WI: GRRM (and not Benioff and Weiss) is in charge of Game of Thrones

What if GRRM himself (since he already had television experience prior to the airing of GoT) and not Benioff and Weiss (that, according to this Cracked article, didn't know what the hell they were doing) was put in charge of Game of Thrones? Would the series have become as popular, and would it have avoided seasonal rot? The article's authors suggest that the fantasy element of the series would've been far more prevalent and the sex and violence content reduced by a lot - those episodes directed by GRRM were comparatively light on it, after all - but is that what would've happened?
 
He would probably have needed to give up on writing altogether, and while he's been slow-going so you could argue it wouldn't have changed anything, I for one would still rather have the book series completed than the TV series marginally better.
 
Martin ends up abandoning ADWD, WOW, and DOS because of focus on the series. He ends up completing the ASOIAF in tv series rather than book form. ASOIAF becomes a series with the distinction of beginning as a book and concluding as a tv series.
 
Someone else finishes the show when he’s incapable of doing it. GRRM is totally unsuited for Hollywood speed of writing.
 
A lot more food porn?

GRRM has talked before about getting to the end of the third book having stuffed the timing up with half of the characters ready to enter the end game and others needing decades of training and positioning still to go. Queue the mess that was books 4 and 5.

I have long felt the tv series hit the same problem but couldn't afford to throw new factions and an extended tutorial on how to run a medieval trading city at the problem. So they had to push on. Maybe not blindly but with not many other options.

In some ways the TV series could be an AH of how the novels could have gone if GRRM had simply sliced the Meereenese Knot.
 
A lot more food porn?

GRRM has talked before about getting to the end of the third book having stuffed the timing up with half of the characters ready to enter the end game and others needing decades of training and positioning still to go. Queue the mess that was books 4 and 5.

I have long felt the tv series hit the same problem but couldn't afford to throw new factions and an extended tutorial on how to run a medieval trading city at the problem. So they had to push on. Maybe not blindly but with not many other options.

In some ways the TV series could be an AH of how the novels could have gone if GRRM had simply sliced the Meereenese Knot.

Maybe the Gurm should've simply gone ahead with his original idea of ASoIaF as a trilogy, even if this would've meant an Arya/Jon/Tyrion love triangle and Sansa becoming pregnant with Joffrey's child and straight up, unambiguously betraying her family and the North as well.

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I don't see Benioff and Weiss not being in charge of GOT as long as the series was successful. But I can see GRRM having more influence in the series.

Let's assume that GRRM manages to finish the books before the series starts airing. Yes, this is a big assumption, I know.

After finishing A Storm of Swords GRRM realises that the five years gap will not work at all and does not lose a year of writing. Instead he finds a way to solve the problem (insert your favourite way to manage this here). A Feast for Crows is published in 2003 with many readers complaining that "it has taken him too long". Luckily for everybody involved now GRRM is inspired and he manages to publish A Dance with Dragons in late 2005 returning to his previous pace for the first three novels (1996,1998,2000). Two years and a half later he publishes The Winds of Winter (2007) and A Dream of Spring is published in 2010 just when the HBO TV series airs its first season.

Freed from the pressure to write the books GRRM becomes more and more involved in the TV series writing the scripts for several episodes in Season 2. After this his involvement with the series increases with each season and soon he is at the same decision level as Weiss and Benioff.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
Anyway, the POD here would be GRRM being dissatisfied with Benioff and Weiss, and pulling a "Fine, I'll do it myself". The result would presumably be that he'd instruct screen-writers to adapt his books into script format pretty directly, with few(er) deviations. Less focus on "sexposition", one may assume. Lots of elements that were whittled down in the OTL series would remain in this version (such as Lady Stoneheart), and the general pace of the series might be perceived as slower. Considering that we know that Benioff and Weiss wanted to speed things along (especially near the end), I would guess that a version made/guided by Martin himself would consist of ten full-length seasons. (One for AGoT, one for ACoK, two for ASoS, two for AFfC/ADwD and two each for TWoW and ADoS.)

This would all be happening well after A Feast For Crows was good and published, so it doesn't radically change the plan for the books. But it would slow down the writing there, presumably to "next to no progress". A Dance With Dragons might not make it to publication, and everyone can just forget about The Winds of Winter. As @GSD310 wrote: ASoIaF would become a saga that began on the page, and ultimately culminated on the screen, without the written version ever likely to be finished.


Someone else finishes the show when he’s incapable of doing it. GRRM is totally unsuited for Hollywood speed of writing.

Being good at writing books doesn't necessarily mean you'll be good at making a movie or a TV show. Just look at Stephen King and Maximum Overdrive.

He wouldn't have to be the writer, although the man actually has a pretty extensive career in both writing and producing for television. His role here presumbably wouldn't be writer, though, but lead producer with final script approval (and an occasional role personally re-writing a few bits or serving as co-writer).
 
Literally anyone would have done a better job at the helm of Game of thrones

Some minor characters and sub-plots from the novels would've had to go nonetheless, but the later books wouldn't have been massacred as badly - in fact, the series could've improved on them, if only because of GRRM's literary ADHD from A Feast for Crows onwards. I wouldn't change a thing in the main cast however, except for Emilia Clarke and Kit Harington. They struck gold with most of their choices, from Peter Dinklage to Maisie Williams.

Maisie in particular is someone that should've been pushed to even greater heights through the series, you just don't go toe to toe with Charles Dance while in middle school by pure chance.
 
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