(Spoilers All) AMA with authors of The World of Ice and Fire, Elio García and Linda Antonsson! (Part 2 of 2)

This is the second part of Elio and Linda's AMA. The first part can be found here.

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11. Can you shed any light on how George's process works? Does he brainstorm, outline, then first draft, then who knows what, then next draft, then restructure, then final pass. It seems like there are several stages of "done" and it would be interesting to see how he goes about such a large task.

When George finally turned his hand to the book, all we basically saw was his going through our draft, and making some notes. He noticed, as we all had, that there were a lot of places where we needed extensive notes and that's where he offered to write some brief sidebars, casting them as material from Archmaester Gyldayn. Then he started sending in sidebars... and, well, you know how those turned out. How did he do it? I have no idea. I will say that Parris told us that George was writing like a man possessed -- Westeros was just coming to life in his head, and he would toss and turn at night with all sorts of ideas brewing and then in the morning he was off immediately to his office to get these things down. The output, and the rapidity of it, was astonishing. Along the way, George went through each of our drafted sections and in many cases expanded and polished them as a way to flesh things out without going the whole "Here's 10,000 words of brand new text" route.

12. Which of the Seven Kingdoms was the most interesting to work on, and what makes it stand out to you?

Dorne, but then we've been fans of the place for a long time. As we remarked earlier, George really surprised us with the material on Nymeria, and then he created quite a bit more as he worked on his Targaryen histories. Their bitter, stubborn resistance against the Targaryens, their involvement in the affairs of the realm at various points in time, were really interesting. Have to say, the Ironborn material was also pretty intriguing. A lot of surprising little tidbits about their ancient history.

13. What are you looking forward to the fandom learning?

Everything! We haven't figured out how many new "facts" there are in this thing, but it's safe to say there's hundreds of new bits of information. Some are trivial, others not so trivial, but they're new and they're a part of the setting now. If there's one specific thing we think fans will find particularly interesting, it's probably the account of the reign of Aerys II, the Mad King, since it comes so near to matters touching on A Song of Ice and Fire.

14. What perception of a character you previously held changed after reading?

Viserys II. Way back when, George provided a description of Viserys and other Targaryen kings to fan artist Amok, and the "shrewd and calculating" bit gave a certain indication of the sort of man he was... but then reading about him in his youth, in George's material on the regency period of Aegon III's reign, you find some surprises. Shrewd? Yes, but I'd say a sort of lively brightness -- a whip-smart kid, full of life and energy. There are, alas, some bits that will have to wait for Fire and Blood to get out there, but we found young Viserys very simpatico.

15. What was the most difficult thing to cut from the book?

I won't say it was cut, per se, but very early on one of the planned illustrations would have been a maester's star chart, showing the constellations as they exist in the setting, marking out the "twelve houses of heaven" and so on, as the maesters are quite interested in mapping the sky as part of their efforts to determine the change of the seasons and such. It felt like a really neat, if geeky, touch. Alas, it was something that never gelled and was dropped.

16. Was there any material that you regret having to cut from the final product due to space or not being able to work it into the structure of the book?

If we could have used all of George's write ups, we would have, but then the book would have pushed 300,000 words and that just wasn't feasible. Hopefully Fire and Blood will happen after the A Song of Ice and Fire series is done.

17. What did you personally find the most interesting to learn or learn more details about during the writing of the book?

Hard to pick just one! The full details of the Dance of the Dragons were certainly a highlight. So, too, was the account of Aegon the Conqueror's attempts to conqueor and pacify Dorne. Both of these things have something in common: an amazing amount of brutality, above and beyond anything seen in the War of the Five Kings. Things can get very, very ugly in the Seven Kingdoms. It makes us afraid of just how much nastier it may get before it gets better (if it does...) in A Song of Ice and Fire.

18. Which is the story you most want to hear that didn't make it into TWOIAF?

We could have used a lot more on the Swords of the Morning, and the history of House Dayne, but again, we're fans of that. There's a bit of new and interesting stuff there, absolutely, and one glorious painting by the amazing José Cabrer ... but more wouldn't have hurt, in our book (as we said, we're fans of Dorne.)

19. We have unicorns, dragons, giants, manticores, fire wyrms. Can you tell me, will this book let us know if there were more mythical beasts in ASOIAF, and if so, where may I find them?

There certainly are some other strange creatures mentioned in the book. Sothyros seems to be particularly rich in them, and there are strange inhumans inhabiting islands in the mysterious eastern lands at the edge of the knowledge of the Citadel.

20. What is the most relevant item we will learn from the World of Ice and Fire that involves the A Song of Ice and Fire storyline?

There's a great deal of information concerning Tywin Lannister and his friendship -- and then his falling out -- with Aerys, with some implications on matters concerning Tywin's children, and Aerys's children for that matter. Plus the Targaryen section's penultimate entry concerns the great tourney at Harrenhal, and certain mysterious matters surrounding it.