hey the dead men just up ahead do you know what killed them was the cold I've seen men freeze before last winter and the one before and I was just half a boy you know they talk about 40 foot snows they talk about the icy wind howling from the north but the real enemy is the cold it burns it does nothing burns like cut cut cut it's not right it's not right at all that's exactly how it is in the script the audience needs to know how dangerous this cold is they need to feel he the snow winter winte
r is coming remember the cold is an important part of the book and I need you to be colder colder yes let's do it again come on time is money okay the dead men are up ahead colder the dead men are up aead all right Carson you went to juliard right yeah then act like it okay come on let's go colder the dead men are up ahead and do you know what killed them the cold colder I don't know what to do cut cut you know I have an idea I have an idea they talk about the Snows 40 ft deep and the and the wi
nd howling icy from the north but really it's the cold it's the cold that gets you it's but really it's nothing burns like the cold all right I don't think you get it we're not here to tell the audience that it's that it's chilly oh no we're here to tell them that it's cold and that they better not fing forget it do it again the cold it burns it does nothing burns like the cold now you know what guys let's wrap it up for lunch we'll come back we'll do this later A Song of Ice and Fire has become
a monolith it has transcended the fantasy genre to become a cultural icon and of course the TV shows for Game of Thrones and the house of the Dragon they've skyrocketed the fame of the series but even before then the Publishers seem to understand the appeal of the series all the way back to the beginning now now George RR Martin had a really interesting journey to become what we know him as today he had some short stories and nelas published in the 1970s when he was in his 20s oh no he's hot an
d even had television rights purchased for one of his novelas titled nightflyers where he then assisted on writing the script and he would continue writing for television and have a pretty successful career in Hollywood it was in the9 s that Martin turned his Focus back to writing now it's important to note that Martin was already a successful established presence in writing he had won multiple Hugo Awards and nebula Awards and he had served as a board member for the Science Fiction and Fantasy
writers of America for multiple years so when he wrote the draft for a Game of Thrones Publishers were paying attention Martin and his agent began in the mid90s shopping around this 1,000 page manuscript and the rights for the trilogy yes it was going to be a Trilogy and this led to at the time the largest advaned ever paid for such a work now what such a work means in this context is kind of odd like is it the biggest advance for a fantasy book for an author for an author in the UK for a Trilog
y we don't really know either way people knew that A Song of Ice and Fire would be big at Game of Thrones the first book grew in reputation and the second book of the series A Clash of King Kings landed on the New York Times Best Sellers List and from then on the series and Martin were established as greats of fantasy literature but why especially in the mid90s fantasy wasn't as big as it is today it was a niche a little corner of the bookstore that didn't get nearly the traffic of the other sec
tions I mean nowadays that's all changed and that brings us to A Game of Thrones and its opening chapter I cannot understate the importance of this prologue in an era where people were not used to reading 800 page books where people were not accustomed to the fantasy genre like they are today Martin needed an introduction in his book that sold the reader on the upcoming Journey that convinced the reader it was worth the effort and you have to remember the biggest books the number one best seller
s of 1996 were these how Ella Got Her Groove Back Silent Honor by Danielle Steel The Runaway Jury by John grizom and these are historical fiction standard literary fiction and thrillers if Martin's work was going to transcend the fantasy genre and join this New York Times bestsellers list then he needed to capture the attention of readers who were not used to Fantasy and to do this he used an action prologue if you aren't aware of the action prologue then you are really missing out this is your
shortcut to mystery inquiry suspense and tension before your story even gets started I actually spoke about the action prologue in my very first video on this channel check it out an action prologue is a tool for you to create a stunning opening scene for your novel without impacting how you introduce your characters or your plot and Hollywood has this down I I mean though usually they include their main characters in The Action prologue but you don't have to examples of this action prologue in
Hollywood include face off Casino Royale nearly every single Saw movie and maybe the best or at least the closest example for this book Jaws the opening scene to Jaws is an action prologue at its most basic and it aligns really closely with what George RR Martin did in his book it features none of the main characters but it establishes the atmosphere the theme and it grabs your attention if you haven't seen it the opening scene to Jaws features some teenagers at the beach partying and a pair dit
ching the party to go skinny dipping a girl swims out into the water and we get some iconic and uniquely filmed scenes like the perspective of the shark under the water looking up at that person and that'll be repeated throughout the film and then we get the action the shark attack the screaming and the terror of this poor girl and then once the audience is truly stunned by what they saw we ease into the actual film and Martin does nearly the same thing he introduces a couple of characters they'
re immediately interesting and they have the strong dynamic between them and we get a theme of people questioning leadership and the stifling cold of the forest around them we hear about the wild Lings and we get hints of something terrifying in the woods that men know of but they don't speak of and then just like Jaws we get scenes and dialogue that feel completely unique to A Game of Thrones this sort of gritty realism and fantasy it's not high fantasy or Epic Fantasy it's not Dungeons and Dra
gons with magic spells and elves and Orcs in your face it's so much closer to a realistic world than that and the action prologue spends time to tell tell you that this is a world where maybe the most dangerous thing is the weather the cold that can drain away your strength but then that shifts tension Rises we see the enemy we see the shark we see the others a being that comes out of the woods something more than human and again there's no magic spell to save anyone in this fantasy world it's m
ore realistic than that it's up to you and your blade to fight off an enemy an enemy that is simply unhuman and then we're off to the actual book and you can see the appeal here I mean this scene just 3,800 words establishes the rules of the world the stakes of the world the style of writing various different themes that'll be explored throughout the novel and maybe most importantly it establishes Reader interest it is so much easier as a reader to be interested in a scene with stakes and action
than it is to be interested in a character introduction done without those elements the great thing is that the action prologue doesn't need to be written first because it's so independent of the rest of your story you can come back to it at any time and maybe when you've better realized the story that you want to tell you can come back to that action prologue and establish those themes and the elements and the symbolism as best you can in fact that's exactly what Martin did and whether that wa
s a note from an editor or his own decision we don't know but it works now the writing in this action prologue is incredibly important and that's what we're breaking down today I took the entire prologue and I retyped it yes it was tedious but now we have this 3,800 words and as I was reading this and I've read it a few different times at a few different points in my life I've always noticed something peculiar and I don't see anyone else talking about it let's talk about Martin's presentation of
atmosphere and tension specifically something that I think Martin does better than most Riders his word choice in the Jaws action prologue one of the important things to do is to establish the tension of the shark underneath the waves the whole movie rides on this tension the iconic soundtrack that plays as we get the perspective of the shark that two note Motif that's arguably like the biggest cultural takeaway from the movie I'm here to to claim that Martin does the equivalent of that soundtr
ack with his word choice damn let me explain the reason that the soundtrack amplifies the tension in the movie Jaws is the pace of the notes the feeling that those notes evoke uh it increases as we get closer to that big moment of action the shark attack and if you watch that scene on mute then that moment is so much less impactful how how do we build that sort of tension in writing well here's how Martin does it he emphasizes the cold that's it simple as that the cold is such an important part
of his novel you know the tagline winter is coming it helps emphasize that A Song of Ice and Fire the name emphasizes that everything emphasizes the cold and in the prologue Martin uses that to amp up the tension here is the entire prologue every single word and now I'm going to highlight every word that has to do with cold now you're probably saying hey this scene takes place in like a snowy Forest there's going to be all kinds of words that have to do with the feeling of cold and you're right
but Martin also uses words associated with cold to describe actions and I actually lied here are all the words associated with cold the purple color is every word associated with cold weather things like snow cold wind Etc the blue words are words associated with cold but used to describe actions like the taste of cold iron filling his mouth or a pale sword shivering through the air deliberate choices that increase in frequency as tension Rises it's the Jaws soundtrack to his writing now I haven
't seen anyone talk about this I'm sure someone out there has but let me be the first to point out that it's totally normal to not not notice stuff like this this is what I call reading with intention it's reading a book not just to experience the story but to learn from an author how do they craft the story or present characters or create dialogue it can also be more about writing techniques like this reading with intention is a lot slower than normal reading but you get so much out of it okay
so how can you apply this to your own writing the action prologue is a great way to start start any story and I recommend that you use an action prologue especially if you want to introduce questions to your readers that will be answered through your book yes I mean of course you can present those questions just within your normal course of your book without an action prologue but it may be a hundred Pages before you get to the point in your story where you can present those questions give the r
eader a taste of what's to come with that action prologue let me give you an example with my own action prologue I have a book that I've been working on for years off and on called Crescent Bay it's a story about some kids who find a little black book within a lighthouse of their small New England town and that book contains the secrets written of all these little crimes done throughout their Town's history this person cheated on his wife with this other person this person sabotaged this other p
erson's business these teachers purposely failed this student because of a vendetta all the names are written in some sort of code though so it's really hard to decipher and the book ends with a huge Revelation that impacts the entire town and implicates the most powerful people in this big nefarious cover up who wrote this book who committed this terrible crime how was this town involved allowing this to happen and what should the kids do all of this can be really interesting to the reader but
I feel like there's a lot of work that needs to be done to establish the town and the characters before this book is discovered so how can I use an action prologue to hook the reader before that 100 Pages where I then introduced these Concepts now a better author would likely plan the story better but not me so I wrote an action prologue a scene that acted out up on this catwalk of a steel mill full of accusations and threats that culminates in a murder and a witness to the crime hidden in the s
hadows frantically scribbling in a black book before the murder murer turns their way so now we've provided those same questions that the reader will encounter 100 pages into the book but we've done it in the first thousand words more so it changes the experience of The Reader through the introduction of the book each character that they meet raises the question is this the murderer will they get Justice the action prologue buys you time as an author it's why so many people use it it's especiall
y useful to an author who knows that their story May have a slower buildup it's a quick shot of exciting pacing to the beginning of a story in a world where a reader has so many books to choose from it may be what convinces them to read your book it's an important aspect of addictive storytelling more on that in another video If you like this video then like and subscribe for more content like this I'm just breaking into Game of Thrones and I see a lot of specific writing choices being made so t
here may be plenty more videos on the series so stick around for more content and as always thank you for watching
Comments