A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE: variations on Freytag's pyramid

In my Game of Thrones review, I mentioned the intriguing sense I had of not being able to tell where in the narrative I might be. Typically, especially for a genre work like this, a protagonist, antagonist, and central conflict are established early, and then plot developments advance the story along an arc of rising action toward a climactic resolution. Having finished Clash of Kings, I find myself 2000 pages in, with no clear protagonist, antagonists galore, no central conflict, and precious few of the conventional "milestones" that signal plot development. For all that, it's a tremendously engrossing story, with awesome narrative thrust and an astonishing frequency of knock-you-on-your-ass bombshell surprises.

Much of that, I think, goes to Martin's playing around with different ways to deal with rising action than simply resolve it in a climax. In Game of Thrones, Martin initially does give us a hero in Ned Stark, antagonists in the Lannister clan, and the sharply-defined conflict of the eponymous "game of thrones" they play against each other. The action rises traditionally enough at first, but then, instead of resolving, the arc disintegrates. King Robert, the "hub" around whom the conflict initially revolves, dies unexpectedly, and his removal from the game destabilizes it. This leads to Ned's confinement and then execution, leaving us without a Hero. All the subplots that wove around Ned's character arc subsequently spiral off in directions of their own with a new and disorienting (in terms of conventional narrative) independence.

Another variation Martin rings on the rising action pyramid is something I'll call laddering action, where one arc of rising action is abruptly interrupted and terminated by another arc that then continues to rise, just in a different direction. This can be an independent arc that unexpectedly collides with the first, or a development of the first arc that unexpectedly swells into a whole new arc of its own powerfully enough to overwhelm or derail the first. The best example I can think of is the way the action rising toward a confrontation between Renly and Stannis is cut startlingly short as a facet of Stannis's character arc--his tragically increasing dependence on sorcery--hits a major turning point.

There's more to all of this than that; Martin also uses sleight-of-hand with point of view to focus our attention on an apparently unrelated set of concerns, the better to blindside us (for example, all that time we spend in the sept with Catelyn as she prays to each of the Seven, anchoring us in her point of view and the conflicts that define her character arc, before she goes to meet Renly), but I think this sort of variation on rising action accounts for much of the punch the surprises pack and the larger sense of intriguing narrative uncertainty.