TWOW "very unlikely" to be released in 2015 - Jane Johnson

[GERM]

Actually, you've gone to some considerable lengths to skew the statistics against Martin, which is futile as they so easily demolished.

Pointing out in the first place that TWMF is far above the quality of AFFC and ADWD is purely subjective, so it's curious why you raised it in the first place. It's even more curious why you think it was worthwhile raising your subjective opinion in the first place and then getting annoyed when someone else offered their subjective opinion. Perhaps you shouldn't have gone to that well at all?

Bakker published his first trilogy in 3 years: he did not write it in three years; TDTCB was in the planning and outlining stages since the 1980s, since before GRRM even started ASoIaF in fact. So let us consider Bakker publishing (but not writing) 519,000 words in three years to GRRM publishing (but not writing) 1,050,000 words in four years.

You can do the math, I think.

So on their first three books in their respective series, Martin was twice as fast as Bakker. On their last two books in their respective series, Martin was almost three times as fast as Bakker. And TUC (which is less than 300,000 words in four years) and TWoW (which should come out at 400,000 in around five) don't help Bakker's case either.

It's probably not a good idea to invoke statistics when they say the very opposite to what you are trying to say.

Except Martin has never taken 9 months a year, ever. So whatever point you were trying to make by making that up has really not worked.

Except that you are only talking about publishing time. ASoS was published 20 months after ACoK. It was in no way, shape or form written in 20 months. Martin had large chunks of the book completed before ACoK was even published, just as hundreds of pages of ACoK were done when AGoT was published.

In addition, Martin wrote vastly more than the published pages in the last two books. He wrote and rewrote many chapters several times over. He spent all of 2007 (IIRC) writing on a regular basis and ended up with fewer completed pages than when he started, as he was rewriting and restructuring extant material.

In short, trying to divine Martin's word production rate or working ethic solely from completely material is utterly futile and does not even come close to giving an accurate estimation of the reality.

Except we have already conclusively proven that Bakker is a slower writer in both time periods and that Rothfuss is a slower writer cannot even be beyond any kind of rational dispute.

Rothfuss began writing Kingkiller circa 1996 or thereabouts (I think Rothfuss has even said the early nineties are when he started writing it, so it might be longer than that). The Doors of Stone should be out in 2016 or thereabouts. So that's 1.1 million words (assuming Stone is the same size as WMF, as it can't get any bigger without being split) in twenty years. If we assume pessimism and put TWoW back to 2017, that will also be about 1.1 million words but in seventeen years. So GRRM is still faster.

As for Rowling, in 17 years she wrote and published 1,084,170 words, compared to the estimated 1,140,000 of AFFC+ADWD+TWoW (assuming a 2017 publication date), also in 17 years. So, again, faster.

I would state at this time that there is zero reason for us to believe, and certainly not D&D themselves, especially if GRRM continues to not write scripts for the latter seasons, that D&D are capable of constructing an ending as good as Martin's. If they honestly can (or believe they can) that would be one thing, but all of the set-up so far has been aimed at the same general end as the books. Simplifying that (removing backstory detail and possibly the Greyjoy/Arianne/Golden Company/Aegon/Quentyn stuff) is not the same as totally deviating from it altogether.

GRRM invited Dan and Dave and Bryan to come over to his house (perhaps after they'd already invited him to go to LA) and brainstorm the rest of the story based on his information. They spent a week in his home going over this stuff in some detail where GRRM had such details pinned down and coming up with ideas for where he didn't.

That is not 'demanding his outline' at some sort of contractual gunpoint. You don't have three people at your house for a week giving them details through gritted teeth under some sort of legal threat. That's insane and is clearly not what happened.

This figure seems to have gotten confused. GRRM made $15 million from book sales in financial year 2011-12, when the books sold 9 million copies in that one year alone. Since then this figure has somehow been conflated with the figure paid to him by HBO - which has never been disclosed - and is now the figure HBO apparently pays him per year (which is beyond ridiculous).

I really don't know where this came from. Other people have suggested that GRRM allow HBO to do the prequel series and he has shot them down quite severely over it. Other people and media outlets have suggested the prequel series idea but GRRM has said he would not allow it.

The movie, maybe, but I think everyone agrees that is a pipe dream. And as GRRM has also said, he responded positively to the idea raised by HBO themselves. It was not, as some would have it, an idea he just came up with himself. I get the impression it might have been an off-hand comment by a HBO exec that GRRM got carried away with, but he did not originate the idea.

Poor flight service has health and financial implications. Writing a novel does not for anyone other than the person writing it. So this comparison can only really be described as 'flawed'.

Translation: "I'm making assumptions and adding 3 and 3 together to get 16."

As said above, HBO and the producers don't care about the book readers (or rather, not as a primary concern). So why go to the trouble of making up wholly original material and hoping it'll make for a good ending when they just use the outline and not have to worry about it? Obviously there's still a ton of work to do in adapting the outline (more than the novels themselves), so why make more work for themselves by having to write 100% original stuff and ensuring that it all links up with the already-published material in a manner that's logical?

The last time one writer followed his vision strongly for multiple installments of a series and then had someone else make up an ending to that story off their own backs, it was Mass Effect and the ending sucked donkey balls because it didn't match up with what had come before and didn't make much sense.

The deal was initially discussed in late 2005, done in 2006, made public in 2007 and filming began in late 2009.

On that front, GRRM had just taken 3 years to write AFFC when the HBO deal was discussed, the same rough average as the first three. Even allowing for his overly-optimistic view that ADWD would take one year, it was reasonable for him to believe that the whole series would be finished by 2012-13 at the latest. Obviously this proved catastrophically wrong, but at the time it seemed plausible.

Actually, I think it's clear that he struggled massively only with ADWD. AFFC itself was actually written pretty fast: three years, or a little bit more than the average of the first three. He lost two years due to struggling with the five-year gap, but once that was gone (and effectively the whole book was junked and a new one started) the book itself came pretty quickly.

Similarly, the primary problem on TWoW appears to have been scheduling and GRRM being busy with side-projects. The very things he said categorically were not major problems in 2006-10 do appear to have been in 2011-12. If TWoW really comes out in late 2015 or early 2016, then the actual time he spent on the book drops to around the 3-4 year mark again.

This is what is truly frustrating. It isn't that GRRM is a slow writer (he really isn't, compared to many), it's that both AFFC and, by appearances right now, TWoW could have come a lot faster if he'd gotten into them faster, without the five-year-gap problem on AFFC and these other distractions on TWoW. The rewriting and structural problems on ADWD seem to have been pervasive right though the novel (we talk about the Knot, but he only mentioned that towards the end of the process; he reported huge problems much earlier than that).

This was a nice response. Lol. It is so long and detailed that I actually have no desire to even dig into it. I disagree with much that you have said here, but I really don't want to take the time to discuss it in any meaningful fashion. Your long-windedness has destroyed me, kudos.

Till next time!

I do have three quick things to say that require no work for me to reference.

He ditched the 5-year gap in January 2001 and still planned to publish in 2002.

If you apply the same timing rules to Martin that you do to Rowling (since she started Harry Potter in 91 poor and working 2 jobs) then his numbers still fall below Rowling because he started AGOT in 91 and took nearly 3 years off for Avalon, which never made it to the screen.

Lastly, he did write almost all of ASoS in 11 months. He told us as much in 99. He powered through that book. I was in college when we did a meet and greet with him.

In the end, it isn't skewing facts to portray Martins WPD count accurately as of now. Something has obviously changed from 2000 to now, and it needs to be reflected in the statistics. Even websites who breakdown his pace versus other authors intentionally neglect to add his WPD count by book because the statistics are so glaringly different but they do it for every author they compare him too.

[Werthead]

He ditched the 5-year gap in January 2001 and still planned to publish in 2002.

He ditched it in August 2001 and announced it the following month at Worldcon.

If you apply the same timing rules to Martin that you do to Rowling (since she started Harry Potter in 91 poor and working 2 jobs) then his numbers still fall below Rowling because he started AGOT in 91 and took nearly 3 years off for Avalon, which never made it to the screen.

The TV series was Doorways and it was between closer to two years than three (GRRM has variously said late 1993 or early 1994 for resuming work on AGoT). GRRM also completed over 100 pages of AGoT before Doorways came up and has reported using his time on Doorways to help plan ASoIaF. For example, he has said he used the drives to and from casting sessions to plan out Tyrion's character and storyline.

In addition, if you remove two years from writing AGoT-ACoK-ASoS, that simply makes GRRM a lot faster than Rowling. It's true Rowling had other jobs, but the single book she wrote whilst doing that job was extremely short (the advance from the American sale of Philosopher's Stone alone was enough for her to give up the other jobs and write full-time).

Lastly, he did write almost all of ASoS in 11 months. He told us as much in 99. He powered through that book. I was in college when we did a meet and greet with him.

ASoS was not completed until May 2000. He has also said that he had completed most or all of Tyrion's chapters for ASoS as part of the writing process on ACoK. So that doesn't entirely track.

The powering through comment was likely a reference to the fact that post-ACoK he didn't take any holidays or breaks at all, even writing for a chunk of Christmas Day 1999, and later said it was so exhausting he didn't want to do it again.

AGoT-ACoK-ASoS were undeniably written faster than the subsequent books. They were not written in the insanely short amounts of time that are sometimes thrown around.

[GERM]

He ditched it in August 2001 and announced it the following month at Worldcon.

The TV series was Doorways and it was between closer to two years than three (GRRM has variously said late 1993 or early 1994 for resuming work on AGoT). GRRM also completed over 100 pages of AGoT before Doorways came up and has reported using his time on Doorways to help plan ASoIaF. For example, he has said he used the drives to and from casting sessions to plan out Tyrion's character and storyline.

In addition, if you remove two years from writing AGoT-ACoK-ASoS, that simply makes GRRM a lot faster than Rowling. It's true Rowling had other jobs, but the single book she wrote whilst doing that job was extremely short (the advance from the American sale of Philosopher's Stone alone was enough for her to give up the other jobs and write full-time).

ASoS was not completed until May 2000. He has also said that he had completed most or all of Tyrion's chapters for ASoS as part of the writing process on ACoK. So that doesn't entirely track.

The powering through comment was likely a reference to the fact that post-ACoK he didn't take any holidays or breaks at all, even writing for a chunk of Christmas Day 1999, and later said it was so exhausting he didn't want to do it again.

AGoT-ACoK-ASoS were undeniably written faster than the subsequent books. They were not written in the insanely short amounts of time that are sometimes thrown around.

I am going to the beach, but Rowling's first book took her 6 years. I think that greatly impacts her overall WPD count. Martin's comes in at 500 and something for the first 3 books even if you just approach it from the August 1993 timetable.

More to come later if I am sober.

[MiniMitch]

I know his UK publisher says it is 'higher unlikely' to be out this year or next year, but how much does she actually know? George could just surprise her or be keeping his publishers in the dark so they can't let anything slip in interviews or Twitter etc...

[The Human Abstract]

I know his UK publisher says it is 'higher unlikely' to be out this year or next year, but how much does she actually know? George could just surprise her or be keeping his publishers in the dark so they can't let anything slip in interviews or Twitter etc...

She doesn't know. She's speculating.

[Queen Ayras Lord Commander]

She doesn't know. She's speculating.

Let's just all hope it's a backdoor way of saying it will come out in 2014.

Also, hilarious to watch a fool pick a fight with a mod. Good stuff.

[sifth]

Let's just all hope it's a backdoor way of saying it will come out in 2014.

Also, hilarious to watch a fool pick a fight with a mod. Good stuff.

Ohh, I know. I've seen some of these mods defend Martin as if he could do no wrong.

[Edmure's Floppy Fish]

Actually, you've gone to some considerable lengths to skew the statistics against Martin, which is futile as they so easily demolished.

Pointing out in the first place that TWMF is far above the quality of AFFC and ADWD is purely subjective, so it's curious why you raised it in the first place. It's even more curious why you think it was worthwhile raising your subjective opinion in the first place and then getting annoyed when someone else offered their subjective opinion. Perhaps you shouldn't have gone to that well at all?

Bakker published his first trilogy in 3 years: he did not write it in three years; TDTCB was in the planning and outlining stages since the 1980s, since before GRRM even started ASoIaF in fact. So let us consider Bakker publishing (but not writing) 519,000 words in three years to GRRM publishing (but not writing) 1,050,000 words in four years.

You can do the math, I think.

So on their first three books in their respective series, Martin was twice as fast as Bakker. On their last two books in their respective series, Martin was almost three times as fast as Bakker. And TUC (which is less than 300,000 words in four years) and TWoW (which should come out at 400,000 in around five) don't help Bakker's case either.

It's probably not a good idea to invoke statistics when they say the very opposite to what you are trying to say.

Except Martin has never taken 9 months a year, ever. So whatever point you were trying to make by making that up has really not worked.

Except that you are only talking about publishing time. ASoS was published 20 months after ACoK. It was in no way, shape or form written in 20 months. Martin had large chunks of the book completed before ACoK was even published, just as hundreds of pages of ACoK were done when AGoT was published.

In addition, Martin wrote vastly more than the published pages in the last two books. He wrote and rewrote many chapters several times over. He spent all of 2007 (IIRC) writing on a regular basis and ended up with fewer completed pages than when he started, as he was rewriting and restructuring extant material.

In short, trying to divine Martin's word production rate or working ethic solely from completely material is utterly futile and does not even come close to giving an accurate estimation of the reality.

Except we have already conclusively proven that Bakker is a slower writer in both time periods and that Rothfuss is a slower writer cannot even be beyond any kind of rational dispute.

Rothfuss began writing Kingkiller circa 1996 or thereabouts (I think Rothfuss has even said the early nineties are when he started writing it, so it might be longer than that). The Doors of Stone should be out in 2016 or thereabouts. So that's 1.1 million words (assuming Stone is the same size as WMF, as it can't get any bigger without being split) in twenty years. If we assume pessimism and put TWoW back to 2017, that will also be about 1.1 million words but in seventeen years. So GRRM is still faster.

As for Rowling, in 17 years she wrote and published 1,084,170 words, compared to the estimated 1,140,000 of AFFC+ADWD+TWoW (assuming a 2017 publication date), also in 17 years. So, again, faster.

I would state at this time that there is zero reason for us to believe, and certainly not D&D themselves, especially if GRRM continues to not write scripts for the latter seasons, that D&D are capable of constructing an ending as good as Martin's. If they honestly can (or believe they can) that would be one thing, but all of the set-up so far has been aimed at the same general end as the books. Simplifying that (removing backstory detail and possibly the Greyjoy/Arianne/Golden Company/Aegon/Quentyn stuff) is not the same as totally deviating from it altogether.

GRRM invited Dan and Dave and Bryan to come over to his house (perhaps after they'd already invited him to go to LA) and brainstorm the rest of the story based on his information. They spent a week in his home going over this stuff in some detail where GRRM had such details pinned down and coming up with ideas for where he didn't.

That is not 'demanding his outline' at some sort of contractual gunpoint. You don't have three people at your house for a week giving them details through gritted teeth under some sort of legal threat. That's insane and is clearly not what happened.

This figure seems to have gotten confused. GRRM made $15 million from book sales in financial year 2011-12, when the books sold 9 million copies in that one year alone. Since then this figure has somehow been conflated with the figure paid to him by HBO - which has never been disclosed - and is now the figure HBO apparently pays him per year (which is beyond ridiculous).

I really don't know where this came from. Other people have suggested that GRRM allow HBO to do the prequel series and he has shot them down quite severely over it. Other people and media outlets have suggested the prequel series idea but GRRM has said he would not allow it.

The movie, maybe, but I think everyone agrees that is a pipe dream. And as GRRM has also said, he responded positively to the idea raised by HBO themselves. It was not, as some would have it, an idea he just came up with himself. I get the impression it might have been an off-hand comment by a HBO exec that GRRM got carried away with, but he did not originate the idea.

Poor flight service has health and financial implications. Writing a novel does not for anyone other than the person writing it. So this comparison can only really be described as 'flawed'.

Translation: "I'm making assumptions and adding 3 and 3 together to get 16."

As said above, HBO and the producers don't care about the book readers (or rather, not as a primary concern). So why go to the trouble of making up wholly original material and hoping it'll make for a good ending when they just use the outline and not have to worry about it? Obviously there's still a ton of work to do in adapting the outline (more than the novels themselves), so why make more work for themselves by having to write 100% original stuff and ensuring that it all links up with the already-published material in a manner that's logical?

The last time one writer followed his vision strongly for multiple installments of a series and then had someone else make up an ending to that story off their own backs, it was Mass Effect and the ending sucked donkey balls because it didn't match up with what had come before and didn't make much sense.

The deal was initially discussed in late 2005, done in 2006, made public in 2007 and filming began in late 2009.

On that front, GRRM had just taken 3 years to write AFFC when the HBO deal was discussed, the same rough average as the first three. Even allowing for his overly-optimistic view that ADWD would take one year, it was reasonable for him to believe that the whole series would be finished by 2012-13 at the latest. Obviously this proved catastrophically wrong, but at the time it seemed plausible.

Actually, I think it's clear that he struggled massively only with ADWD. AFFC itself was actually written pretty fast: three years, or a little bit more than the average of the first three. He lost two years due to struggling with the five-year gap, but once that was gone (and effectively the whole book was junked and a new one started) the book itself came pretty quickly.

Similarly, the primary problem on TWoW appears to have been scheduling and GRRM being busy with side-projects. The very things he said categorically were not major problems in 2006-10 do appear to have been in 2011-12. If TWoW really comes out in late 2015 or early 2016, then the actual time he spent on the book drops to around the 3-4 year mark again.

This is what is truly frustrating. It isn't that GRRM is a slow writer (he really isn't, compared to many), it's that both AFFC and, by appearances right now, TWoW could have come a lot faster if he'd gotten into them faster, without the five-year-gap problem on AFFC and these other distractions on TWoW. The rewriting and structural problems on ADWD seem to have been pervasive right though the novel (we talk about the Knot, but he only mentioned that towards the end of the process; he reported huge problems much earlier than that).

You have entirely too much time on your hands. That was a small thesis bro. Although I don't agree with it, I can appreciate a nice long post.

You even defended the airline comment![emoji38]

If you taught GRRM to to write that fast we would have ADOS by now.

BTW, props to the mods for keeping this thread open and guiding conversations to the proper location instead of just locking it!

[Queen Ayras Lord Commander]

OMFG the Floppy Fish has resurfaced!

:bowdown:

[Mr Fixit]

The rewriting and structural problems on ADWD seem to have been pervasive right though the novel (we talk about the Knot, but he only mentioned that towards the end of the process; he reported huge problems much earlier than that).

I didn't know about this bit of info. What other "pervasive" structural problems were there besides the Meereenese Knot? Something with the North, I assume? I don't know what else it could refer to, but the Northern storyline seems pretty straightforward and elegant. It doesn't *feel* belabored like the East.

It's interesting to see Martin having so many problems with the former 5-year gap. Could be his "gardener" approach let him down in this instance.

[The hairy bear]

It's interesting to see Martin having so many problems with the former 5-year gap. Could be his "gardener" approach let him down in this instance.

I suspect that the "gardener approach" is the root of most of the problems with AFFC and ADWD (both the delays in the writing process and the structural problems of the novels). The two previous books, where we know he had a more cohesive plan in mind, were better structured and were delivered on a more timely basis.

If I were his editor, I think I'd ry to convince him to schedule the entire book before writing a single plan.

[Faint]

What is the point in reveling in the minutiae and details of Martin's writing process? What good comes of it? Whatever his writing speed was before A Feast for Crows, the only thing that matters is that he is not writing fast enough now. Everything else is irrelevant. Moreover, Martin has commented, quite recently actually, that he simply cannot write as fast as he used to. Which makes the suggestion that he return to his former writing speeds even more futile and pointless.

And if this is about him tracking with the completion of the show, that ship has already sailed. If we take him at his word that there will be two more books, both roughly equal in size, then if the show is to air for seven seasons, as currently planned, he would have had to complete the first book by the beginning of 2014 to give him the same amount of time to complete the second by early 2017. If the show is extended to eight seasons, he will have to complete The Winds of Winter by the end of this year to give him the same amount of time to complete the final volume in the series before the final season airs in 2018.

[Blackfyre Gateau]

What is the point in reveling in the minutiae and details of Martin's writing process? What good comes of it? Whatever his writing speed was before A Feast for Crows, the only thing that matters is that he is not writing fast enough now. Everything else is irrelevant. Moreover, Martin has commented, quite recently actually, that he simply cannot write as fast as he used to. Which makes the suggestion that he return to his former writing speeds even more futile and pointless.

And if this is about him tracking with the completion of the show, that ship has already sailed. If we take him at his word that there will be two more books, both roughly equal in size, then if the show is to air for seven seasons, as currently planned, he would have had to complete the first book by the beginning of 2014 to give him the same amount of time to complete the second by early 2017. If the show is extended to eight seasons, he will have to complete The Winds of Winter by the end of this year to give him the same amount of time to complete the final volume in the series before the final season airs in 2018.

I can accept that changing outlook on life, major uplift in celebrity status + natural effects of ageing may serve to sap the creative juices a bit, but I can't help think he's inside a self-created gilded cage because of his reluctance to 'self-edit' and focus on 'the plot' rather than the environment and 'lore' of the world he's created. When you re-read the first three books, they're narratively constructed to give you a sense of the history and the culture of Westeros/ Essos etc, in ways that don't actively distract from advancing the plot at hand.

From AFFC onwards you can't help but feel he's started to get carried away with the 'world building' element of the ASOIAF series - the desire to pack in more places and perspectives, even if they actually serve to take us down tangential pathways to big plots surrounding the Game of Thrones and the War with the Others. Far, far too much time was spent in ADWD basically treading water in plot-development terms. Yes, we got some significant pay-offs at the end (particularly in the North/ at the Wall) but Tyrion's Essos sojurn and the Meerenese Knot were really not worth spending the best part of a decade writing.

I think part of it may well be the 'ASOIAF.WESTEROS.ORG' effect - he knows he has an extremely passionate, opinionated, diverse, and contenious readership community out there who exhaustively analyse not simply every word he writes but every single word that comes out of his mouth with respect to the future of the series. I think that must also play at his mind to a certain extent, for all his protestations that he writes the books for himself. I think there may be a sub-conscious dynamic going on where he thinks 'on second thoughts let me put that 5 chapters ahead, we don't want it to be too obvious' or 'I can't have an insurrection in the city, without introducing the rebels and profiling them' for several chapters in advance.

[Werthead]

I didn't know about this bit of info. What other "pervasive" structural problems were there besides the Meereenese Knot? Something with the North, I assume? I don't know what else it could refer to, but the Northern storyline seems pretty straightforward and elegant. It doesn't *feel* belabored like the East.

It's interesting to see Martin having so many problems with the former 5-year gap. Could be his "gardener" approach let him down in this instance.

The big one early on was the Wall storyline. It's never been entirely clear what it was, but GRRM reported spending a lot of time trying to get that side of things to work. At one point he even sat down and systematically rewrote every Jon chapter he had.

I think a key issue there would have been how much interaction Jon and Stannis had. In the final novel Stannis is out of there and off to Deepwood and then Winterfell almost instantly, whilst I got the impression from ASoS and post-ASoS interviews that there would be more interplay between Stannis and Jon. Of course, given the immense distances Stannis had to travel, that would have been difficult. There were also issues with how many AFFC characters would get chapters (originally it was solely Arya and only later expanded to include others) and a bunch of problems with Tyrion as well. Apparently there was a whole storyline with Tyrion in Chroyane with the Shrouded Lord that got junked as it was just too time-consuming at that point in the story.

[yolkboy]

The big one early on was the Wall storyline. It's never been entirely clear what it was, but GRRM reported spending a lot of time trying to get that side of things to work. At one point he even sat down and systematically rewrote every Jon chapter he had.

I think a key issue there would have been how much interaction Jon and Stannis had. In the final novel Stannis is out of there and off to Deepwood and then Winterfell almost instantly, whilst I got the impression from ASoS and post-ASoS interviews that there would be more interplay between Stannis and Jon. Of course, given the immense distances Stannis had to travel, that would have been difficult. There were also issues with how many AFFC characters would get chapters (originally it was solely Arya and only later expanded to include others) and a bunch of problems with Tyrion as well. Apparently there was a whole storyline with Tyrion in Chroyane with the Shrouded Lord that got junked as it was just too time-consuming at that point in the story.

Yeah there does seem to have been significant re-shufflings to get the affc/DwD house in order. Originally (I think from an early reading he did), it was Euron headed to Dany with Victarion, not Moqorro. These kind of changes might seem small - but as Grrm has highlighted with the show - there's always a butterfly effect that could lead to some serious plate spinning and re-writing down the line.

With any luck, WoW won't face half as many of these conundrums.

Interesting what you say about Tyrion in Chroyane, I'd never heard that.

[Faint]

I can accept that changing outlook on life, major uplift in celebrity status + natural effects of ageing may serve to sap the creative juices a bit, but I can't help think he's inside a self-created gilded cage because of his reluctance to 'self-edit' and focus on 'the plot' rather than the environment and 'lore' of the world he's created . . .

I am not going to speculate on why Martin's writing style has changed, as I know little about him personally -- although all indications are that he tends to actually ignore forums like this -- but I agree that it has changed. This is basically an empirical fact; one need only look at the length of chapters in the last two books compared to the first three.

That said, I am actually in the minority of readers that much prefers his writing in A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons to his writing in the earlier three novels. I do admit to hating how the last two books were put together -- split geographically for a book and half, then not for the last half of the second book; there being no conclusions to several plot threads crying for a conclusion; the insanity of how the Jaime and Brienne chapters were handled within the context of how the two books were released; the abundance of artificial cliffhangers -- but the writing itself I love.

I have argued, and I will continue to argue, that if A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons were meshed together and then divided into two again -- this time with the artificial geographical split dispensed with -- and you then added in the Battle of Meereen, those two books would easily be the two best published books in the entire series.

Unfortunately, despite how I think Martin has improved as a writer, it seems that improved writing comes with all the other baggage that seems to detract from the series to an unjustifiable degree in the eyes of most readers.

[Cas Stark]

I am not going to speculate on why Martin's writing style has changed, as I know little about him personally -- although all indications are that he tends to actually ignore forums like this -- but I agree that it has changed. This is basically an empirical fact; one need only look at the length of chapters in the last two books compared to the first three.

That said, I am actually in the minority of readers that much prefers his writing in A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons to his writing in the earlier three novels. I do admit to hating how the last two books were put together -- split geographically for a book and half, then not for the last half of the second book; there being no conclusions to several plot threads crying for a conclusion; the insanity of how the Jaime and Brienne chapters were handled within the context of how the two books were released; the abundance of artificial cliffhangers -- but the writing itself I love.

I have argued, and I will continue to argue, that if A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons were meshed together and then divided into two again -- this time with the artificial geographical split dispensed with -- and you then added in the Battle of Meereen, those two books would easily be the two best published books in the entire series.

Unfortunately, despite how I think Martin has improved as a writer, it seems that improved writing comes with all the other baggage that seems to detract from the series to an unjustifiable degree in the eyes of most readers.

That might improve things, but a re arranging doesn't fix the fundamental issues of bloated text, extraneous details, and the huge growth in new POVs. I know that some people love the Martells and the Greyjoys, but I find that for the most part, his new set of characters are much less compelling than the originals we started with, combined with what I can't see as anything other than self indulgent "filler" that as some else stated is world building at the expense of novel writing.

[DaveSumm]

That said, I am actually in the minority of readers that much prefers his writing in A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons to his writing in the earlier three novels. I do admit to hating how the last two books were put together -- split geographically for a book and half, then not for the last half of the second book; there being no conclusions to several plot threads crying for a conclusion; the insanity of how the Jaime and Brienne chapters were handled within the context of how the two books were released; the abundance of artificial cliffhangers -- but the writing itself I love.

Yes yes yes yes yes. Exactly. We were a bit spoilt with how the first three books were both great novels AND great instalments in the larger saga, but the last two were definitely well written, if not well structured.

I do think the geographical spilt could have worked though, but the Dance half just turned out to be far larger so it came out a bit skewed. A book that focused on the North and concluded with the battle of ice, then a book of Kings Landing and Meereen that concluded with the battle of fire.......now that would've worked.

[Faint]

I think Martin should drop the conceit that his recent installments are proper novels in and of themselves instead of one multi-volume work and just release batches every time gets to a thousand manuscript pages. Not since A Clash of Kings has any of his books read like a proper novel anyway, so I see little reason why he continues with the charade.

[Cas Stark]

I think Martin should drop the conceit that his recent installments are proper novels in and of themselves instead of one multi-volume work and just release batches every time gets to a thousand manuscript pages. Not since A Clash of Kings has any of his books read like a proper novel anyway, so I see little reason why he continues with the illusion.

Or, maybe he could man up, get out of the garden and pull together an outline of a novel, with a beginning, middle and end.

I'd have to think about Storm of Swords, it seems to work decently in terms concluding various stories... we start with hope that Robb will win his war, and by the end, the Starks are totally decimated and even the Lannister hold on power is looking dodgy; Jon is LC, Dany has completed her transition to war leader. Though I would say none worked as well as stand alone works as GOT.