A Lesson in Nudity and Violence from Game of Thrones

Recently I’ve become addicted to a new television show. Don’t worry, this happens like once a month. I’ll hear something is a good show and then I’ll troll the internet (mostly Netflix) until I find all of the episodes ever and then I’ll watch them all one after another until I feel guilty about having gotten nothing else accomplished. If it’s a good TV show, normally I won’t feel guilty about this until I’ve watched all the episodes.

So, right, recently I’ve become addicted to a new show. I don’t know, maybe you’ve heard of it? It’s a little show called Game of Thrones. It’s summer, so I’m home, and my parents saw me watching an episode. For anyone else that watches this show (which should be EVERYONE), you know that along with all of its amazingness, it also has a ton of violence and nudity. So my dad is standing there watching a second of this with me and he says, “So why exactly do you like this show?”

This is a reasonable question when he is watching a bit in which in one scene someone gets his throat slit and in the next scene two women in a brothel are getting it on. But it didn’t take me even a second to think about it before I answered.

The writing is amazing.

Part of this is probably because the author of the books this series is based on writes some of the episodes and is a co-producer so he has a ton of creative control (always a good thing). Part of this is probably because the main writers, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, have experience in both screen writing and in novel writing. This second part is the key bit. They both also write novels, which, when it comes to adapting a novel to the screen, seems utterly important to me but also utterly overlooked. Plus, I just finished reading David Benioff’s novel City of Thieves and it was incredible! So, you know, it’s good writing upon good writing upon good writing.

Okay, so fine, I like the writing. But there has to be more that attracts me to this than just the witty dialogue (although I could probably just listen to Tyrion talk forever). 

 

I think it also has something to do with the mix of violence/nudity and the extremely emotional connections we make to the characters. Game of Thrones is widely known to be that show that kills off everyone you like and never the people that you hate (which happens to be more than half the characters). This sounds evil, right? But it’s actually kind of brilliant. If you put those characters that fans hate in charge and always put the good guys as the underdogs, it is guaranteed that those fans will come back. They want to see their favorites succeed, but if they do, fans will feel satisfied and leave. So while all of us fans moan that Joffrey still hasn’t died and that not even Sansa deserved that, we all secretly kind of love watching all this violence and nudity and this horrible stuff happen. Not because it’s happening, but because we know that the best is yet to come.

Delayed gratification. All of our writing could learn a little from it. Or, at least mine could.

Bravo David Benioff. Bravo D. B. Weiss. But really. Bravo George R.R. Martin.  

Go Ahead and Lie! You'll Feel Better.

Alice – (f) A-liss; of English/Germ origin; meaning: the truthful one

I find this definition a little ironic given the fact that I’m a fiction writer. Because from my experience, the number one rule of writing is learn to lie.

Okay, so maybe this isn’t the number one rule. But it’s up there.

When I was young (I’m talking elementary school), I was a chronic liar. It wasn’t like I woke up every morning telling myself I was going to lie. It’s just that lying came a lot easier to me than the truth did. I would lie about insignificant things, like what I had for breakfast or what I did over summer break. But I would about significant things too, inventing grandiose stories about a family I didn’t have or people I’d never met.

I don’t think I lied like this because I had malicious intentions or because I didn’t like my life. (I was a pretty happy kid.) I think I lied like this because I knew that these things were true for other people. I liked to imagine what it would be like if they were true for me. And while lying can be really inconvenient in real life (I realized this after an excruciatingly long period of silent lunch, a punishment given for lying to my teacher), this is the reason I love to write. Lying is liberating. It gives me permission to think beyond what is real; it gives me permission to think about what could be real.

One of my best friends is a girl I met in second grade and I think one of the reasons I loved her so much from the start was she gave me permission to lie. We lied to each other constantly. We told each other our parents were dead, that we’d met witches, that we were actually magical creatures trapped in human bodies, that we could read minds. We made up so many lies that sometimes our lies got mixed up and we were able to catch each other on them. That’s when I realized I had to write these lies down to keep track of them. 

So, really, it’s her fault I write. (And for that I'll always owe her one. : ) )We don't still lie to each other anymore, but she is still someone I know I can talk to about what I love to do - write.

Being a good liar is important no matter what I’m writing. And no matter how many times I do it, the lying (er…writing) never gets old.

I didn’t tell you all of this to make you think I’m going to lie to you – I got over the chronic liar part, I promise. I just wanted to give you some background on how I started writing. I’ve experimented with a lot of different genres and at this point I’m partial to women’s fiction and sci-fi or dystopian, aimed at a young adult audience. In the past, I’ve written a lot of romance as well, which has given me insight into that genre and how to incorporate it into other genres. I’ve also been working with short fiction a lot recently. But I’m also an avid reader, and no genre is out of the question for experimentation. (I feel like that statement should be followed by a “muah hahaha.”)

Before I let you go, I wanted to share the ending of one of my favorite short stories, River of Names by Dorothy Allison. (Heads up if you actually read the whole thing: it comes from a really dark and twisted place. You’ve been warned.)

            

Jesse puts her hands behind my neck, smiles and says, “You tell the funniest stories.” 

“Yeah,” I tell her. “But I lie.”

The question is, do you believe me?