TWOW Character POV Ratios

[The Holy Goat]

My guesstimate. There will be many characters, and many of their plotlines will probably intersect, so I don't believe any character will have the same huge amount of chapters as could be seen in previous books

Daenerys Targaryen: 10 Chapters.

Tyrion Lannister: 9 CHapters.

Jon Snow: 8 Chapters.

Cersei Lannister: 7 Chapters.

Samwell Tarly: 4 Chapters.

Sansa Stark: 4 Chapters.

Arya Stark: 4 Chapters.

Davos Seaworth: 4 Chapters.

Jaime Lannister: 4 Chapters.

Brandon Stark: 3 Chapters.

Theon Greyjoy: 3 Chapters.

Asha Greyjoy: 3 Chapters.

Victarion Greyjoy: 3 Chapters.

Barristan Selmy: 3 Chapters.

Brienne Tarth: 3 Chapters.

Arianne Martell: 3 Chapters.

Aeron Greyjoy: 2 Chapters.

Jon Connington: 2 Chapters.

Melisandre: 1 Chapters.

Areo Hotah: 1 Chapters.

Prologue: 1 Chapters.

[Credar]

Daenerys Targaryen: 5 Chapters.

Tyrion Lannister: 7 Chapters.

Jon Snow: 8 Chapters.

Cersei Lannister: 4 Chapters.

Samwell Tarly: 5 Chapters.

Sansa Stark: 5 Chapters.

Arya Stark: 4 Chapters.

Davos Seaworth: 4 Chapters.

Jaime Lannister: 4 Chapters.

Bran Stark: 4 Chapters.

Theon Greyjoy: 3 Chapters.

Asha Greyjoy: 5 Chapters.

Victarion Greyjoy: 5 Chapters.

Barristan Selmy: 3 Chapters.

Brienne Tarth: 2 Chapters.

Arianne Martell: 5 Chapters.

Aeron Greyjoy: 2 Chapters.

Jon Connington: 4 Chapters.

Melisandre: 3 Chapters.

Areo Hotah: 3 Chapters.

85 POV Chapters.

+ 1 Prologue (Maester Harmune)

+ 1 Epilogue (Howland Reed)

= 87 Chapters

[Fat Mac]

My predictions

Prologue- a Maester, either Lomys (of Highgarden) or Harmune.

Meereen

Daenerys- 12 chapters

Tyrion- 8 chapters

Barristan- 3 chapters

Victarion- 3 chapters

26 total

North (Winterfell, the Wall, BtW, Skagos)

Asha- 6 chapters

Bran- 5 chapters

Melisandre- 5 chapters

Davos- 4 chapters

Theon- 2 chapters

Jon- 1 chapter (end of book resurrection?)

23 total

Riverlands

Jaime- 4 chapters

Brienne- 2 chapters

6 total

Dorne/Stormlands

Arianne- 4 chapters

JonCon- 2 chapters

Areo Hotah- 2 chapters

8 total

Misc. Locations

Arya- 4 chapters

Sansa- 6 chapters

Cersei- 5 chapters

Aeron- 2 chapters

Sam- 5 chapters

22 total

Add a epilogue (maybe Benjen) and that adds to 87 chapters

[Maxarion]

I'm too lazy to think of my own estimates right now, but I'd just like to point out to those who say there will be no Brienne chapter, that she orginally had a chapter in ADwD, which has been shuffled to TWoW. That makes at least one Brienne chapter.

Just so you know, and if GRRM hasn't decided otherwise since.

I think you are mistaken with someone else, I don't see any mention of that in the Wiki: http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/The_Winds_of_Winter

[HairGrowsBack]

I think you are mistaken with someone else, I don't see any mention of that in the Wiki: http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/The_Winds_of_Winter

Heh, I might be. I'll try to get some evidence, if there's any.

[Ours if the Fury]

I think nearly all the POV's will be present or some will merge… as this is where the mega culling starts…

My predictions:

Bran: 4

Sansa: 6-7

Arya: 8

Jon: 8-10

Tyrion: 8-10

Dany: 6

Arienne: 4-5

Jamie: 4-5

Cersei: 8

Sam: 4-5

Davos: 6

Theon: 5-6

Barristan: 2

Victarion: 3-4

Areon: 2

Aero: 2

Jon Cot: 1-2

I honestly think this book will be a major (Arya, Sansa, Jon, Cersei and possibly Jamie and Theon) the other characters tyrion and dany etc, will appear a lot as well but it seems that the characters above (having mentioned) are going to have a lot being played out in their respective stories

[Talking Hodor]

grrm has confirmed we won't be getting any new povs

Crap, my dreams of a Hodor POV have been shattered. Perhaps in A Dream of Spring (or A Dream of Hodor, as I think of it).

[Mithras]

From various SSM’s, we conclude that WoW will be a giant book like SoS. However, back in SoS GRRM used to write shorter POV’s. Now we see that he prefers his POV’s longer. Recalling that SoS had 80 POV’s, and DwD being nearly as big as SoS had 71 POV’s; a number of 75 POV’s in WoW neglecting any Prologues or Epilogues looks like a good assumption. There are 11 confirmed POV’s in WoW. Except the Damphair and Sansa POV’s, we have either read or listened to what those can offer to us. That means we already know 10% of WoW.

I think Areo Hotah will most probably be the Prologue POV to die against Darkstar.

[Endymion I Targaryen]

Daenerys 10

Theon 8

Tyrion 8

Arianne 6

Arya 5

Sansa 4

Jon 4

Davos 4

Cersei 4

Bran 3

Jaime 3

Sam 3

Barristan 3

Victarion 3

Brienne 2

Melisandre 2

Aeron 2

Jon Con 2

Areo 1

Asha 1

Total:78

[Stormlandian]

Prologue: *Obara Sand

The Wall: (8)

Melisandre: 6

Jon: 2

King’s Landing: (7)

*Cercei: 7

Beyond the Wall: (5)

Bran: 5

Meereen: (13)

Barristan: 4

Tyrion: 6

*Victarion: 3

Essos: (12)

Dany: 8 (last 2-3 in Meereen)

Arya: 4 (last 1 headed back to Westeros)

The North: (12)

Theon: 5

Asha: 3

Davos: 4

The Iron Islands: (3)

*Aeron: 3

The Stormlands: (7)

Jon Con: 2

Arianne: 5

The Vale: (4)

Sansa: 4

The Riverlands: (6)

*Jaime: 5

Brienne: 1

The Reach: (4)

Sam: 4

Epilogue: *Jaime

Total: 81

* Indicates characters that I believe won't survive tWOW.

I think that as the series goes on, the Prologue/Epilogue characters will become more and more central/recognizable characters even to the point where the tWOW prologue features a POV character.

[Sangiv Purplestar]

The problem is that locations that in DwD were out (Vale,Oldtawn,Iron Islands) will have chapters now which makes it hard to make any prediction.But definitely Wall and Essos will have much so:

Daenerys:11

Melisandre:9

Tyrion:8

Arianne:5

Theon:5

Sansa:4

Arya:4

Davos:4

Cersei:4

Jon:3

Jaime:3

Victarion:3

Barristan:3

Jon Con:3

Bran:2

Samwell:2

Asha:2

Brienne:1

Aeron:1

Areo:1

Total:77

Brienne,Asha,Theon,Victarion and Barristan will end dead.

[Colonel Green]

Most of those figures are way too low. Sam is in his own plotline now; 2 chapters is clearly not enough, to cite just one example.

[lokisnow]

a while back I made this infographic to illustrate the "mission creep" problems of AFFC/ADWD. The graphic is ordered by when a character's POV first shows up, so Bran is first, Barristan last)

http://s715.photobucket.com/user/lockeender/media/ASOIAF/ASOIAFChapters.jpg.html

the point here is that all the 'appendages' of the AFFC/ADWD are probably an anomaly, and that the rest of the narrative--beginning with The Winds of Winter--will probably be much more compact. Narrative progress in the Winds of Winter will probably be much more akin to the narrative progress of the first three books.

(I assume this will happen in part because I think Barristan, Victarion, Connington, Arianne, Asha, and Brienne will all die in TWOW, and possibly many of them relatively early on)

Here is how I see the TWOW character POV ratios playing out.

Dragons

12 Tyrion

8 Dany

2 Barristan

3 Victarion

The North

10 Jon

2 Melisandre

5 Theon

2 Asha

5 Jaime

1 Brienne

Kings Landing

10 Cersei

4 Arianne

1 Connington

Sequestered POVs not interacting with other POVs

1 Aeron

2 Bran

2 Sam

2 Sansa

2 Davos

4 Arya

that's 80 chapters, which is right in line with the number of chapters ASOS and ADWD, ah but word count matters too!

unfortunately, I don't have word counts per chapter, I go by pages per chapter, which gives us the following data, which indicates that GRRM is backing away from the novella chapters of AFFC and returning towards the direction of shorter more efficient chapters of the first three books.

average chapter length based on US hardcover first editions:

AGOT: 9.3 pages

ACOK: 10.4 pages

ASOS: 11.3 pages

AFFC: 14.9 pages

ADWD: 13.2 pages

So if GRRM writes somewhere between his ASOS and ADWD manner he can deliver a volume in the size of either of those, with the same amount of chapters (70-80) covering all the characters in the cast.

so, chapter size is falling, indicating isolated characters, mileau development and travelogue are on the way out for the coming book.

I have a feeling that WoW will feel much more narratively compact because it has three primary narrative threads with multiple characters in each thread but relatively little movement from thread to thread.

You have the North, Kings Landing and Meereen in WOW and that's pretty much it (Jaime and Brienne will either be rejoining the North (which is what I think, because unCat will hear of the unholy wedding and demand they go north to Arya) or KL the chapter after their cliffhangers are resolved). The Dorne storylines are heading towards KL and presumably the Iron Islands storylines will be heading towards the North as well.

Part of what made the first three books of ASOIAF work so well was how well the threads performed a relay handoff from one viewpoint to the next, advancing the storyline in beautiful seamless ways This is partly why it has adapted so readily to TV, scene to scene transitioning in a sprawling episodic narrative is not something many novelists excel at but is crucial for successful TV writing.

What made the last two books so ponderous is that Martin spent two books introducing new locales and factions in detail (meaning long chapters for those), maneuvering numerous characters into isolation or travel (meaning long chapters for those), maneuvering Tyrion to Mereen (for the first time, Tyrion had no other viewpoints like Cat or Sansa to relay a transition into), and having the main locations often bereft of an additional character to execute a transition (meaning long chapters).

Imagine if we had to read two books that maneuvered everyone into the place they were at the beginning of Game of Thrones, it'd be dire, even if there were interesting machinations in getting Dany and Viserys to Pentos, the conspiracies behind the death of Robert Arryn and whatever circumstances it was that led to the entire court journeying to the other side of the continent. For the most part, everything would be travelogue, mileau development and positioning the chessboard. Wholy uninteresting.

The narrative of book 1 works because the board was set to play from the first page without two books of set up.

The narrative should work in tWoW again because the board will be set to play from the first page.

The short, tight chapter handoff of the Tyrion/Barriston samples seems to indicate that Martin has resumed his prior writing style.

[Colonel Green]

Sequestered POVs not interacting with other POVs

1 Aeron

2 Bran

2 Sam

2 Sansa

2 Davos

4 Arya

Basically all of these counts are too short. The sequestered POVs have to hold up their own plot. You can't tell a separate plot in two chapters (no matter how long they are). GRRM has been offering to read an Aeron chapter at conventions, which by your estimate would mean he's offering to tell Aeron's entire independent story. Sansa has one chapter moved in from ADWD, meaning you think she had only one other chapter in the whole book, which is less than she had even in AFFC. We know from Arya's already-released chapter that her first chapter will (despite a cool ending) feature almost no plot movement, so I have a hard time seeing how she'll have only three more.

[Faint]

We make far too big an assumption if we presume that the so-called "sequestered" point-of-view characters will stay that way. If the next book is truly the penultimate entry in the series, then we should in fact conclude the opposite, that many of these solitary storylines will very soon join other, more expansive narratives, involving multiple point-of-view characters.

This is precisely why figuring out a point-of-view ratio is such difficult guesswork. Much of it involves trying to predict how the story is going to go and how the different characters will meet up, including those that are far away from each other right now.

The one piece of information that we have been given recently, which figures greatly in these calculations, is that Tyrion and Daenerys will not be interacting as much or as soon as many expect. So it looks a sure bet that we will be getting many chapters of both, whereas before it was thought they might divide the same storyline.

[Ser Eric]

a while back I made this infographic to illustrate the "mission creep" problems of AFFC/ADWD. The graphic is ordered by when a character's POV first shows up, so Bran is first, Barristan last)

http://s715.photobucket.com/user/lockeender/media/ASOIAF/ASOIAFChapters.jpg.html

the point here is that all the 'appendages' of the AFFC/ADWD are probably an anomaly, and that the rest of the narrative--beginning with The Winds of Winter--will probably be much more compact. Narrative progress in the Winds of Winter will probably be much more akin to the narrative progress of the first three books.

(I assume this will happen in part because I think Barristan, Victarion, Connington, Arianne, Asha, and Brienne will all die in TWOW, and possibly many of them relatively early on)

Here is how I see the TWOW character POV ratios playing out.

Dragons

12 Tyrion

8 Dany

2 Barristan

3 Victarion

The North

10 Jon

2 Melisandre

5 Theon

2 Asha

5 Jaime

1 Brienne

Kings Landing

10 Cersei

4 Arianne

1 Connington

Sequestered POVs not interacting with other POVs

1 Aeron

2 Bran

2 Sam

2 Sansa

2 Davos

4 Arya

I hope to god Tyrion and Dany don't have a combined 20 chapters (!) in TWoW or if they do, they get a fucking move on.

I don't see why Asha needs to have a PoV at all in TWoW. We needed to know about Stannis in DwD so it made sense but now we have Theon with Stannis. And presumable at some point we'll also have Davos returning so that's another PoV close to Stannis.

Sam will definitely have more than 2 PoV's. Whatever is happening at Oldtown/Reach is important and he's the only PoV there. He'll have at least 5 chapters if not more.

A total of 15 chapters for KL sounds alright but I don't expect Cersie to have 10 of them. JonCon will have at least 3 chapters, probably more.

10 chapters for Jon seems a lot as well seeing as he's either dead (and needs to be reborn) or grievously injured.

You've completely skipped Areo Hotah. He's the only PoV in Dorne so he's bound to have a chapter or two.

Sansa, Arya and Bran are impossible to predict. I have no idea where their story is going.

[lokisnow]

We make far too big an assumption if we presume that the so-called "sequestered" point-of-view characters will stay that way. If the next book is truly the penultimate entry in the series, then we should in fact conclude the opposite, that many of these solitary storylines will very soon join other, more expansive narratives, involving multiple point-of-view characters.

I disagree on this point, because I think part of why Arya, Sansa, Sam and Bran have all been sequestered far from narrative interaction is because they are being preserved for the end game, not the penultimate game. They've been postioned into holding patterns because they have to be alive for book seven (or eight).

***

I did forget Areo Hotah, but that's probably the most unimportant story in the books following the most unimportant character in the books. Sure, there might be one "dude:kewl" chapter where Areo and Darkstar die, but that's probably it for Dorne, since most of the important characters from Dorne have left Dorne and are converging with Aegon on Kings Landing. Areo got an entire one chapter in A Feast for Crows and that increased massively to him having an entire one chapter in A Dance with Dragons. I figure he will probably increase massively again and have an entire one chapter in The Winds of Winter.

***

For reference, here are the combined chapter ratio of AFFC and ADWD:

ADWD and AFFC combined chapter ratio:

Aeron: 2

Areo: 2

Arianne: 1

Arya: 5

Arys: 2

Asha: 4

Barristan: 4

Bran: 3

Brienne: 8

Cersei: 12

Connington: 2

Daenerys: 10

Davos: 4

Jaime: 8

Jon: 13

Melisandre: 1

Quentyn: 4

Samwell: 5

Sansa: 3

Theon: 7

Tyrion: 12

Victarion: 4

Organized by Locale:

Dragons:

Barristan: 4

Daenerys: 10

Quentyn: 4

Tyrion: 12

Victarion: 2

The North:

Asha:3

Davos: 4

Jon: 13

Melisandre: 1

Samwell: 2

Theon: 7

Iron Islands:

Aeron: 2

Asha 1

Victarion: 2

Dorne:

Areo: 2

Arianne: 1

Arys: 2

King's Landing / Realm at large:

Brienne: 8

Cersei: 12

Connington: 2

Jaime: 8

Sequestered:

Arya: 5

Bran: 3

Samwell: 3

Sansa: 3

The entire story of Dorne and the entire story of the Iron Islands were told in a total of five chapters each, respectively. and they primarily needed so much attention since little exposition had set up either in the previous, both will need less screentime in Winds of Winter. shoot, those five Kingsmoot chapters in the Iron Islands were all really happening with the final third of A Storm of Swords, they just got spread out when Martin dropped the 250 page prologue idea he originally intended to use to introduce Dorne and the Iron Islands. Arya, Sansa, Bran and Sam all had extremely few chapters once they left the main action, I expect that to continue in Winds of Winter. Their entire stories for two books took up very few chapters, so I think that will again be the case.

[Colonel Green]

Arya, Sansa, Bran and Sam all had extremely few chapters once they left the main action, I expect that to continue in Winds of Winter. Their entire stories for two books took up very few chapters, so I think that will again be the case.

That really doesn't follow. They had few chapters (well, Sam and Arya had five, with Arya originally intended to have six) because they were characters who did not have much going on in the "five year gap" that Martin subsequently decided not to do. We're now getting to the Act 2 in the original trilogy. There's every reason to think that the Stark kids will be back to being major figures, as they were in the first three books (well, Bran less so in the third book; he was already running out of Act 1 material then).

[Ser Eric]

I did forget Areo Hotah, but that's probably the most unimportant story in the books following the most unimportant character in the books. Sure, there might be one "dude:kewl" chapter where Areo and Darkstar die, but that's probably it for Dorne, since most of the important characters from Dorne have left Dorne and are converging with Aegon on Kings Landing. Areo got an entire one chapter in A Feast for Crows and that increased massively to him having an entire one chapter in A Dance with Dragons. I figure he will probably increase massively again and have an entire one chapter in The Winds of Winter.

Areo Hotah also follows Doran, probably the most important Dornish character. In the Feast, you had Arianne and Hotah in Dorne whereas now you just have Hotah. I'll be surprised if he only has one chapter when you add the Darkstar/Obara factor. Then there's also Myrcella in Dorne and she might be key to Cersie's death as well. 1 chapter does not seem enough when you consider all that.

I also disagree with your assumption that Jaime and Brienne will head north. Both Jaime and Brienne know Arya is NOT in Winterfell and I expect Lady Stoneheart already knows this.

I do agree with your Sansa/Arya/Bran point. I see them having a combined total of not more than 10 chapters which would work very well. With Sam, I'm less sure. The Citadel plot was important enough for him to devote a prologue to it and things are hotting up there with Euron and the IB.

What I hope GRRM avoids is tons of chapters from Tyrion and Dany where they both do precisely nothing. Their chapters were the prime reason the Essosi part of the story was boring and uninspiring.

[Colonel Green]

I do agree with your Sansa/Arya/Bran point. I see them having a combined total of not more than 10 chapters which would work very well.

With the two Sansa and Arya chapters held over, that means you think Sansa/Arya/Bran will have less story specific to TWOW than they did in the bridging books where there wasn't much story for them due to the books' covering what was originally intended as the five-year gap. Their stories in AFFC/ADWD were about manoeuvering them to the point where their Act 2 stories were meant to start, and as such there wasn't much that could happen there.

That really doesn't make sense. Assuming that TWOW actually covers what it's supposed to cover, it's Act 2 of Martin's originally-planned trilogy. There's no reason to think that original main characters will be sidelined in it.