20 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About George RR Martin

4. He Only Planned On Three Books At First

Yes, A Song Of Ice And Fire has spiralled into a sprawling epic of thousand page instalments in a seven-book series (even more, if you count all the tie-ins and prequel novellas). It's not the first time such a thing has happened to a series that was originally envisioned as something much smaller -The Lord Of The Rings was never intended to encompass all the ephemera around it - but it's still impressive. When Martin finally put pen to paper and began detailing the story of Westeros, a good five years after he'd started thinking of the series, he intended to write three books. That was pretty standard, and he was a big Tolkien fan, so the urge to produce a trilogy made sense. Part of the way through the third book though, he realised he needed more room. So three became six, a couple of trilogies that would give his huge story some room to breath (just about). Then he got stuck into A Dance With Dragons, and it was even bigger than anything that came before, and he had to split it into two. And even then, he's still got another couple of books planned after. There's even a chance that those two books that close the series will also be split up. Argh.