GEORGE RR MARTIN Comic Con Panel

[@Consural]

I have watched a lot of GRRM interviews but I never get bored.I can listen to this guy talk for hours.No wonder he's a legendary writer.

[@Kinkoyaburi]

True, but he does say repetitive things in most of his interviews.

[@amaxamon]

Because they always ask him the same questions!

[@vincevirtua]

He always has fantastic and detailed answers. Good on you George!

[@theblackdahlia88]

This is amazing. This man is a legend, I cling to every word he said. Thanks for posting this.

[@FlicksAndTheCity]

The_Howler Glad you enjoyed the video!

[@Sukh.Sanghera]

this guy is so inspirational

[@Azmodaeus49]

he is so down to earth and has a humor as well, it is interesting that he was into a lot of comics and writers.

[@keithyw]

the last part is particularly inspiring for someone like myself (I'm an aspiring writer). i have managed to create a career in tech but writing is where my true passion lies. i often told myself that even if i never sold a single book, what's more important to me is just being able to have something out there and hope that others can enjoy it just as much as i do writing my fiction.

[@arthurdayne1190]

If you try hard for your dream and actually put work and soul into your books I believe they will be legendary.

[@kylewitcher9670]

My goal is to just get a book on a shelf in a store. Writers of the future, unite!

[@Marblez3]

Thanks! You guys never miss a beat. Can't wait to see the Game of Thrones panel.

[@FlicksAndTheCity]

You're welcome! And thanks for the kind words! :-)

[@FTONERDTALK]

Very cool

[@Schmidteren]

27:38-28:54 Words ANY storyteller should take note of.

[@patelien]

thanks for the hi res video. you've really done a great job with george and song of ice and fire.

[@FlicksAndTheCity]

patelien our pleasure! :-)

[@IapetusThePiercer]

Gotta love George. I'm not really into comic books, though I'm only 14 so maybe I will be one day. Either way George is a great guy who I really look up to as a person.

[@NOICKNOICK]

I'm 14 and I read comics, although I have to pirate them because there are no comic books stores near me

[@NOICKNOICK]

***** Yeah this was made two years ago. I borrow them from my school library/local library or buy them. I still have to torrent the odd comic when I can't find them anywhere.

[@Travis7060312]

"I'm 14, maybe I'll be into comics when I'm older." What a time to be alive.

[@wallacelovecraft8942]

A really great interview.

[@FTONERDTALK]

Loved this

[@joeymason6908]

George is walking on stage like. "Yeah. my hat is better than yours"

[@AwaysinTorpor]

He talked about H.P. Lovecraft hnnnnnnnnggggggg

[@piranhabait9177]

I came to the comments just to say the exact same thing, oh boy!

[@parabolicpawn]

Holy CRAP!! He actually went a day without wearing his Earnest Hemingway cap.

[@cartman1249]

then a book cost only 35 cents Wtf okay in my time machime!

[@blooddrunk242]

OMG 47:07 Nods for time's up. Says something instead, followed by talking OVER G.R.R.M. Eventually does it. I mean I know you're doing your job and there's a tight schedule, but as you booted him, he was gonna say something, possibly EPIC, that will now forever go unsaid. Also, what's with the edit? 48:28

[@JeffreyClemmonsJZK]

I totally agree with GRRM when he talks about how 'diverse' the publishing and literary world has become, restricting authors to a single genre instead of allowing them to simply be writers. Books can no longer simply be books, they have to be a [insert any genre here] book, and that's that. Sure, a book can be defined as a science fiction just so that the publishers can make it easier on themselves to market it (the book industry has become very much like Hollywood in that it has slowly become less the quality of the novel sells the novel and much more the quantity that the novel can sell makes the novel, which is a very sad thing in my opinion as it has made for a saturated market in many respects, not to mention in the realm of the 'YA Revolution', which don't even get me started on, because I'll go on for days), but that science fiction book could just as easily be a horror novel, a romance, or a mystery. That's one of the things that always made the great books great (including George's), is because they don't confine themselves to a genre, they are there own genre and they exist as they exist with no restrictions, those are the best stories because they have all the stories. One of my favorite examples of this has been _To Kill A Mockingbird_ by Harper Lee, which I think is as much a fantasy as it is an autobiography, a thriller and a mystery, a coming of age novel and one of a special kind of magical realism; it has all the elements of a good story and that's what makes it so great, one of the reasons it has stuck around for so long. One of the best things that I have learned from Martin as a writer, along with other things (in combination with other authors, most prominently Fyodor Dostoevsky), is the ambiguity of characters, that no character is wholly good or wholly evil; as real people, we all have the capacity to save a person from falling, at the same time we have the capacity to watch that person fall and break theri neck; we all have the capacity to stop a school shooter, and we all have the capacity to be one, and because of that, no character can be good (even in those moments of 'good', there is something that is not noble about what they have done, something that goes against their morals) all the time, and if they do, they end up doing more bad than good. The colors black and white are simply colors; no matter what banner or color of robe you wear, those colors do not define you, only you define you and because of that no one can walk a single path without stepping on a stone from the other path and reach the end of the journey successfully, for even the yellow brick road was not completely easy in it's going. Characters that are only good or only evil are the worst characters, because they are not believable, and while they might be fun to read about, they're not the characters that stick with you. People will remember the epic saga of Walter White because he was not a hero, he was an antihero, and while he had good intentions, those good intentions resulted in his killing of many people, sometimes for a reason, other times based on suspension, and it lead to his inevitable downfall and his family rejecting him, the death of his brother-in-law, and even in the end, he still died (and it wasn't even from the original threat!). I totally agree with GRRM on the whole thing about death mattering. When my brother died last year, it was a sudden thing that happened the day before Easter, and believe it or not, it was raining, pouring. My mom woke me up at about 4 o'clock in the morning telling me that there was something wrong, asking me if I wanted to go to the hospital with them. In a sleepy haze, I denied them (mind you, I was horribly conflicted, but in the end, sleep won out) and they came back later telling me he had passed. I cried then, but for the next 4 months, I held it within me, not believing it, even as the funeral happened, even as I watched them close the casket for the last time, even as I watched them shoveling dirt, I held it in. In July of that year, it was the middle of the night and I began to think about how I would never get to talk to him again, and a rush of memories came over me, and before long I was sobbing into my pillow, and for the next week or so, I couldn't do much because the death finally hit me so hard. Death is hard. Death is not fun. Death is not something that anyone can really smile about in the end; when Joffrey died in the show, many people may have rejoiced, but you still couldn't deny that he was a brilliant character. Every character's death should matter, and it's not something that you shrug off, it hurts and no one wants to go through it, but it's a part of life; you'll always be wanting to hear that it was all a hoax, but you never get that call and that's what makes it so painful, which is what I think that all writers should strive for in their stories, there should be a mourning and a deep sorrow for the death of characters that you love, and even a small something for those that you hate (I felt a little sad when Gustavo died, because he was the villain and he was just as much a part of Walter Whites story as any other character, and then he was gone). Death is real, even in fiction. While I have gotten over my brother's death (to some small degree at least), there is a picture that I have of him and every time I look at it, I cannot help but feel overcome by a sense of grief; death lingers. Even as far as _A Dance With Dragons_ people still echo on about Ned Stark's death, years after it happened. Death is real, death lingers, death matters. "Even I can do better than _that_," George echoes Stephen (King) in this matter, and while it may have worked for them, I am sad to say that such an echo did not hold up for me to well with my first book. I decided that when I was 12 (I'm 14 now and realize the error of my ways, and I've mature din my writing quite considerably if I say myself) that I could do better than _The Maze Runner_, because King once said that, "Have you ever read a book, and thought, 'This really sucks?' and said, 'I could do better?'" and so I took that to heart after reading five chapters of _The Maze Runner_ disliking it with a passion (more so these days than ever for other reasons that have little to do with the work itself) and began working on what inevitably became _The Maze Games_ (the title wasn't a jab at _The Maze Runner_, rather it was the only phrase that I could think of at the time that defined exactly what was going on in the book). It was a monumental flop, of course at the time I thought it was a glorious piece of fiction, when in fact it was a culmination of about every action movie I'd see up to that point (Michael Bay comes to mind, if that gives you any indication of the books plotting and pacing) along with every book I'd read up to that point with action, not to mention it was infused (at the very last minute) with every boys fascination with Greek Mythology (thanks very much to Rick Riordan, I might add). I sent it out to the publisher and it went off to print with a light edit (a very, very light edit) and formatting, and there it was (and still is) on Amazon. I regret having published it in the format that it was in (and I'm even making an effort to 'reboot' it with a rewrite), but in the end, what can you do but move on, right? Better to learn from _that_ mistake instead of crying over it; maybe if I win my statewide contest and get my more recent work out there, it won't haunt me so bad anymore. On writing itself, one thing that I have learned that is the most important about writing anything is that, you have to dedicate yourself to finish it. There may come a time when you will write a story that you just cannot finish, but so long as you have all the parts of a story, there is no reason not to finish it. Not finishing things can become a terrible habit, and it can be your downfall if you end up not finishing all the things that you write; you will most often try to finish everything you start, movies, TV shows, books (even the bad ones), because you don't want to be surrounded by a court of things that you didn't finish. You can start a billion fires, but can you put them all out?

[@JeffreyClemmonsJZK]

On another note, just as George said, if you still have to write even if you're not going to be published, then it's for you. I could have stopped after _The Maze Games_, because a) the book was fucking terrible (comparably, I suppose it's my _Armageddon Rag_ or _The Tommyknockers_), b) my royalty checks have rarely exceeded 11 bucks, and c) I've gotten a lot of shit for it, but you know what, I still go onto my desktop every day and I wrote _something_. I may not have written a story that day, but I'd probably written some comment or blog post that required me to put some kind of technique and effort into what I was trying to convey. The life of a writer is a lonely and unsteady one, it is choppy and uneven, a constant storm and war with yourself to decide 'Can I keep doing this?'. Just yesterday I hit an epic low, and I wanted to just quit, I wanted to fuck it all, and just stop, but today I got up and I still sat down and I wrote because I _had_ to, not even really because I wanted to, but because if I didn't write, I'd pretty much be another kid who does nothing with his summer (and arguably, I'm still that, but my writing is what I believe makes me special by my own respects). You have to be strong, iron skinned, to be a writer and you have to be prepared to live in a very unfruitful garden.

[@JeffreyClemmonsJZK]

Firstly, I don't mind advice at all, that's why I read Stephen King, listen to George, and do everything else to improve; the real task is putting your training to good use on the battlefield and trying to remember if the general said left or right when you find yourself at the fork on the road, on to one side there were ravenous wolves and to the other there are lions; in the heat of battle, can one really say which is the safer option? I may give 'advice' on my own blog, guide other writers, but I'm nearly 15, I've been writing for a couple of years, but that dosen't give me right to be giving any kind of advice, honestly; like I said, sometimes it's hard for me to tell the lions from the wolves, the crows from the doves, and which tree to dig up in the woods of my mind (my imagination), along with my childish fears of failure. I've only just allowed myself not to care (I'm writing a story about killer grass at the moment, if that gives you any idea of just how free I'm allowing myself to be. There was a time when I thought that I wouldn't be able to write anything unless it was the brilliant literary tomes akin to that of Cormac McCarthy and George himself, no one would respect me, no agent would pick up my work, and who gives a fuck if it's not literary, was the sea that I faced. But now, I'm saying fuck it. If youdon't wannt to read about killer grass, a vagina monster, or killer centipedes from space (or any number of ideas that I'll find buried in the woods) then great; someone will come along eventually and decide, "What the hell?" Also, as a final note, any writer who isn't begging for advice on the streets of the Writerdom will forever be the vagabonds and wanderers who never finish their kills and call themselves merciful, when in truth, they have not the heart or the strength to finish such a kill. Secondly, if you read the entirety of both of my comments (and this one so far), I commend you; seriously. I myself don't feel like even skimming to see if I've said this already, but I'll say it again if I did. When I wrote that awful book I mentioned, I was young, truly dumb, and I figured (begin 'derp' voice) "Hey, I could write a whole big series liek Rick Riordan and be a big bestsller like man, and man I'll be on talk shows across the country, derp-derp-dupie," A fever dream if there ever was one! I've learned my lesson since. I'm currently in the middle of about 3 short stories now, of course the problem for me is the problem that I think a lot of writers face: the story grows in the telling. One of the stories I just wante d to see where it goes, and I'm still waiting to see if things will fall in line according to plan, the other one is still in the coming, and the final one is (thankfully) writing itself. At the end of last year I started to write a short story, but it ended up being a novella (my best I think, a true improvement on everything that I've ever written, for looking back, I don't know how I made it here (When I look back I am lost, to quote)) and I'm afraid that's going to be the fate of a lot of my short stories. While I still shouldn't be trying to write a series (for even as I try and reboot the awful and grotesque _Maze Games_, I'm still poking at the fire to see if all the pieces will finally meld into each other), I'd like to spit it out already; not only this, but it's the ugly child that glares at me from the back of the room asking when I'm going to feed it again, and I don't like it whining whenever I feed the other children, if that makes sense. Though, aside from the novella I mentioned above, last year my English teacher helped to edit a story that I wrote for the Texas Book Festival, and I'll be honest: landmark of my writing 'career'. Truly one of the best things I've every written, a step towards my true Voice- at one point, I believed I have found it, but there is still a long road to go- and if it dosen't win I'll probably walk down to Austin myself and demand an explanation. So short stories can be good, very good, especially for the long winded writer: the original version of the story was nearly 3,000 words, but we somehow managed to whittle it down to a perfect 1,998 (2 words shy of the limit). All in all, the woods are a scary and dark place, but you have to trudge forward, and you have to keep digging and once you find something, you have to excavate: you'll find a UFO one day, and the next you'll just find more squirrel bones...but even the squirrel bones can tell you more than you could ever imagine.

[@NoName-im2fc]

Jeffrey Clemmons I find it hard to believe that you're 14! You sound really mature! But anyways, if you're actually that young then I'd tell you to take it easy on yourself, you ought to enjoy your youth and not be having the kind of goals such as success, fame and wealth and all that pressure at such a young age! Those would come eventually to your life if you keep pursuing them, but I doubt that they would come at such an early age! I even doubt that you're that good (despite how mature you sound) simply because of your young age, I don't think you're in a state of mind strong enough to deliver your thoughts especially with all the confusion of puberty that your brain is going through right now! I'm not trying to bring your morals down but am just telling you to be realistic, if you enjoy writing then that's good, keep writing, but I wouldn't consider it anything but a hobby if I were you and at your age! I kind of envy you though! You're surrounded by a creative environment and you can go to events and contact creative minds and you have all the opportunities to make it if you're good enough! I on the other hand, have no such privileges, I've been living in a war devastated country my whole life and art here (in all fields) is in a beyond pathetic situation! Here I'm at the age of 27 and already all my dreams and life's goals have gone with the wind! It's a shame really because I always had an amazing imagination from my early age! At age five I used to pretend that my right hand is possessed and it always attacked me, 9 years later an American film called "Idle Hands" had the exact same idea, though the difference is my idea was for a horror story and that movie was a comedy! I always had my ideas stolen by Hollywood, or that what I actually believed as a naive child, I believed that Hollywood had an advance device that could steal thoughts from around the world haha, so I stopped thinking of new thoughts for a while to prevent them from stealing them, that lasted for about a month and then I couldn't resist going back. That was the first idea that I've seen being "stolen", after that I've seen hundreds of movies "stealing" my other ideas, it really just shows that if you don't put it out first then someone else would think of them, and I didn't have the advantage to do so being a child and living were I live, but I still pride myself of thinking of them first! Even "A Song of Ice and Fire" was my idea, at least that what I thought when I first read it and I was shocked, but then later I discovered that GRRM thought of it in 1991 and I had my idea at 1997 at the age of 11, so he was the first to think of it (damn!) haha, but notice the following similarities, my story was about a man who was raised by a farmer couple who found him in the wood next to his dead mother, the man discovers later that he is the son of the late "Klawgon emperor" who was murdered in the human rebellion against the Klawgon rule, the Klawgons were a race of white haired people with yellow eyes (Targaryens have pink eyes but oh well, a small difference) who ruled the Empire of the Stars (that name was later "stolen" by a video game named Dungeon Siege haha) for thousands of years, the empire had many different creatures living in it but the humans under their evil king "Hurramester" wanted to dominate the whole world so they lunched a horrific war against the rest of the empire! And though the Klawgons had no dragons (there are no dragons at all in my story) but they were really good with magic and each had a snake that they had a special spiritual connection with! I'm not going into details because it's a big world and a long story with an epic twist in the end, but other similarities were the banners (or flags as I used to call them) each race had a banner representing it and there was a war in which all the Klawgons perished in (Robert rebellion and the elimination of the Targaryens) and then later another war between my 20+ races and factions (The War of the Five Kings) and a white haired lost prince and his adventures and path toward revenge and the restoration of his father's throne (Danny Targaryen)! But of course George's tale is a lot better than mine (I was 11 after all) and my story didn't have all the horror, gore and barbarism that Ice&Fire has. Am still waiting for Ice&Fire's end though, I hope that George thought of a similar twist as mine! In case you're wondering, my twist had the lost prince (Volik is his name) to turn out to be the evil one in the end, or became the evil one, just like... wait for it.. his real father.. Hurramester! So I hope Danny turn out to be the villain in the end, which is very likely since (knowing George) I don't expect a Cinderella happy ending for her! Anyways, so that was my rambling (sorry for that), I still have hundreds of ideas and stories, hopefully one day I could share them with the world (though highly unlikely) before I die, one thing that GRRM's experience taught me was that age is not important, just because am 27 now and haven't achieved any of my dreams or told any of my stories doesn't mean that it is all lost, he made it at a very old age and so can I, and so can you. I also still have a lot to learn, improving my English is one of the main goals, I'm still really bad at it, it's a third language for me so it's kind of difficult!

[@Vilppy]

Wuuut!? No sailors cap on George?

[@FlicksAndTheCity]

I know, right?! How do we know it's really him?! ;-)

[@wrenwrenwood6503]

I thought he auctioned it off for charity. (Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary) A $7,500 donation will get you an "old greek sailor cap" that Martin has worn.

[@Vilppy]

***** It think he switched out of his cap to go incognito to avoid all the fans jumping him. :D

[@linkamus]

Please stop flying GRRM around to do interviews so he can focus on Winds of Winter. I'm teasing, but seriously.

[@systemofafox6487]

Avram Neal 3 years later...

[@elbubson5600]

@@systemofafox6487 3 years later

[@higorc.freitas]

Even if I had been born a thousand times I i couldn't made the historys he does. (sorry my inglish)

[@theblackdahlia88]

Who is the author he mentions at 8:20? Could someone help me please.

[@timlehnerer8266]

Sounded like A. E. van Vogt, which is a science fiction author's name, but if you didn't already know about him you wouldn't get "A. E. van Vogt" out of the syllables that Martin spoke into the microphone.

[@theblackdahlia88]

Tim Lehnerer I've never heard of him. Thanks though, I'll check him out.

[@Dryoshidude]

Wait, did Geroge create fandoms?

[@Langkowski]

34:10 "Having meaningless sex" Is there such a thing as meaningless sex?

[@spacedew]

how old are you?

[@Langkowski]

Tony L Old enough to know that it's not up to moralists or religious people to define what is "correct sex".

[@Langkowski]

***** If it gives you satisfaction, it is not meaningless. A small elite should not define what is "meaningless" and not.

[@megamovieman101]

All sex is meaningless... well, unless people are looking to reproduce.

[@arthurdayne1190]

+Tim Hansen It's his opinion what meaningless sex is

[@guilima3097]

Get out of there ang go write the next book!! I'm just kidding.

[@rlbarnes1328]

It would help if the hosts would stop trying to be funny, clever, etc. while George is talking.