MovieChat Forums > Game of Thrones (2011) Discussion > I'm confused about the book/show writing

I'm confused about the book/show writing

posted 6 years ago by [deleted]
4 replies | jump to latest

So the reason GoT was so solid as a TV show for six seasons is that it had GRRM's books to draw on, and if anything, the TV show is an abridged version of the books, right? And when S7 rolled along, they continued this, but the writing was suffering as GRRM still had to finish the story, that's why S8 was postponed for a whole year for him to catch up, right?

So why, with S8, is everyone saying that the writing is now initially done for the TV show and is suffering? Hasn't GRRM completed the last two books and the S8 screenplays have been written from them? Or are the screenplay writers determining what happens in the last book? Isn't that rather silly, if so?

[–] Sandoz (2021) 6 years ago

From recent articles I've read about GOT, the next GOT novel is still unfinished but it's getting closer to being done. And the final book is only sketched out. Martin conferred with the DB's of the TV show so they'd know the general gist of how the story should resolve and who "wins", who does what, etc... But even with the basic knowledge, without having the details available from the complete text it's made the TV version suffer because the plot and characters seem to be behaving more perfunctory than they were in the earlier seasons. I think the lack of dialogue and nuance that the TV scripters had available to them from using the novels as their guide has affected the quality of the TV story.

[–] Otter (24464) 6 years ago

The show's writers are working from GRRM's outline, so don't absolve him from all blame if you don't like the writing.

As for the show being better when it had the books to draw on, remember the last two and a half books were pure crap where hardly anything happened, and there were plenty of complaints at the time about the godawful sluggishness of the politicking in Mereen or with the Night's Watch, and Arya's interminable stay in Bravos. And while those were problem storylines, they were infinitely better than the books! NEVER in the history of publishing have any books needed editing and condensing so desperately, and the show's writers did their best but a lot of the problems with the books remained.

So I'm not saying this season or last season's writing was perfect, because obviously it wasn't, and I have huge problems with this last episode in particular. I'm just saying that the show's writing has never been perfect, even if it has been consistently better than anything on TV and has reached extraordinary levels of excellence at times. It's just that if you think the book-derived episodes were better, you're thinking of the first few seasons (from when the books were good), and not the whole run of material that was drawn from the books.

[–] [deleted] 6 years ago

I've never ever read the books, nor will I ever do so, but yes, I did think the TV writing in the first few seasons was excellent. And yes, I've heard that people hate season 5, and it was rather slower than usual, so I guess there's that.

I only hope that there's some kind of massive twist in the story, that our heroes got off too lightly in "killing" the Night King so soon, and that he possessed/took over Bran, and that he will lead everyone to ruin despite his best efforts to force the Night King's presence out of his mind.

There is that shot of the ruins of the Red Keep throne room with the Iron Throne covered in snow (from the very first episode, I believe) so that could be a premonition of things to come?

[–] Alerra (244) 6 years ago

I have read the books and ended up skimming through a lot of the sluggish parts -- like the interminable politicking on Pyke, or the 500 years of contemplating it took for Tyrion not to get to Mereen. Many of the changes the show has made are better than the books (fleshing out of Olenna and Margery, for example) and many of them are worse (Dorne).

But yes, I feel like there needs to be a massive twist coming, because my immediate thought when I saw the Night King shatter was, "That can't be it. That's too tidy." I had been fully expecting the Night King to route the armies of the living and push them back all the way to King's Landing, and only then -- when the Lannisters and the Golden Company are forced to come out to fight them -- would they be finally defeated.

Remember that Bran had a vision of a dragon flying over King's Landing, which hasn't happened yet (It looked like a present day Kings Landing, so it couldn't have been when dragons had been that big in the past). And Dany had one in the House of the Undying of a gutted throne room completely empty and covered in snow. There needs to be some sort of payoff for them.