One of the continuing concerns for fans of Game of Thrones is that the hit HBO fantasy drama will catch up to the novels, which are written by author George R.R. Martin at his own pace.

With the April 6 premiere of Season 4, the television series begins to burn through the remainder of the third novel in the planned seven-book epic (Martin is still writing the sixth one), leaving many to wonder what happens if, or when, the gap closes between the adaptation and the source material.

Don't worry, Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have a plan.

“Last year we went out to Santa Fe for a week to sit down with him [Martin] and just talk through where things are going, because we don’t know if we are going to catch up and where exactly that would be," Benioff tells Vanity Fair. "If you know the ending, then you can lay the groundwork for it. And so we want to know how everything ends. We want to be able to set things up. So we just sat down with him and literally went through every character.”

Martin, who concedes that it's "alarming" how rapidly the show is gaining ground on the books, adds, "I can give them the broad strokes of what I intend to write, but the details aren’t there yet. I’m hopeful that I can not let them catch up with me.”

But while the release of A Dream of Spring, the final novel in Martin's series, may seem an eternity away for many fans, Benioff and Weiss see a definite ending for Game of Thrones, after seven or eight seasons.

“It doesn’t just keep on going because it can,” Weiss says. “I think the desire to milk more out of it is what would eventually kill it, if we gave in to that.”