Matthew J. O'Dwyer

Writing Wednesday: Game of Thrones Week: The Difference Between Necessary and Unnecessary scenes.

Hey, everyone! It’s Writing Wednesday again here on the blog and it’s also Game of Thrones week.  With the premier of the HBO show taking place later this week, these posts will mostly focus on the television series. Be on the lookout for a week dedicated to the book later this year.

For Writing Wednesday, I thought I would actually talk a little bit about the differences between the novels and the show. This isn’t going to be a straight comparison. Instead, I’m going to look at one challenging aspect of the first novel incorporated into the show, as well as a scene in season two that never took place in the books.

First, I want to talk about a scene with Petyr Baelish. I believe this scene took place in episode eight of the first season. Petyr is instructing two prostitutes on how to have sex with one another for five or ten minutes while giving a monologue. At first glance, it’s a fairly graphic scene that heightens the sexual reputation of the show. However, the scene is actually pretty genius.

While you might not want to sit down and watch this scene with the whole family, it does serve an important purpose. In the first novel, Martin gives us the background of Petyr Baelish and his history with Lady Stark. However, this information isn’t given to us through dialogue. Well, in a television show or movie, information like that needs to be given through dialogue or a voice over. In most cases, dialogue is the better option. This scene gives the audience a private moment with Petyr and allows him to give the information to someone that truly wouldn’t know the information, the new prostitutes. While it is a graphic scene, I do have to applaud the writers for working Petyr’s backstory into the first season.

The second scene I want to talk about is something I felt was unnecessary in the show. In season two, Tyrion sends two prostitutes… wait… I’m seeing a theme here… anyway, he sends two prostitutes to King Joffrey’s room for his birthday. Joffrey then commands the women to beat one another mercilessly with a club or some kind of strange Baratheon staff.

This is another scene you probably won’t sit the family down for. However, unlike the first one, this doesn’t happen in the books and there doesn’t seem to be any reason for it. In fact, given the way Martin writes, the reader never sees a private moment with Joffrey. I’ve heard arguments for and against this scene. The argument for the scene has a couple of valid points. This should be a moment of forbidden pleasure for Joffrey, but he’s turned it into a moment of pain for these two women. He’s also in private, which means that he’s not putting on a show for anyone. It’s meant to show that he’s evil in, quite possibly, every way. I tend to favor the argument against it. At this point, we’ve seen Joffrey threaten and torture (emotionally or physically) just about anyone who crosses his path.  The audience already hates the character, there’s really no need to put this scene in as well. This is a moment where I feel the writers reached too far. It didn’t come across as clever, it came across as fairly unnecessary. Perhaps the scenes greatest downfall is just how unnecessary it seems upon closer examination, unlike the scene with Petyr Baelish.

Now it’s your turn! What did you think of these two scenes? What other moments in the show deviate from the book or display information in a creative way?