the summer snows

The man had just started writing a science fiction novel.

It was going well.?

He had 30 pages already written.?

The story of three students from different cultures who met at the Avalon Academy of Human Knowledge.?

It was to be his magnum opus.?

He said it would be “the science fiction War and Peace”.?

A story that combines a thousand worlds.?

And then, an idea hit him.???

An idea that didn’t fit into the story he was writing.??

It came to him so strongly and vividly, that he had to write it.?

He rushed to get it on paper.?

The idea was about a boy who had just watched a beheading.?

And finds direwolf pups in the summer snows.?

~

He had no idea what this story was about.?

All he knew was that a boy had witnessed an execution and found direwolf pups in the summer snows.?

He started asking himself questions.?

Why are they summer snows??

Well, it must be a place that is very cold and would snow in the summer.?

Who is the boy? Why is there a beheading? What are direwolf pups? Who else is with the boy?

He wrote the answers.?

The more questions he asked, the more he wrote the answers.??

It only took him three days to write the chapter.?

This was the first chapter of Game of Thrones.?

George R.R. Martin never finished the science fiction series.?

He started on a new one instead.?

~

That first chapter was largely unchanged when it was published in 1996.?

His magnum opus became A Song of Ice and Fire, one of the most successful and celebrated fiction series of all time.?

Note: he didn’t start with a plot.?

i.e. a boy who saved the world from a deep evil beyond a giant wall?

He started with a single idea.?

Which stands in contrast to the finished work, a sprawling and incredibly complex world.?

Arguably, it is so successful because it is so complex.?

The world feels real.?

It has thousands of years of history.

?

Hundreds of characters.?

And most of us who love Game of Thrones think:

How the heck could anyone come up with all this stuff??

By answering one question at a time.?

~

He said that “the world-building grew parallel to the story”?

As he would write the story, he would reference a king.?

Who is the king??

He would make up a name.?

What about a different king??

Same thing.?

He finally decided that so he didn’t get them all mixed up, he made a list of kings.?

And the history began to grow.??

~

It seems incredibly overwhelming to build an entire world.?

All the characters.?

All the geography.?

All the history.?

It’s incredibly overwhelming to build anything, frankly.?

But you don’t need to build the entire thing at once.?

Start with a single idea.

Start asking questions about your idea.?

The answers will build it for you.

And after a lot of questions, and a lot of answers.?

You might have your magnum opus.

-Ian

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