George R.R. Martin explains how he writes villains on The Great American Read
By Dan Selcke
PBS is currently in the middle of The Great American Read, a show dedicated to discovering America’s best-loved novel. There are 100 books contenders, including A Game of Thrones, the first novel in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. “It’s Thunderdome for books,” Martin wrote about the show. “100 novels enter, one emerges.”
Just this week, PBS uploaded a segment from the episode “Villains and Monsters” where Martin lays out his thinking on how to write baddies. The secret? He doesn’t think of them as villains at all.
“I don’t try to write anyone who’s, ‘Oh, I’m a villain. Let me get up today and just go out and do villainy and pull the world [in]to darkness,'” Martin says. “They all have grievances. They all have wounds, and they have things that drive them to do the things that they do.”
That’s a great tac to take, although I think there are a few villains in Martin’s story that test the limits of his theory. Martin’s words apply well to people like Cersei Lannister, Tywin Lannister and Walder Frey, who are driven by ambition, family and pride. I may root against those characters, but I see why they do what they do. But what about villains like Joffrey Baratheon, Ramsay Bolton and Euron Greyjoy? There’s something more traditionally monstrous about them, particularly Ramsay and Euron.
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Let’s hash that out in the comments. In the meantime, I also like this pearl of wisdom from Martin: “We’re all these complicated people, who are capable of doing a heroic act on Tuesday and on Wednesday doing something horrible.” That’s a great philosophy for writing interesting characters if I’ve ever heard one.
Martin has appeared on other portions of The Great American Read. Here he is talking up The Lord of the Rings, which was a big influence on A Song of Ice and Fire:
And here, he talks about his love for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby:
There’s still time to vote on your favorite novel before the end of the show!
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