George R.R. Martin Says He Won’t Change Upcoming Books Based On Fan Reactions

While Game of Thrones might be over, George R.R. Martin is still hard at work on the last two novels in his A Song of Fire and Ice series. And, as he told Entertainment Weekly, he has no plans on changing anything in his books based on fan reactions to the last season of the hit HBO show.

“There is a temptation to then change it [in the upcoming books]: ‘Oh my god, it’s screwed up, I have to come up with something different.’ But that’s wrong. Because you’ve been planning for a certain ending and if you suddenly change direction just because somebody figured it out, or because they don’t like it, then it screws up the whole structure,” the Santa Fe-based writer said, giving the example of a reader figuring out Jon Snow’s parentage and putting the spoiler on the internet before it was revealed on the show or in the novels.

“So no, I don’t read the fan sites. I want to write the book I’ve always intended to write all along. And when it comes out they can like it or they can not like it.”

Martin also talked about how strange it was for him to watch the last three seasons of the show while writing The Winds of Winter, the next and sixth book in the series. Martin said that while he told Game of Thrones show runners David Benioff and Dan Weiss a number of plot points, they didn’t use all of them. He compared the show and his novels to alternative realities and said that despite what occurred on the show, he plans to write the novels his own way.

George R.R. Martin: Game of Thrones fan reactions won't change my books https://t.co/vrmAA0ohDj

— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) July 15, 2019

Martin also talked about the pressure to try and finish the book before the TV series wrapped up, saying now that the race is over he just wants to make the books as good as he can.

This isn’t the first time Martin has talked about fan reactions to his story. After the backlash over Game of Thrones‘ final season, the author called the reaction “madness,” according to Yahoo!. He added that the internet created a toxic environment that didn’t exist in previous fandom cultures.

The first book in the series, A Game of Thrones, was released in 1996, while the latest, A Dance with Dragons, came out in 2011. There’s still no set release date for The Winds of Winter.

Meanwhile, the Game of Thrones prequel, starring Naomi Watts, is currently filming in Northern Ireland.