Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, From A Game of Thrones to A Dance with Drago by Unknown Read Free Book Online Page B

staggered word balloons. In a project that relies on dialogue—and most novels rely on dialogue—reframing the action so that more of the information is given to the reader through images is a challenge, and it encourages the adaptor to reimagine the scenes in ways that simplify and condense conversations, while amplifying action and the images that take the place of physical description in prose, even when that means doing some violence to the story.
    Narrative voice is also a serious and related structural issue in the translation between media. It also brings in the collaborative nature of the adaptation. In prose, the narrator is an additional and often unnamed character with an idiosyncratic voice and manner that sets the essential tone of the story and provides information to the reader. In transitioning to comic books, those two functions are split.
    The basic feel of a comic book isn’t provided by the narrator’s imagined speaking voice but by the artist’s visual style. Whether we are to take a story—or even a scene within a story—seriously or lightly is signaled by the way in which it is drawn and the palate used in coloring it. This is very similar to the way that word choices and vocal rhythms of a narrator’s voice cue a reader how to interpret action in prose. Imagine, for example, Winterfell drawn as a Disney princess cartoon as opposed to the style of Ted Naismith. The way that the artist approaches the image is the mood of the piece and exists with its own set of constraints, including the skill and interests of the artist and the time pressure of production. While the scripter can specify that an image be more stylized or realistic and describe the effect that an image or scene should convey, the actual drawing has to rely on the skill and, more importantly, the judgment of the artist. The images, however carefully conceived by the person making the script, are the necessary subject of the person drawing the lines, and the choices made at the drawing table are as important as the ones made at the keyboard. The role of the narrative voice as a cue on how to approach the project is actually taken out of the writer’s hands. Even if the script gives lengthy, specific instructions to the artist in the best Alan Moore tradition, the artist will still interpret it and make decisions that sometimes differ from the script. But what the visual style can’t do that a prose narrator can is provide abstract information, like exposition.
    Exposition is always a problem. How well an author manages exposition is one good litmus test for quality. By having an engaging narrative voice, a text can move away from the literal and concrete action in a scene—the cinematic aspects of the story—to give background information, history, or philosophical and thematic grounding. A Game of Thrones in particular features passages that cover the history of Westeros and the complex backstories of the characters engaged in conversation in the scenes. When Eddard and Robert descend to the crypt below Winterfell to visit Lyanna’s grave, for example, there’s a wealth of information in the text about how the three of them were related, how Brandon Stark and the Tullys fit in, and the history of the rebellion that put Robert on the throne. There is no graceful way to take that abstract information and present it in a purely visual form. The options are to reprint the prose exposition (either entirely or in summary) with some limited illustration, omit the exposition and lose the depth and background, or take the information that was presented in exposition and shoehorn it into the action of the story, often using dialogue, with all the attendant trouble that creates.
    A third strictly technical issue is the pacing of the plot. A Game of Thrones is built in chapters of varying lengths with the dramatic high points and resting places coming where they fit organically within those units, both individually and combined as a full