Writing Forum

My Dear FSFS Fellow Traveller,

I was going to get all creative with links and such but time does not allow. Instead let me give it to you bald. What do you think about prophecy in fantasy writing? I think it can get you into trouble.

What brought this to my mind was a flurry of Game of Thrones related pokes to my consciousness. OH! by the way, the FSFS is going to be competing in the WdC Game of Thrones event. Here's a link, not a cool inline one or anything cleverly altered to fit neatly with my post, but still a link that can get you to the thing: "King's Landing updating " 
That was not the first of the pokes, but it comes along with a veritable rainstorm of other things that got me thinking about George R.R. Martin's (may he live forever because it seems to be taking that long to finally finish up Winds of Winter and you KNOW that's not the end of it either) Song of Ice and Fire. I've fallen back into trolling some of the most fanboyish sites and marvelling at how much time others spend on such things, ummm, errr, and then I go to the next one. You know the sites, like this one where panelists talk for 2 hours about the 1 hour Game of Thrones show, (Ummm, here: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheHistoryofwesteros ) and this one that really gets me thinking about my topic (Preston Jacobs is off the hook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh7UdY1lgAo and there is a chance that he's escaped institutional control).

OH NO, THE LINKS LOOK AWFUL!!! (see, this is a prediction, a prophecy one might say. I don't really know what they are going to look like, but I suspect I will not be pleased, and I'm writing as if I DO know it for a fact. BOY, I hope I'm right and they look terrible or this might not go so well.

So the Preston Jacobs comparison of the books and the TV show by episode brought up the Maggy the Frog prophecy and how it was different and how that's not so bad because it frees the show up to do what they want. GRRM salts his works with a lot of predictive stuff. If you wanted to get technical you could call it foreshadowing, but a lot of it is out and out prophecy. Characters have visions or something and they say things that you just KNOW are going to happen.... and they do. (and some, they will)

Sometimes prophecy can be like genie wishes. You can be surprised by how the letter of the prophecy is fulfilled, like when you get just what you asked for, but the genie makes sure it isn't what you wanted.

But there is no doubt that they lock you into certain events. So, you better remember what you promised. No wonder George R.R. Martin takes so long to write his books. His stuff is drenched with premonition and foreshadowing (you'd think we were in Ashai) I have an example. I've been listening to GRRM read by Roy: {l-link:http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-Song-Fire-Book/dp/B0001DBI1Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1432176568&sr=1-1&keywords=game+of+thrones+audiobook} and I noticed something I hadn't noticed before. Early on in the first book Bran has a true vision. In a dream he is falling from a great height and he sees a good many things that we've read about in earlier chapters so we KNOW that he's seeing what really is and then he sees Robert Strong, the giant in plate armor (with nothing in the helm but dark blood) and that isn't mentioned... I'm not sure but I think we might be waiting for Robert Strong way into Winds of Winter and it might not figure into season 5 of the show. That's a long time down the old prophetic road if you ask me.

I've listened to endless talk about the series and have heard conjecture about the Heart Trees, the werewoods with faces carved into them. The thought goes that green-seers can see through the tree's eyes. *Spoiler alert* Bran does this, looking through the heart tree and seeing not only what IS there for the heart tree to see, but also back into time to what WAS there. (I've got a theory that all the heart trees are linked together under the ground like huckleberry bushes)

But here's the thing. Bran sees from above the world in his dream. He sees what we know is happening and he also sees some things that aren't going to happen until Winds of Winter or afterward. It appears that though you can look through the heart trees Bran doesn't need to. I'm guessing GRRM knew what he was doing in book 1, but that is some serious potential trouble. Never mind Maggie the Frog!

The prophecy is a pretty standard trope in Fantasy, but I think it is rarely done well and is a bit of a sign of poor writing when it fails and of good writing when it works.

What do you think?

LSO