Would you like an AFFC/ADWD like split of Winds?

[Lord Varys]

So you're actually defending a slower pace story over a fast paced one. Pretty sure the slow placing is one of the key reasons many don't enjoy George's last two books.

I know. But that's me. And I think lots of the irritation comes from the fact that people (including George, for whatever reason) continue to believe 'the seven book idea'. If you ignore that, and take a more realistic view on the matter you really don't have complain about the pace all the time - because you know that it cannot be done in two more books. If he even tried to do that in the sense that he sat down and assessed how many pages he needed to write the stuff he did write, and how much he had to cut (short) to finish the series in another 3,000 manuscript pages, and actually did that, then those two books would most certainly be the worst books in the entire series, and the series itself would be huge failure.

The main reason for this simply is that pretty much nobody wants to read about a rushed fight against and a quick defeat of the Others. We want to feel the threat they pose, the hopelessness they bring, and that winter has finally come. We want to see what happens to Westeros in the middle of winter as if we were living through one of Old Nan's stories. And that's not going to work in two more books - even if there weren't another Dance of the Dragons in-between (that war might be much shorter than the First Dance, to be sure, but still there should be some time spend on it especially since the Martells have been so perfectly set up to become Dany's worst enemies and Aegon's staunchest supporters).

GOT is my favorite book in the series for the very reason that his writing is so dense.  He conveys an unbelievable amount of information, mood, back story, foreshadowing in the first 100 pages.  There aren't any paragraph long food descriptions, nobody goes on a tangent to nowhere, everything in the book is important and the story does not get bogged down in unnecessary details.

But you can tell the story is starting to get away from him by Storm of Swords where yes, there is a lot that happens but things aren't tied up well for all the stories.  However, the writing doesn't feel full of filler the way it does in Dance.  To me anyway.  

Having read AGoT very tightly during the last months, there is a lot food stuff even in there. And there is stuff that goes nowhere even in there. The whole plot about Tyrion in the Vale leads literally nowhere. We could have had the whole Lannister-Stark confrontation and Cersei's subsequent coup with less 'filler material' (say, because something Ned does leads to the Jaime-Ned confrontation and Jaime's subsequent flight - Tyrion could have stumbled Tywin in the Riverlands or be imprisoned/dragged to Riverrun instead, where he is eventually freed by Jaime and sent to Tywin to contine his story from there). Cat's and Tyrion's Vale chapters are the most boring for me on a reread because nothing important happens there, and all the promise in there leads to nothing.

I'd not want him to change many of the chapters there, just add stuff that is obviously missing - like Bran during the Winterfell feast, and important talks between important people. Renly is essentially a joke as a character (how his relations with Robert were is a complete guesswork, and what the hell the reason for the bad blood with him and the Lannisters is is never explored at all), and many of Ned's chapters feel strangely out of focus with his actual day-to-day work? Why didn't we see Ned confronting Robert over the tourney business (he wanted to talk to him but never did - or if he did the author forgot about it)?

By the way: I actually think TWoW will be the weirdest book of all - beginning with some very fast paced chapters like Theon 1, and presumably the following chapters set near Winterfell, as well as the chapters covering the Battle at Meereen - but having the potential of sort of getting slower when it approaches its finale. I'm not sure TWoW will see the fall or the Wall, but even if it does there will be a battle just an escape (due to the fact that nobody at the Wall will have the numbers to oppose the Others in any meaningful way). The plots around Aegon and KL will also be very fast due to the fact that there will be battles, perhaps even in KL itself (or the Red Keep, like they were during the Regency of Aegon III) but Arya, Sansa, Samwell, Davos, Aeron etc. could be very slow paced.

Technically the southern plot could advance as far as Aegon sort of uniting the mainland from the Neck to southern coast of Dorne under his rule, setting him up as Dany's main 'positive obstacle' (if the Riverlands, the Vale, the KL, and the Aegon plot all go together). But what could be the big climax there? The grey plague pandemic Jon Connington is going to cause? Cersei's eventual marriage to Euron, forming the ultimate union of death and destruction?

The gang in the east won't reach Westerosi soil in the next book. At best some or all of them get as far as Volantis.

On a side note, after the last book is published (probably the 8th or 9th if he keeps the current pace), he could spend his free time editing the books into a "director's cut" with rearranged chapters, maybe cutting some and adding others, so that future readers are spared the weird disappearance of nearly all major characters in AFFC and the quasi soap opera cliffhangers that have no place in the end of a book (though by then it won't matter as much since there's no waiting a decade for the next book).

Moving the Ironborn chapters up to the Kingsmoot and perhaps even the first Areo chapter into ASoS while combining AFfC and ADwD into one book. Has anybody ever read/heard the books in a combined fashion? That certainly should change the overall feeling of the experience.

[sifth]

 

Moving the Ironborn chapters up to the Kingsmoot and perhaps even the first Areo chapter into ASoS while combining AFfC and ADwD into one book. Has anybody ever read/heard the books in a combined fashion? That certainly should change the overall feeling of the experience.

Well asking a reader to move forward in time to a certain point, only to jump back in time, does seem very weird. I often wonder why Geroge would chose such a strange format for a book in the first place. I mean Jon and Sam have a chapter that more or less covers the exact same events, granted Jon's chapter goes on a bit longer to show us the death of a certain character. It only gets weirder when Dance starts to cover material past AFFC's, when the characters from the previous book start to show up again.

[Wilnova]

A slower pace actually works much better than the pace in AGoT. In the first book you never have a real interaction between Catelyn and her daughters, between Ned and Jon Snow, between Robert and Joffrey, or Benjen and Ned. George writing the same book now would have done a much better job.

This makes no sense to me. George is trying to tell a story with a beginning, a middle and hopefully an end. He is not writing a book on relationships. Why would he spend time on interactions between Cat and her daughters. We know she loves them fiercely from her actions in trying to get them back and we get to know about her relationship with Arya from Arya's thoughts. Ned and Jon Snow interaction is kept minimal because of the whole mystery behind it. We know enough of Bob Baratheon's relationship with Joffrey to understand why Joff turned out the way he did. Why would we need Benjen and Ned interaction? What is the importance of that?

No matter how interesting reading about these interactions are to you, unless they serve a narrative function, they just eat up book pages without leading to a conclusion. I think that's what the others are trying to say. Reading about Brienne's travels may have been interesting to you, but they did nothing to push the books towards a conclusion. I thought that ADwD was better because both Jon and Dany's arcs served a purpose. Show ruling/leading was hard and in Jon's case: preparations for an imminent invasion of the Others. The worst part of ADwD was Tyrion's travelogues which did not serve the story in any way except perhaps to introduce Aegon. Who may not be all that important to the end game anyway.

And if George has improved in writing about relationships why does he still not give us anything about Jon and Sansa's relationship? Why does he not think of the Red Wedding and what happened to Robb. Stannis mentions that Sansa is Lady Lannister and Jon wonders about how Tyrion is doing! Not worry about his sister. This is in ADwD. Why does he focus on Jon and Tyrion's relationship and not on Jon and Sansa? Why does he only build up Jon's relationship with the one sister? Is George telling us that Jon does not care an iota for Sansa or does he write about the relationships that matters for telling his story? Obviously Jon/Arya and Jon/Tyrion matters going forward so he spend time on their interactions.

In that sense, the first 3 books were more tightly written, barreling towards a conclusion. And then Martin expanded his world, introduced more characters and decided to talk about food and traveling.

And he really doesn't owe anyone anything. Any reader with half a brain knew that he or she was reading a book series that was not finished yet. There are people smart enough not to pick up an unfinished book series, you know.

So you are saying that Martin 's readers are idiots who should have known better than to buy his unfinished books and make him rich and famous? And that Martin deceived his readers because he was not promising an ending ? Just books without a beginning or an end?

This attitude maybe okay for Martin and his apologists. But it's rather damaging to new authors trying to make their name in the genre. As Brent Weeks put it rather eloquently in his essay:

http://www.scifinow.co.uk/blog/brent-weeks-opinion-column-george-rr-martin-is-not-your-bitch/

Part of what entices us to buy a book is the promise conveyed in the title. “Gragnar’s Epic Magical Dragon Quest Trilogy: Book 1” promises there will be two more books. Whether through the title, or interviews, or through a note to readers at the end of a book that says the next book will be out in a year, when an author makes that kind of commitment, maybe technically there’s no contract, but there is an obligation.

And do you know who’s hurt when that obligation is broken? Not the multimillionaire authors, but the mid-listers who are in the middle of a series, barely making it, who hear readers say, “I don’t start a series anymore until all the books are finished. I’ve been burned too many times.”

Regardless of their success, writers have obligations to readers because readers pay us to do what we love. Readers don’t understand how hard writing can be, but many of us don’t understand how hard it is to work at McDonald’s, or a post office, or a sales desk. I’m in the middle of writing my second trilogy now, and I’ve been working six days a week for the last two years. The more successful I’ve gotten, the harder I’ve had to work. Some days I look at my full inbox, dozens of comments on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, and more awaiting moderation on my webpage, and I despair. But you know what? Every job requires you to do things you’d rather not. That’s why you get paid for it. At the end of the day, we have the best job in the world. How about some gratitude?

[Wendel Shoemaker]

Considering it sounds like we'll get WINDS within a year, no, I don't need a split. I'd rather wait and not have GRRM spend time thinking about how he can organically split the novel.

[Wendel Shoemaker]

 

This makes no sense to me. George is trying to tell a story with a beginning, a middle and hopefully an end. He is not writing a book on relationships. Why would he spend time on interactions between Cat and her daughters. We know she loves them fiercely from her actions in trying to get them back and we get to know about her relationship with Arya from Arya's thoughts. Ned and Jon Snow interaction is kept minimal because of the whole mystery behind it. We know enough of Bob Baratheon's relationship with Joffrey to understand why Joff turned out the way he did. Why would we need Benjen and Ned interaction? What is the importance of that?

No matter how interesting reading about these interactions are to you, unless they serve a narrative function, they just eat up book pages without leading to a conclusion. I think that's what the others are trying to say. Reading about Brienne's travels may have been interesting to you, but they did nothing to push the books towards a conclusion. I thought that ADwD was better because both Jon and Dany's arcs served a purpose. Show ruling/leading was hard and in Jon's case: preparations for an imminent invasion of the Others. The worst part of ADwD was Tyrion's travelogues which did not serve the story in any way except perhaps to introduce Aegon. Who may not be all that important to the end game anyway.

Kind of sounds like you're not into characterization or themes if you think Tyrion's story was a waste of time.

I do think Jon and Danny's stories had a better mix of characterization and story movement, compared to Brienne's story. But I also think Brienne's story was very important for world building (and it did actually make a lot of story advancements between introducing us to Randyl Tarly, Sparrows, Elder Brother and of course continuing with the brotherhood and Stoneheart.

[sifth]

Kind of sounds like you're not into characterization or themes if you think Tyrion's story was a waste of time.

I do think Jon and Danny's stories had a better mix of characterization and story movement, compared to Brienne's story. But I also think Brienne's story was very important for world building (and it did actually make a lot of story advancements between introducing us to Randyl Tarly, Sparrows, Elder Brother and of course continuing with the brotherhood and Stoneheart.

Sorry, but I have to agree with him. After Tyrion leaves Aegon's group, his story really is a waste of time. He literally spends two chapters on a boat with Jorah and Penny doing nothing. I laughed so hard when Tyrion finally has the chance to meet Dany only to have her fly away on a dragon. I don't think I ever felt so trolled reading a chapter before.

Jorah was probably the only thing about Tyrion's chapters I enjoyed to be perfectly honest.

[Good Guy Garlan]

Well asking a reader to move forward in time to a certain point, only to jump back in time, does seem very weird. I often wonder why Geroge would chose such a strange format for a book in the first place. I mean Jon and Sam have a chapter that more or less covers the exact same events, granted Jon's chapter goes on a bit longer to show us the death of a certain character. It only gets weirder when Dance starts to cover material past AFFC's, when the characters from the previous book start to show up again.

I remember that left me scratching my head when I first read Feast. It was, "The priest was drowning men when they told him the king was dead". Wait, which king? And who the fuck is this "prophet" who doesn't have the decency to have his name on the chapter title? Oh, it's Theon's weird uncle and the king was Balon. But this happened already! What the hell is going on?

So yeah, that was a ride. 

 

Sorry, but I have to agree with him. After Tyrion leaves Aegon's group, his story really is a waste of time. He literally spends two chapters on a boat with Jorah and Penny doing nothing. I laughed so hard when Tyrion finally has the chance to meet Dany only to have her fly away on a dragon. I don't think I ever felt so trolled reading a chapter before.

Jorah was probably the only thing about Tyrion's chapters I enjoyed to be perfectly honest.

Don't even get me started on Tyrion's Dance chapters and that ship. It doesn't even make sense from a character standpoint.

It's like, okay, Tyrion was on a semi-suicidal nihilistic mood until there was this big storm and he thought he was gonna die and then realized he really didn't want to die just yet, and Jorah and him got enough shrimps to buy ten more Jennys and became the most successful boating company in the Bayou but Jorah gave the money to Bubba's mom anyway. 

So the boat trip was necessary for Tyrion to reach that state, right? It was necessary in the name of character development, right? Wrong! He survived a far better, far more interesting, and far more dangerous life-threatening situation with the Stone Men before. That should've been his wake up call. But no, we needed that storm because repetition, I guess.

Martin may be a gardener or an architect or whatever, but I'll tell you what he's not: an economist.

Disclaimer: I just took some Nyquil and now I'm more groggy than Ben Carson, so this post may or may not make sense. 

[Ninefingers]

Eh, I'm reminded of Quentin Tarantino. 

At this point, he's a recognized giant in the industry who can do pretty much whatever the heck he wants. As such, it's difficult to rein him in and you get unwieldy monsters like Kill Bill. So convinced of his genius and the on screen gold, he was unwilling to edit and it needed to be split. The result was a lot of self indulgent filler and bloat that made it not very good. 

It's easy for me to imagine the same thing happening to George if there were to be another split. 

[vividox]

Absolutely not.

The worst part of FFC/DWD was the geographical split. I prefer to read them in the "chronologic"ally combined order as a single 2000 page book.

 

[A Ghost of Someone]

I think he will take it to and finish it in 8 books. I, also have doubts he will finish it before his death. I hate to be this pessimistic about it but must be honest. He is not in good shape and does not eat well and does not seem to exercise. I am worried about it.

[Whitering]

I am now wondering if he hasn't finished because he is trying to finish in two books. There is a lot that has to happen yet, and while there was plenty of character development in Feast/Dance the only people who moved were Sam to Oldtown, Brienne to the Riverlands, Jaime to the Riverlands, Dany to the Waste, Stannis to 3 days from Winterfell.

Yep, not a lot actually happened, other than Drama and treading water, which I enjoyed well enough, but that's not enough actual movement. I do not believe the series can be finished in two books. So, perhaps George is trying to pare down the story to cram it into two books, and not happy with the results.

This thread will soon be locked based on the comments herein and board policy.

[Wendel Shoemaker]

On ‎2016‎-‎01‎-‎11 at 9:38 PM, sifth said:

 

Sorry, but I have to agree with him. After Tyrion leaves Aegon's group, his story really is a waste of time. He literally spends two chapters on a boat with Jorah and Penny doing nothing. I laughed so hard when Tyrion finally has the chance to meet Dany only to have her fly away on a dragon. I don't think I ever felt so trolled reading a chapter before.

Jorah was probably the only thing about Tyrion's chapters I enjoyed to be perfectly honest.

Which again, is why I said he must have not cared about characterization if the rest of the story was a waste.

[sifth]

 

Sorry, but I have to agree with him. After Tyrion leaves Aegon's group, his story really is a waste of time. He literally spends two chapters on a boat with Jorah and Penny doing nothing. I laughed so hard when Tyrion finally has the chance to meet Dany only to have her fly away on a dragon. I don't think I ever felt so trolled reading a chapter before.

Jorah was probably the only thing about Tyrion's chapters I enjoyed to be perfectly honest.

Which again, is why I said he must have not cared about characterization if the rest of the story was a waste.

And by that you mean what exactly? From my point of view, after Tryrion leaves Aegon's group he spends 3 chapters doing nothing with Jorah aside from meeting Penny. He then becomes a walking camera showing us what being a slave is like, until finally in his last two chapters he returns to being a character again and comes up with a clever way to escape.

[winterfellsedai]

No splitting up please. It took me FOREVER to read the last 2 books chapter by chapter via the Boiled Leather list. Please no.

[Not a kneeler]

I must agree. I would rather read an integrated story told in a mostly chronological order as opposed to the mess created by the AFFC and DWD split. I am as impatient as any reader on this list, but above all, I want a complete book and if we must wait for that, then so be it. Once George has created his masterwork I would like to see him go back and recreate books 4 and 5 into a more organized books 4 and 5. Splitting them was not a success. Having done that once and seeing the result, I am sure he will not repeat this unfortunate mistake.

[Endymion I Targaryen]

I would prefer no split.When I finished reading FFC,I was not so enthusiastic.Nice book but it had too many new POVs,large chapters, 6/10 SOS POVs did not return,little character development,many fillers and the chronological order of events was lost.

[The Dragon has three heads]

Not wanting a split WOW into two books is all well and good.

However.

The show is about to run rough shod over the currently written, edited and finished pages for that book.  The show runners have read all this material, I have no doubt.

Id honestly rather he find a smart place to split the story get it out before the show ruins it and bring the second half out before the next season airs.

The show runners, by design I think, invented that horrible dornish sub plot to give him extra time, but couldn't do it with all characters, so inevitably Jon, tyrion, Danny are going past their written material.  

He could find out where the show is going this year and end it in around about the same place.

Sure some people will bitch and moan. But I'd rather see what it was supposed to be like before the show comes and puts their...lens, over it.

Shrug.

 

 

[Magnar of Skagos]

Please for the love of god no. As much as I enjoyed each of those books, it did feel like something was missing throughout them because of the absence of some of my favourite POV characters. ADWD was a little better because it had Jon, Daenerys, Bran, etc, but AFFC suffered from having the "big players" that were there from day one stripped away.

[Wendel Shoemaker]

On 1/24/2016 at 11:57 AM, sifth said:

Which again, is why I said he must have not cared about characterization if the rest of the story was a waste.

 

And by that you mean what exactly? From my point of view, after Tryrion leaves Aegon's group he spends 3 chapters doing nothing with Jorah aside from meeting Penny. He then becomes a walking camera showing us what being a slave is like, until finally in his last two chapters he returns to being a character again and comes up with a clever way to escape.

For me it was Tyrion's interactions with Penny. How after seeing her and the suffering she has gone through because of her Dawrfness and the loss of her brother because of him, he kind of started to get some humanity back after being so messed up. Someone he actually kind of gave a shit about and wanted to protect.

I also in general found the interactions with Jorah to be interesting, as well as seeing the slave life.

I do think it's clear though that George has planned on going a little further with Tyrion's story in Dance than he was able to.

In the end, I would have felt more trolled if Tyrion and Dany met up in a similar fashion to how the show did it than what we got. Maybe I'm just too okay with knowing that the beginning of TWOW is going to be so awesome with all of these characters right on the verge of something big happening.

[Wendel Shoemaker]

On 1/29/2016 at 7:05 PM, The Dragon has three heads said:

Not wanting a split WOW into two books is all well and good.

However.

The show is about to run rough shod over the currently written, edited and finished pages for that book.  The show runners have read all this material, I have no doubt.

Id honestly rather he find a smart place to split the story get it out before the show ruins it and bring the second half out before the next season airs.

The show runners, by design I think, invented that horrible dornish sub plot to give him extra time, but couldn't do it with all characters, so inevitably Jon, tyrion, Danny are going past their written material.  

He could find out where the show is going this year and end it in around about the same place.

Sure some people will bitch and moan. But I'd rather see what it was supposed to be like before the show comes and puts their...lens, over it.

Shrug.

 

 

Personally I think the show can't wait to pass the books and have an excuse to do whatever they want with it. If they wanted to wait for Martin they could have made two seasons of Feast/Dance and not cut out Griff, Arianne, Stoneheart ect.