Science explains why A Song of Ice and Fire is so gripping

Physicists, mathematicians and psychologists join forces to explain why the Game of Thrones books are so hard to put down.

Okay, you might think that professional academics from five universities from throughout the UK and Ireland getting together to study George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books might seem frivolous, but hear them out. These researchers are looking to understand the power of narratives, which as Professor Colm Connaughton from the University of Warwick observes, is the main way a lot of people make sense of the world, “but we have no scientific understanding of what makes complex narratives relatable and comprehensible. The ideas underpinning this paper are steps towards answering this question.”

With that in mind, these scientists have published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the results are pretty interesting. Basically, they identify two big reasons why Martin’s fantasy epic is so gripping:

1. The character interactions mimic real-life social patterns

A Song of Ice and Fire (and its HBO adaptation, Game of Thrones) are famous for having a huge number of characters. Some criticized the story for having too many characters — the researchers identified 2,007 — but given that Game of Thrones was the most popular show in the world for years, clearly it didn’t bother them that much.

According to the scientists, that may be because, as many characters as there are, they’re introduced and followed in a way that makes a lot of instinctive sense to our brains. To figure this out, the researchers mapped out the characters’ interactions, finding that 1,806 characters interacted with another character at least once, for a grand total of 41,000 character-to-character interactions throughout the five books of the series so far.

The social network at the end of the first book “A Game of Thrones”. Blue nodes represent male characters, red are female characters and transparent grey are characters who are killed by the end of the first book.

The key is that, because the story is told through various point-of-view chapters, none of the characters are interacting with everyone at once. Each of the individual characters — even the really prominent ones — only have around 150 other characters to keep track of. As it happens, 150 is the average number of relationships the human brain can process at once. “This study offers convincing evidence that good writers work very carefully within the psychological limits of the reader,” University of Oxford professor Robin Dunbar said.

2. The non-chronological narrative makes deaths and other twists seem both unpredictable and believable

Another thing A Song of Ice and Fire is known for are the unpredictable twists and deaths. But the researchers found that a lot of the surprise comes from how Martin arranges the twists, rather than the twists themselves.

The point-of-view structure means that the books aren’t told in strictly chronological order, even before things get wonky with the A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons. Martin can spend some time with this character in one part of the world and then visit with a character in another part, who’s doing things at the same time. Then, when he knows we’re ready, he’ll visit a different character and spring a twist on us.

Using a timeline compiled by Reddit, the researchers laid the events of the story out chronologically, and concluded that they were much more predictable this way. “Portraying significant events by discourse time instead of as they happen appears to maintain the reader’s suspense,” the researchers wrote.

At the end of the day, the researches think that the power of A Song of Ice and Fire can be chocked up to how it mixes “realism and unpredictability in a cognitively engaging manner,” a note that writers everywhere may want to take.

And what do the scientists behind this work hope to do with it? “This kind of study opens up exciting new possibilities for examining the structure and design of epics in all sorts of contexts; impact of related work includes outcry over misappropriation of mythology in Ireland and flaws in the processes that led to it,” said Professor Ralph Kenna of Coventry University

And of course, we can use it to predict things. “I am excited to see the use of network analysis grow in the future, and hopefully, combined with machine learning, we will be able to predict what an upcoming series may look like,” said Dr. Joseph Yose, also of Coventry University.

Maybe the scientists can write The Winds of Winter before George R.R. Martin does?

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels

h/t Insider