The following is copy-pasted from Wikipedia and trimmed by yours truly. Hopefully this can be of some help.
Narrative Structure
The books are divided into chapters, each one narrated in the third person limited through the eyes of a point of view character. Each POV character may act from different locations. Beginning with nine viewpoint characters in A Game of Thrones, the number of POV characters grows to a total of 31 in A Dance with Dragons; the short-lived one-time POV characters are mostly restricted to the prologue and epilogue. David Orr of The New York Times noted the story importance of "the Starks (good guys), the Targaryens (at least one good guy, or girl), the Lannisters (conniving), the Greyjoys (mostly conniving), the Baratheons (mixed bag), the Tyrells (unclear) and the Martells (ditto), most of whom are feverishly endeavoring to advance their ambitions and ruin their enemies, preferably unto death". However, as Time's Lev Grossman noted, readers "experience the struggle for Westeros from all sides at once" so that "every fight is both triumph and tragedy [...] and everybody is both hero and villain at the same time".
Modeled on The Lord of the Rings, the Ice and Fire story begins with a tight focus on a small group (with everyone in Winterfell, except Daenerys) and then fans into separate stories. The storylines are to converge again, but finding the turning point in this complex series has been difficult for Martin and slowed down his writing. As the sole author, Martin begins each new book with an outline of the chapter order and may write a few successive chapters from a single character's viewpoint instead of working chronologically. The chapters are later rearranged to optimize character intercutting, chronology and suspense.
Both one-time and regular POV characters are designed to have full character arcs ending in tragedy or triumph, and are written to hold the readers' interest and not be skipped in reading. Main characters are killed off so that the reader will not rely on the hero to come through unscathed and instead feel the character's fear with each page turn.
The unresolved larger narrative arc encourages speculation about future story events. Events planned from the beginning are foreshadowed, although Martin pays attention to not make the story predictable. The viewpoint characters, who serve as unreliable narrators may clarify or provide different perspectives on past events. What the readers believe to be true may therefore not necessarily be true.