Today at his Capclave 2013 “Not A Panel,” George R.R. Martin talked up Game of Thrones and hinted at what we will and won’t be seeing in the future. The author spoke frankly about the ramifications of changes in the adaptation, and also chatted about what he might have done differently in his own writing.

According to the reports from Capclave:

There is “a week or so left of filming,” and Martin confirmed the fourth season does pull from the novels beyond A Storm of Swords. (It seems he may have received some bad info – our sources are saying there is still a month left to go in shooting.)

The problem of the “butterfly effect” in the show’s adaptation was brought up, and he cited the specific example of the show deleting the two older Tyrell sons, Willas and Garlan. Martin stated that they will become important in the books, and that they have “parts to play.”

A change that has repercussions for season 4 is Marillion’s tongue removal from the first season. Martin said that the change was made (from an anonymous singer being the victim of a de-tonguing) because they wanted Joffrey to maim someone the audience would recognize. He believes this is an issue because of the part the singer plays in Sansa’s storyline, how he affects her interactions with others in the book, and he doesn’t believe another character will be fulfilling that role on Game of Thrones.

Martin said that at this point, he considers his books to be his, and the show to be Dan [Weiss] and David [Benioff]’s.

There will be no prequels written but we will learn more about Robert’s Rebellion in upcoming books.

The behind-the-scenes material has done well on HBO, and they’ll be doing more “Making of” content and similar productions on top of what they already do.

He does have anxiety about the TV series passing the point where he is in the writing. The metaphor he used was feeling like he was “bound to train tracks and could see smoke wafting,” though he can’t yet see the train. Martin mentioned that the Tyrion book doesn’t take away from his other writing, because it was mostly his publishers selecting the quotes, so people had no basis for their complaints about it pulling him away from his work on TWOW.

When it comes to point-of-view characters, if he had it to do over again, Martin says he may have changed it up, mentioning Robb as a character who might have been “sensible” to have as a POV.

Ours is the Fury: I think they’ve had a few years to figure out how to work around Marillion’s absence on the show, but I’m intrigued by the other Tyrells. It’ll be interesting to find out more in the books what is happening with them, and how GoT will work around that.