Game of Thrones, Storytelling, and closure
Before you say anything, yes. I have read the books. I almost wish I had not at this point because who knows when GRRM will ever put out another one, but I digress. The point of this blog post isn’t to point fingers, but to point out how good the books, and by proxy, the show really are.
I don’t mean they’re good because they’re shocking. I don’t mean they’re good because the characters are cool. I mean these are just good old fashioned storytelling. With all long epics like this you begin to worry after a while, because usually authors start with a shtick, but by the time the end really needs to come together it’s to daunting to do. A perfect example of this is the Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan which was finished by Brandon Sanderson. You have this big sweeping epic and an author who is to close to the story to feel it ending appropriately, so bringing in another talented author to complete it is necessary. GRRM seems to be doing this with Benioff and Weiss.
There are five books and five and a half seasons of the show, and now that the show has pulled ahead we are starting to see some of that storytelling come to fruition. A large problem shows that contain mysteries have, is they focus on expanding the mystery to the point it is so untenable that it becomes too loose and no longer entertaining. Game of Thrones (and the book alternative A Song of Ice and Fire), after Sunday night’s episode is seeming to be eliminating some of these issues.
We are finally getting explanations to why the characters are the way they are. We are finally getting information about the forces in the world trying to destroy it. We are finally getting some closure.
That’s what good storytelling is really all about. Anyone could be like the show Lost and come up with all these crazy ideas, but the trick to good storytelling is being able to bring them all back together in a nice cohesive bundle. Story telling is cyclical, your ending must hearken back to the beginning and pay off the events that happened that got your story started, and it appears as though GRRM did in fact have a plan, from the beginning, as to what he was going to do. That gives me hope for a good show. That gives me pride in a great book series.
And it all came with the realization of a characters name.
Sean McBride 