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What Game of Thrones Taught Me About the MICE Quotient
- Jennifer Peaslee
- May 13
- 3 min read
I'm rewatching Game of Thrones and I'm enjoying it, despite its descent into mediocrity.
What I really miss is the sense of community. I loved getting together with my friends on Sunday nights. I loved the fan theories—especially the wilder ones.
But, damn, that last season sure was disappointing, right? I mean, the music was gorgeous. The cinematography was breathtaking (when you could see it).
It just...completely failed to stick the landing. I'm not only talking about the disappointing finale. I'm talking about how the showrunners fumbled the ball with the Night Walkers.
My friend and writing collaborator, Dashcomma, who also recently wrote about GoT/ASOIAF, believes that the showrunners mixed up the A plot and the B plot. The Walkers were never meant to be a B plot, and the showrunners have completely missed that point. I agree. Go read her post; it's quality.
The MICE quotient helps illustrate her point.
MICE?
If you're unfamiliar, the MICE quotient is a story structure model that Orson Scott Card coined. Here's what he writes:
Four basic factors...are present in every story, with varying degrees of emphasis. It is the balance among these factors that determines what sort of characterization a story must have, should have, or can have.
What are those four factors? MICE.
Milieu
The world, environment, setting, location, etc.
Begins when a character enters a place and ends when they leave a place (not necessarily where they entered).
Example: The Wizard of Oz
Inquiry
Questions
Begins when a character asks a question and ends when that question is answered.
Example: Any Agatha Christie story
Character
Driven by internal angst
Begins when a character asks, "Who am I?" and ends when that is answered.
Example: The Catcher in the Rye
Event
Driven by external action
Begins with a disruption and ends with a new status quo
Example: Any of the books in the A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF) series
Nesting MICE
Many stories, of course, include multiple MICE factors. You might have a story that starts with a question...and then a character enters a new world trying to answer that question...and engages in plenty of action in that new location. That's Inquiry, Milieu, and Event.
According to Orson Scott Card, the MICE factors must be nested within each other, with each factor closed in the reverse order they were opened, like an HTML code. For our story outline above, that would look like this:
<Inquiry>
<Milieu>
<Event>
</Event>
</Millieu>
</Inquiry>
If you do not follow the rules of nesting, the tension of your story gets thrown off.
(Normally, I like to throw in an "exception to the rule" to show that most rules in writing can be broken. I can't think of an exception in this case, but if you can, let me know in the comments.)
Now, almost no reader is going to think, "Wow, this book is so unsatisfying, because they finished the story arcs out of order." Readers don't think like that. But subconsciously, they will pick up on the unevenness.
What Does This Have To Do With GoT?
Game of Thrones opens with the White Walkers. The book and the show. White Walkers first, Iron Throne drama later.
So why does the show have the big fight with the White Walkers before the Iron Throne question is resolved?
No, really, I want to know—why would they do this? I get that it's called a GAME of THRONES. But it's not about the thrones.
And the show understood this for the first five seasons! Many times, we were told, "A bigger enemy is coming." Then the "Long Night" comes, and it's literally one regular night. Baffling. "Anticlimactic" isn't a strong enough word to describe the feeling.
I don't think there's any way the show could have stuck the landing after that. All that hype, all that buildup, for nothing. And then they tried to distract us with dragons. It didn't work.
So, hey, let this be a lesson for you. Learn the MICE quotient and follow its rules.
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