions of fans, but… hey. It’s fine. It’s fine. Fuck ‘em.

Tthere is a problem here in completely losing the plot. He’s always wanted to have full creative control of his work, to paint on a canvas of infinite scope where no one could tell him no. And that’s fine. Who doesn’t want that?

Within that, though, Martin has created a scenario in which infinite choice has completely stopped him from being able to make any. He’s let his garden overrun so hard that it’s completely locked him up.

Like… imagine writing a book for 15 years. It’s giving you a lot of problems. You’ve completed 1100 pages of it. You’ve written new chapters, re-written others, thrown old ones out… And then you write a chapter you’re so fucking in love with that you consider (however fleetingly) throwing out a decade and a half of work because you love that it so much. Once chapter. Like… and even when you realize that that’s impossible, you try to crowbar it in as a dream sequence rather than move your sprawling, unwieldy story forward.

For the love of god, dude. Make a fucking decision. Stop being so precious.

Martin’s writing has gotten so out of control that he’s completely incapable of finishing another novel and it’s starting to haunt him. If the article makes anything clear, it’s that he’s never going to finish the book. He essentially says he doesn’t want to write these books anymore, and he’s made so much fucking money off HBO that he can truly fuck off and never write ever again.

Unfortunately, that’s not how he works. He wants to keep sprawling. Jesus, I mean A Dance With Dragons introduces entire new subplots when that book needs to start drawing things together and tying them off.

Martin is quick to judge the HBO series, which made a lot of choices that shrank his vast world into something more manageable. Benioff & Weiss consolidated characters and storylines, trying not to fall into the traps Martin had fallen into over the course of this century. Sure. Maybe the ending sucked. But going into the final season there wasn’t the sense that it was going to. If anything, they probably condensed the story too much, even if that condensing meant some truly thrilling relentless shit over the series’ final 15 episodes. Those five extra episodes probably would have made a significant difference in terms of paying off massive emotional logic leaps they failed to set up (despite knowing about them from day one).

And at least they gave their audience an ending they could walk away from.

But all of this is outside of Martin’s control. HBO is a business. Actors and directors and producers and below the line production crews don’t have the luxury to keep people on contract while they wait for him to figure out his shit. Imagine if they’d done what he had wanted and paused the series after season five, putting it on indefinite hiatus as they waited for him to finish his book.

This spring is the tenth anniversary of Game of Thrones’ sixth season. They (and we) would still be waiting.

And that’s to say nothing about his planned seventh “and final” book3.

On the flip side, Martin wanted so much for the Targaryen series House of the Dragon, and that show has an even more forgiving production schedule than Game of Thrones (two years per season instead of one) AND it had an ending already. Still there’s a sense of Martin lamenting Ryan Condal’s vision of the series (however right or wrong he might be). A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms might be doing well so far, but what happens when it hits season four and Martin hasn’t put out this fourth novella he’s never going to finish because he hasn’t even started it? Will Martin throw another hissy fit, blaming a massive television production for his inability to write anything in a timely manner?

This is mostly just frustrating. Martin is an extremely talented writer, and has built a world millions of people have enjoyed. The adaptation of his signature work functionally created the trend of mega-budget blockbuster/prestige television series. We’re going to be feeling the impact of his work for a generation.

There’s got to be a part of him that regrets it, though. That he signed away his ability to fully control and operate Westeros in every capacity. He created Westeros as a reaction against Hollywood screwing him over. And it is through Westeros that Hollywood is seemingly screwing him over again (albeit, while he lives in a prison of his own making).

The designs of an architect

Meanwhile, Brandon Sanderson has a plan.

In 2005, Brandon Sanderson released his first novel, Elantris. Readers might not have known it at the time, but this was the first release in an opus that would add up to his life’s work. He calls this project “the cosmere”, the name of the universe in which all of these fantasy novels take place, and over the past two decades he’s released 24 distinct works of varying lengths into it.

The man is a machine, and I’m not going to compare him to anyone. His output is truly ludicrous (I’m not even touching on his non-cosmere work, which is also vast), but he’s been very open and honest about how this project’s timeline. There is an ending and a plan, and he recently mentioned that he’s at about the halfway point of this entire project. He anticipated it would take 20 years to get here, he think it’ll take another 20 to finish.

To read Sanderson is to read works of tremendous intricacy. His prose might not be the flashiest, his dialogue not the juciest, but he trades that for sheer volume at consistent quality. His stories have rich characters with carefully plotted arcs. Large operatic moments speak to intimacy as well as deep mythology. And they all work together, though Sanderson is quick to say he’s not at the point where everyone has to read everything to understand what’s going on. Yet.

Already, though, he’s started to draw connections and parallels, interweaving his various worlds together to create a vast tapestry that lives, breathes, and criss-crosses. Elantrians have shown up in Mistborn, Feruchemists have shown up in Stormlight, and on and on and on.

This is only possible because of rigorous planning and a clear vision of how to get from point A to point B. He knows who the players are, how long they’ll be around, and what role they’ll play far into the future (if any). There are entire elements he slowly teases out to his fans at regular intervals, breathtaking in the scope of everything he knows and has figured out.

Full creative control

Given his pedigree, there’s been rumblings of live action adaptations of Sanderson’s works for decades. Rumors of a Mistborn movie or what have you. Nevertheless, he managed to reconsolidate all the rights recently, and took the universe out to Hollywood to see what he could make happen. This week’s deal with Apple to produce live action Cosmere is breathtaking. He retains an insane amount of control, having approvals on basically everything and the capacity to write and produce whatever comes out of his universe.

Not that he will. But the approvals is a major aspect of something he’ll always have.

This is a far cry from Martin, who is ultimately powerless to the whims of HBO or the showrunners they’ve empowered. But this is how these deals tend to work. That’s to say nothing against Amazon’s recently cancelled Wheel of Time series, where Sanderson (who finished that series by writing the final three books) gave notes and comments on decisions its creator made w/r/t the story and its characters. That creator ultimately ignored his feedback.

As a lesson from that, Sanderson is getting a level of control that’s basically unthinkable. A lot of that is Apple, which (by all accounts) seems to endow its creators with the freedoms to make the shows and movies they want to make. They don’t always work, but there’s not a sense that some overlord is dictating how all this is going to go.

The whole enterprise could completely fall on its face. While Sanderson is writing the first draft of the first Mistborn screenplay, it’ll be impossible to have that level of involvement while still finishing all of the books he’s planned. At a certain point, he will have to delegate choice-making to people he trusts, whether that’s company people he’ll empower or showrunners he’ll entrust to the day-to-day operations of a massively complicated television series. Showrunning alone is a 60-hour-a-week job. Minimum.

What’s exciting is the prospect that these adaptations won’t be one-to-one faithful, but rather through the prism of some other creator who might create a harmony as such. It’ll be impossible for a showrunner to not have a specific perspective on Stormlight or the world of Roshar, and their interests will be at least somewhat stray from Sanderson in at least some way. Finding that sweet spot has the potential to be something special and unique and new.

All of this is possible, though, because Sanderson himself is an absolute machine. He has an insane infrastructure supporting him, one he built into a company of nearly a hundred people. And he has also made a tremendously detailed plan that he thinks will probably work (or… at least it’s worked out so far…) and keep things from going astray. This isn’t like Martin, who has vague ideas like “what Hodor means” or “that Dany will burn King’s Landing” and has to work for decades to somehow get there. Sanderson knows what his broad strokes are and why they’re there. It’s his most valuable asset outside of his work ethic.

There’s always an option

Many creators (especially authors) will sign away options on their work early. There’s a ton of reasons for this, ranging from financial (optioning costs money) to tactile. Very often, these come to nothing (options lapse every day), and sometimes they turn into something imperfect or downright bad. Television, movies… adaptations take a skilled hand, and that conversion from one voice (the author’s) to another (the adapter’s) can result in a total collapse of the final souffle.

Authors themselves have pride. Anyone who is a writer (hi, hello) has to have a sense of narcissism or ego to push through the crippling sense of “this is too hard”. Seeing one’s work manifested in real life with sets and costumes and actors is something anyone would be crazy to say no to. But this always comes with risks that they might not work out. Even if a creator adapts their own work it can go disastrous. It happens all the time.

But if there’s one thing to take away from this, it’s that retaining power and the capacity to say “no” until the right opportuniyt is incredibly empowering. It’s probably worth holding onto your work until there’s the capacity to steer the execution in at least some way. Maybe it won’t be as robust as Sanderson, or maybe you won’t care like Witcher creator Andrzej Sapkowski4. Whatever the case, there are a lot of considerations to make when it comes to seeing one’s work adapted.

Martin wanted his work to be on screen so badly that he sold to arguably the best possible vendor of that work. It’s definitely curdled in a lot of areas, with House of the Dragon the biggest nightmare. But having lost this particular battle, it would make sense to pivot from where he doesn’t have control to the world where he does. That, though, would mean writing books.

The original vision of Westeros was to have the perfect control he always wanted to have as a creator. If anything, it looks like the Cosmere actually will be.