George R. R. Martin is one of today’s most well-known authors. His writings have a distinct flavor since he incorporates aspects from both the actual world and fiction. Martin’s characters are one-of-a-kind, with a grey undertone, and some of them have unusual talents. When he began writing, he did not plan on writing a multi-novel magnum opus, instead, he initially thought it was going to be a short story.
Game of Thrones started as a short story about direwolves
Martin once discussed how he began writing his highly acclaimed novels with The Guardian, “When I began, I didn’t know what the hell I had. I thought it might be a short story; it was just this chapter, where they find these direwolf pups. Then I started exploring these families and the world started coming alive,” Martin says. “It was all there in my head, I couldn’t not write it. So it wasn’t an entirely rational decision, but writers aren’t entirely rational creatures.”
George R. R. Martin praises J.R.R. Tolkien
Martin has often been hailed as the modern Tolkien, and rightly so. Tolkien inspired him too, as he said, “I think every contemporary fantasy writer writes under the shadow of Tolkien, but there was no way I could capture his voice, which is singular and unique.
He was a very different man than me, a man from a different time with very different attitudes, and even though we were both writing about a medieval-type society I had a very different take on it, on basic attitudes about the war and sexuality, so I was just telling my story.”
