NO SPOILERS! You can safely read this whole post!
We’ve only got one more episode of Game of Thrones to go and then the show is over forever (although HBO’s got spinoffs planned). But not everyone has been pleased with the writing this season (including, it seems, some of the actors).
Characters are doing things that seem contrary to their natures, and one fan, of the show and of the fantasy genre in general, has an idea why. Daniel Silvermint wrote a long thread on Twitter explaining why he thinks Game of Thrones feels different now than it did in the earlier seasons.
Want to know why Game of Thrones *feels* so different now? I think I can explain. Without spoilers. /1#GameofThrones #GoT #WritingCommunity
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
The whole thing, according to Silvermint, comes down to the different writing processes of the series’ creator, George R.R. Martin, and the writers/producers of the HBO show.
It has to do with the behind-the-scenes process of plotters vs. pantsers. If you’re not familiar withthe distinction, plotters create a fairly detailed outline before they commit a single word to the page. /2
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
Pantsers discover the story as they write it, often treating the first draft like one big elaborate outline. Neither approach is ‘right’ – it’s just a way to characterize the writing process. But the two approaches do tend to have different advantages. /3
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
Because they have the whole story in mind, it’s usually easier for plotters to deliver tighter stories and stick the landing when it comes to endings, but their characters can sometimes feel stiff, like they’re just plot devices. /4
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
Pantsers have aneasier time writing realistic characters, because they generate the plot by asking themselves what this fully-realized person would do or think next in the dramatic situation the writer has dropped them in. /5
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
But because pantsers are making it up as they go along (hence the name: they’re flying by the seat of their pants), they’re prone to meandering plots and can struggle to bring everything together in a satisfying conclusion. /6
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
That’s why a lot of writers plot their stories but pants their characters, and use the second draft to reconcile conflicts between the two.
What does this have to do with Game of Thrones? /7
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
Well, GRRM is one of the most epic pantsers around. He talks about writing like cultivating a garden. He plants character seeds and carefully lets them grow and grow. /8
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
Martin, speaking about writing, has said:
I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects planeverything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they’re going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there’s going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up.
That’s why every plot point and fair-in-hindsight surprise landed with such devastating weight: everything that happened to these characters happened because of their past choices. But it’s also the reason why the narrative momentum of the books slowed over time. /9
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
Martin continued:
The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don’t know how many branches it’s going to have, they find out as it grows. And I’m much more a gardener than an architect.
After the first big plot arc, book four was originally going to skip ahead five years. But GRRM didn’t know how to make the gap in action feel true to the characters or the world, so he eventually decided to just write his way through those five years instead. /10
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
Which meant planting more seeds, and watching those grow. And suddenly his garden was overgrown, and hard to prune without abrupt or forced resolutions. He had no choice but to follow each and every one of those plot threads, even when they didn’t really matter to the story. /11
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
And now that the plants were fully in control, he struggled to get some of the characters that had grown one way to go where they needed to be for the story. (Dany getting stuck in Meereen is the example he frequently cites.) /12
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
And because he had allthis story to cover and pay off, some of which was growing in the wrong directions and needed enough narrative space to come back around, he started increasing the number of books he thought it would take him to complete the series. And, well. /13
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
The problem, Silvermint contends, isn’t that the HBO writers couldn’t generate new plots.
So the books the showrunners were adapting ran out. What now? People assume the show suffered because they didn’t have GRRM’s rich material to draw on anymore, as if the problem was that he’s simply better at generating new plots than they are. But that’s not what happened. /14
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
For a season or two, the showrunners actually tried to take over management of GRRM’s sprawling garden, with understandably mixed results. When that didn’t work, they shifted their focus to trying to bring this huge beast in for a landing. /15
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
They gave themselves a fixed endpoint – 13 episodes to the finale, and no more – and set about reverse-engineering the rest of the story they wanted to tell.
You see, I think the showrunners are not only plotters, they’re ending-focused plotters by design. /16
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
They want to deliver an ultimately satisfying experience. So with only two seasons to work with, they started asking themselves what was left to do. What could they build with the pieces left in the box? What beats did they just have to include? /17
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
What big moments did they want to deliver? Where should the characters end up? What did they think we, the audience, wanted to see on screen before the show came to an end? It was a Game of Thrones bucket list. /18
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
And once they had that list, it was time to connect the dots to make it all happen. So they started maneuvering the characters into the emotional and literal places they needed to be for all those dots to connect up in the right way. /19
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
The difference is that the showrunners had certain outcomes in mind, and they had to use the characters like pawns to move them to their fates, rather than letting it all develop organically.
That’s why Game of Thrones feels different now. A show that had been about the weight of the past became about the spectacle of the present. Characters with incredible depth and agency – all the more rope with which to hang themselves – became pieces on a giant war map. /20
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
Where once the characters authored their own, terrible destinies, now they were forced to take uncharacteristic actions and make uncharacteristically bad decisions so the necessary plot points could happen and the appropriate stakes could be felt. /21
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
The characters on season eight of the show seem to lack depth because everything was so rushed (after all, the series had a set endpoint).
Organic developments gave way to contrivance. Naturally-paced character arcs were rushed. Living plants became puppets of the plot. The characters just weren’t in charge anymore. The ending was. /22
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
No one’s to blame. Keeping a million plates spinning the way GRRM did is hard. And setting those plates down without breaking too many, which the showrunners had to do, is also really hard. Creation in general is hard. /23
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
There’s a reason writers have haunted eyes and always seem like they need a hug. Give everyone a break. But: the shift in approach did have consequences. /24
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
Silvermint isn’t saying that one type of writer (pantser/plotter or gardener/architect) is better than the other, just that their stories will inherently be different.
Is pantsing better than plotting? No. And this has nothing to do with which approach is ‘right’, anyway. It’s about the approach changing in the third act. That’s the sort of thing an audience can feel happening, even if they can’t put their finger on exactly why. /25
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
The audience fell in love with one kind of show, but the ending is being imported from a different kind of show. Now, I happen to think the finale will stick the landing. It’s what the showrunners have been building toward these past two seasons, after all. /26
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
But to be satisfying, it matters how we get there, too. Treating the journey as equally important is how you get endings that feel earned. And it’s how characters keep feeling real the whole way through, even though they’re completing arcs some writer has chosen for them. /27
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
By placing so much emphasis on the ending, the showrunners changed the nature of the story they were telling, meaning the original story and the original characters aren’t the ones getting an ending. Their substitutes are. /28
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
That’s why no amount of spectacle or fan service can make this ending as satisfying as it should be. Resolutions invite us to consider the story as a whole; where it all started, where it all ended up. And we can feel the discontinuity in this one. /29
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
The thread ended with a cute picture of Jon Snow’s direwolf, Ghost.
Well that ended up being a long thread. So here’s a picture of a very nice dog. /30 pic.twitter.com/YcJZ7COvff
— Daniel Silvermint (@DSilvermint) May 7, 2019
Joanna Robinson, a senior writer at Vanity Fair, weighed in, saying she agreed with Silvermint and adding something about the show’s ending.
It’s right in a lot of ways and very well written. The only factor he misses is that not only were they reverse engineering from any old ending, they were reverse engineering from an ending Martin told them about.
— Joanna Robinson (@jowrotethis) May 11, 2019
Silvermint’s analysis does make a lot of sense. Having a fixed endpoint, and having a lot of plot to squeeze in during that time leaves less room for character development. And while season eight may not be many people’s favorite, I think most people will agree that the show has still been amazing.
