No TV show has caught my attention so quickly and with such a hold as HBO’s House of the Dragon. If you aren’t aware, it’s a prequel story to Game of Thrones based on George R. R. Martin’s book, Fire & Blood. As a writer, I’ve learned a few lessons about writing by watching it. Here are some of them. I’m keeping this spoiler free!
Don’t be Afraid to Write Brutally
By brutally, I don’t mean the act of writing is brutal, but that writer’s should fear to write about brutality. It’s not something I approach too often, but I’m finding that by watching, reading and listening to stories of human brutality, it’s an important part of life. Brutality has had such an influence on the course of human history.
Game of Thrones grew to become one of the biggest TV shows of its time because it pushed the envelope of brutality. It pushed so hard that I think one of the reasons the final seasons suffered is because the showrunners probably felt more of a need to keep up with that brutality more than a need to create the best story the characters and plot were capable of conveying.
House of the Dragon is different. The acting, dialogue, sets and music follow the blueprint of Game of Thrones, but it doesn’t push brutality for brutality’s sake. At least, it isn’t AS brutal. But guess what? IT WORKS.
Game of Thrones and Brutality
Game of Thrones chose to put atrocities on display; things like violence against children, torture and other terrible acts were common. This grim take on fantasy worked because it kept people’s attention. Things happened nobody believed could make it to air. Characters died that would otherwise have always survived if other writers were in charge. Characters perpetrated atrocities, one after another, but the story was stronger because of it. When people chose to do good, it meant that much more. And then it got predictable.
In 2022 came House of the Dragon, and the show’s creators had choices to make. Follow the blueprint of Thrones exactly, or shake things up? Luckily, they chose to shake things up. In the first episode alone, House of the Dragon shows its teeth. It has the DNA to ‘go too far’ with things. It occasionally does the worst thing, but not consistently. House of the Dragon is a story about flawed people, just as much as Thrones was, but House doesn’t need to prove itself in the same way.
Daemon Targaryen and Brutality
“Pushing the envelope” for House of the Dragon means even ‘bad’ characters will do good things. Game of Thrones stuck pretty well to a structure of ‘good’ characters doing good sometimes, while failing to do good other times. The ‘bad’ characters were pretty consistently bad. Now, with House of the Dragon, especially with characters like Daemon Targaryen, you never really know who is ‘good’ and who is ‘bad.’ Daemon’s capacity for atrocity is matched by his capacity for greatness. Because he lives in a grim world, his moments of choosing to be kind, honest and loyal are especially meaningful. His virtue is unpredictable.
I do enjoy writing virtuous characters. I enjoy stories of noble knights and their struggles against evil, but Daemon subverts what it means to be a noble knight. The evil he fights against is his own capacity for violence, deception and betrayal. This is what makes him such a fantastic character. It is all made possible by the decisions of the writers to fearlessly tell a brutal story. So, lesson learned: don’t be afraid to tell a brutal story.
Demand Uncertainty from your Audience
The second big lesson I take from this show comes from near the end of the second season. Uncertainty is a powerful tool, especially in genres that are often defined by their tropes and cliches. Fantasy has long been victim to tropes and cliches like ‘the chosen one,’ ‘the prophecy,’ ‘the evil empire,’ ‘the dark lord,’ and ‘we’re not so different, you and I.’ House of the Dragon still falls victim to the prophecy cliche, but it’s executed in a way that stops it from dragging things down.
House proves that you can still make a fantasy story with a prophecy as a main element and still have uncertainty. I’m not talking about cop-outs like ‘oh the prophecy doesn’t say exactly who the chosen one is, it might be this person or that other person.’ This show simply presents a few ideas as being set in stone, but complicates the story in several ways to make the process of revealing how more significant than why.
Never Let them Guess your Next Move
There is a plot point in season 2 of House of the Dragon that I especially appreciate. Without spoiling anything, Rhaenyra Targaryen seeks new riders for some unclaimed dragons. Claiming a dragon is a life-threatening task, as a dragon can simply kill anyone they won’t let ride them. When this time comes, I found myself so conflicted, so uncertain that I was glued to my TV to see the outcome. Because this show has been less brutal than Game of Thrones, would this work out for the best, or would the scene still end in a bloodbath? With almost any other show, it would have been predictable, but not this time.
House of the Dragon balances the possibilities so well I genuinely couldn’t guess the result, either as a writer with insight into other writer’s brains, or as an audience member simply going for the ride. The layers of storytelling overlapped to form such a fascinating tapestry of meaning that all I could do was sit back and watch. Pretense fell away, and I was just enjoying an incredible TV show. That’s how it ought to be.
Storytelling without Words
This is a hard writing lesson to learn, but I feel like a few TV shows and movies I’ve seen recently have been driving this idea home for me lately. As a writer, you often get wrapped up in a sense of superiority of the written word over other forms of media. You can do things in a book that no amount of technology or innovation on stage or screen will fully convey, so it should be easier to accept that the reverse is also true. And it is true. There are things actors can add to a story through their performance that can’t be fully captured in a book.
I have the slightest bit of experience with acting, I played several extra roles in Miss Saigon my senior year of High School, so I feel like I have the tiniest bit of authority when it comes to talking about acting. Good actors transform a script into something new. The best actors can add so much context, so much feeling and so much power to a scene through tone of voice, body movement and other nuances that go beyond what the script could ever describe.
House of the Dragon has so many great actors giving some of the best performances of their lives. Matt Smith drew me into the show, but it was Paddy Considine who really sold it for me. His is some of the best acting I’ve ever seen. Steve Toussaint, Eve Best and Rhys Ifans go all-out as well. To avoid spoilers I won’t go into any specific performances, but it’s all there. Watch it, please.
Don’t Try to Write a Performance, Write a Story
It’s nice to think a good script helps actors deliver on what a script can’t. The more I think about it, the more I realize that if an author or script writer did really try to prescribe all of the acting nuances, the prose or the script would suffer. It isn’t a writer’s job to direct a movie. It isn’t even a script writer’s job to direct a movie. Even the director can’t speak the exact performance they expect out of each actor into existence. Doing so would only make the acting suffer.
So, as a writer, I think it is a powerful lesson to learn to accept that prose writing cannot prescribe an actor’s performance. It is a writer’s job to write the dialogue, scene description, scene summary and internal dialogue (sometimes), but a writer that seeks to dictate the exact performance of a character for their reader will just end up inundating someone with words that lose meaning as they pile up. A prose writer is usually more descriptive of character actions than a script writer by the nature of the medium, but a prose writer must still know their limits.
Let your Readers Fill in the Gaps
When writing character action descriptions, don’t explain everything. Don’t even try. Give your readers enough of a sense of what is going on, and they will naturally fill in the rest. Readers are good at doing that. Remember that fifty people can read the same book and still come away with different interpretations. That’s either the fault of media illiteracy or the simple consequence of differences in perspectives. The latter is good and natural, by the way. Let your readers read, don’t get in the way.
Other Lessons from Shows, Books and Movies
I plan to make more posts like this in the future, both for my benefit as a memory aid, but maybe it will interest whoever stumbles upon this blog too. I’m thinking of doing a “Writing lessons learned” post about each big show I watch, some of the movies I’ve seen recently, and especially the books I’ve read this year. Subscribe to this blog for more of that. If you want more of my writing, please check out my books! They’re linked in the ‘Books’ section at the top of this page. Support an indie author today!
The Phyronian Chronicle 