[Book spoilers]: GoT producer expects at least 7 seasons

[Basileus777]

Slate calculated that Martin has 3.75 years for each remaining book before the show catches up.

That Slate article is...well it's best not to put much faith in a calculation that is projecting GRRM to finish TWOW in early 2014.

[Paul Blackfyre]

I started visiting this forum because I thought that I would find a place full of people that love the books and enjoy the TV series. But I guess I was wrong. Seriously, there's so many pessimistic people around here. "Martin will never finish the books.."; "AFFC and ADWD are terrible", "the show is garbage", etc. Jesus.

[Cas Stark]

The Slate articles uses the average time, which doens't take into account his writer's block since Storm of Swords. The first three books took less than 3 years each, and then the time jumped up to 5 years. If he returns to his original form then he will make it, if not, he won't come close and might barely even get out the 6th book while the show is running.

[MachoGrande]

I started visiting this forum because I thought that I would find a place full of people that love the books and enjoy the TV series. But I guess I was wrong. Seriously, there's so many pessimistic people around here. "Martin will never finish the books.."; "AFFC and ADWD are terrible", "the show is garbage", etc. Jesus.

B...but we only complain 'cause we love the series so much! :D

And strictly speaking this is primarily an ASOIAF fansite, so the existence of users who dislike the show (often accused as book purists) isn't necessarily a contradiction to the nature/purpose of this site - not to say that I find it a good thing.

But yeah, all the Feast and Dance hate makes my heart bleed, especially since thoese books had some "objectively awesome" parts undeniably on par with the rest of the series. Not to mention that people seem to have lost faith in Martin way to easily, considering they are calling themselves fans.

While all those sentiments are understandable, I think they are majorly overblown. But hey, you can't forbid anybody his right to complain.

[Lord Elrosir]

I can still be a fan and declare that, in my opinion, Martin seems to have lost his touch and his way with writing ASOIAF. Quite frankly, he could write anything in the ASOIAF universe and I'd buy it and probably enjoy it.

The only Ice and Fire novel I did not enjoy was AFFC.

[Weeping Sore]

I can still be a fan and declare that, in my opinion, Martin seems to have lost his touch and his way with writing ASOIAF. Quite frankly, he could write anything in the ASOIAF universe and I'd buy it and probably enjoy it.

The only Ice and Fire novel I did not enjoy was AFFC.

If you haven't yet, do yourself a favor and read it interlaced with ADwD as one book. I will never read it seperately again. www.boiledleather.com GRMM's strategy for splitting the two books just didn't work IMO.

[Stannis' shadow babies]

But yeah, all the Feast and Dance hate makes my heart bleed, especially since thoese books had some "objectively awesome" parts undeniably on par with the rest of the series. Not to mention that people seem to have lost faith in Martin way to easily, considering they are calling themselves fans.

While all those sentiments are understandable, I think they are majorly overblown. But hey, you can't forbid anybody his right to complain.

Part of that opinion, I believe, derives from the fact that so many readers had to actually wait for those books to be published, their expectations grew huge! I read the books after season 2 ended, one right after the other, and I didn't even stopped to contemplate AFFC and ADWD as bad. True, some parts weren't as entertaining as the previous books but they worked well. I think it's different when you read the story as a continuum. You can't have a story that long to be at the top of its game the whole time.

[Thlayli]

The Slate articles uses the average time, which doens't take into account his writer's block since Storm of Swords

Slate also fails to take into account the amount of filler in AFFC/ADWD. Those books, combined, could make for a good season five with a little spillover into seasons four and six. I've seen people posit that those two doorstops deserve two or three complete seasons. Those people are delusional. HBO will most likely be writing a good chunk of material from TWOW in less than two years and ADOS the year after. This goose is cooked.

[Paul Blackfyre]

Part of that opinion, I believe, derives from the fact that so many readers had to actually wait for those books to be published, their expectations grew huge! I read the books after season 2 ended, one right after the other, and I didn't even stopped to contemplate AFFC and ADWD as bad. True, some parts weren't as entertaining as the previous books but they worked well. I think it's different when you read the story as a continuum. You can't have a story that long to be at the top of its game the whole time.

I couldn't agree more.

Slate also fails to take into account the amount of filler in AFFC/ADWD. Those books, combined, could make for a good season five with a little spillover into seasons four and six. I've seen people posit that those two doorstops deserve two or three complete seasons. Those people are delusional. HBO will most likely be writing a good chunk of material from TWOW in less than two years and ADOS the year after. This goose is cooked.

Yep, My opinion is that AFFC and ADWD have material for 1 season and a half.

[Cas Stark]

They could do a very languid 2 seasons combining the two books into a single narrative timeline, especially since they like the King's Landing stuff, but tthe idea of getting more than 2 years is not going to happen.

[Werthead]

Who knows, maybe there were 2000 extra pages of heavily detailed banquet descriptions, turtles and "wherever whores go".

Or you could look at the actual information. ADWD has about 1,510 MS pages (not counting appendices) out of 1,700-odd that GRRM completed. 80 MS pages were lost in editing and tightening the book. The other 120+ were held back to TWoW.

Certainly the books are edited, both as GRRM goes along (the current 400-odd 'completed' MS page count for TWoW means those pages have been edited by GRRM and his editor) and then another pass when the whole thing is done.

Whether they're edited to everyone's satisfaction is another matter. But certainly it happens, is fairly exacting and more is done than for many other bestselling fantasy authors. Terry Goodkind, for example, has oft-boasted that he has never let anyone at all change anything in his books since the second one, apart from one word that he later changed back to what he intended.

He could reasonable do this...if he would write shorter books. 1500 pages is just mammoth. And he wouldn't have to write 1500 pages if he didn't have so many POVs.

Given the sheer number of balls in the air, 1,500 MS pages each is probably necessary. That number is because at much above 1,500, the novel would have to be split in two volumes (ADWD was 1,510 MS pages, ASoS was 1,521), so 1,500 is a size limitation, not a story one.

As mentioned earlier, GRRM has a fair bit of PR to do each time a book comes out. For the last two books (if not the last three), he seems to have lost at least 6 months writing time per released book from the next volume; if he had done no PR at all for ASoS, AFFC and ADWD he'd be possibly 18 months further along in writing TWoW. Of course, PR is part of the job and GRRM likes to do it (after spending 3/5/6 years working on a book, getting out there and meeting the fans is a welcome change of pace). Amongst other things, it gives massive boosts to struggling bookstores to have big authors come round and do signing visits.

Releasing 3 smaller books rather than 2 big ones might mean that we get the next bit of the story faster, but it also loses time from the overall completion of the series. Also, GRRM has said that each book will be as big as it needs to be: 1,500 is very much at the upper limit. If he found really good break-points for the characters in TWoW at, say, 1,200 pages instead (a bit longer than ACoK) he might decide to do that instead.

Doesn't matter, I wouldn't think. The show is HBO's biggest international hit ever, and their second biggest hit of all-time domestically. I'll dig up the article, but during the first season the overseas sales of the series alone almost completely covered the production budget, and that was before that same season became HBO's fastest-selling home video release ever (total sales calculated to, again, roughly the total production budget). And the second and third seasons have been bigger still, despite the fact that the show is the most pirated series ever. The merchandise for Game of Thrones accounts for 65%+ of their total sales, according to one HBO representative. The show wins awards, and is a bona-fide cultural phenomenon.

More or less accurate. Foreign rights sales meant that about 50% of Season 1's budget was covered ahead of time. The merchandise for Game of Thrones accounts for even more, 75% of sales.

Now that doesn't necessarily mean that the show is certain to make it to eight seasons, because any number of things could occur, but it wouldn't be an issue of budget if the show were to be cancelled prior to finishing the story. An entire studio was recommissioned and refurbished in Belfast specifically for this show (in addition to the studio they already use, known as the Paint Hall, which is massive [it's actually where the Titanic was painted]), and the UK tax break that producer Frank Doelger was hoping for did indeed pass, meaning that the $65 million dollars they spend on the show (rough average) goes a lot farther than the $100 million that Rome was budgeted (first season).

Indeed. Rome was based in Italy, and apparently there is no place in the world more expensive to film.

It will probably take us 3-400 pages into TWOW until he can resolve the 2 battles... which solve nothing in the overall picture

The battle for Meereen will bring together a number of important characters (amongst POVs, Barristan, Tyrion and Victarion will join up) and determine the future of Dany's storyline. If the bigger Volantene fleet turns up - which is probably big enough to carry Dany's entire army to Westeros - and is captured or the slave rowers revolt, that gives Dany what she has needed since the start of AGoT: a way of getting to Westeros relatively quickly. For me the question is whether Dany's storyline with the Dothraki can unfold and be resolved quickly enough to get her back to Meereen. The battle at Winterfell will also decide how Stannis, Theon, Asha and Ramsay's stories unfold and the fate of Winterfell, which are all clearly big parts of the main narrative.

The Slate articles uses the average time, which doens't take into account his writer's block since Storm of Swords

GRRM hasn't had writer's block since ASoS. If he had, he wouldn't have been able to publish (and he'd have written many more, considering the number of chapters written and later junked) about 750,000 words in this series alone. For the record, that's considerably more words than in Douglas Adam's entire 30-year novel-and-script-writing career (and he did suffer from writer's block), and considerably more than Dan Brown has published in the same time period.

[Cas Stark]

I'm using "writers block" as a stand in phrase for whatever is the actual problem he is having with his story, since to me, a doubling of the writing time with the result being a two novels chock full of meandering filler chapters that don't have any resolutions, as well as the fairly bizarro excuse of the "Meereen knot" indicates that there is a problem. It is especially indicated since the time between Feast and Dance was the longest ever.

[lokisnow]

Or you could look at the actual information. ADWD has about 1,510 MS pages (not counting appendices) out of 1,700-odd that GRRM completed. 80 MS pages were lost in editing and tightening the book. The other 120+ were held back to TWoW.

...

Given the sheer number of balls in the air, 1,500 MS pages each is probably necessary. That number is because at much above 1,500, the novel would have to be split in two volumes (ADWD was 1,510 MS pages, ASoS was 1,521), so 1,500 is a size limitation, not a story one.

Agreed, as I said earlier in the thread:

for a book the size of ADWD

Meereen

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

2 Bran

2 Sam

2 Sansa

2 Davos

4 Arya (because she is Paris' favorite)

that's 79 chapters, which is right in line with ASOS and ADWD, ah but word count matters too! since 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.

And this graphic shows that the extra POV chapters from AFFC and aDWD were mainly filling the gaps caused by POVs not in attendence (like Barristan and Quentyn trading chapters to tell us what happened in Mereen in Dany's absence). So they will mostly not be present because so many POVs have or are converging.

http://s715.photobuc...apters.jpg.html

As mentioned earlier, GRRM has a fair bit of PR to do each time a book comes out. For the last two books (if not the last three), he seems to have lost at least 6 months writing time per released book from the next volume; if he had done no PR at all for ASoS, AFFC and ADWD he'd be possibly 18 months further along in writing TWoW. Of course, PR is part of the job and GRRM likes to do it (after spending 3/5/6 years working on a book, getting out there and meeting the fans is a welcome change of pace). Amongst other things, it gives massive boosts to struggling bookstores to have big authors come round and do signing visits.

Is it realistic to expect he'll be able to do a proper signing tour now that show has escalated his popularity far beyond what it was at the end of Season One? When was the last time JK Rowling or Stephen King did a signing tour?

The battle for Meereen will bring together a number of important characters (amongst POVs, Barristan, Tyrion and Victarion will join up) and determine the future of Dany's storyline. If the bigger Volantene fleet turns up - which is probably big enough to carry Dany's entire army to Westeros - and is captured or the slave rowers revolt, that gives Dany what she has needed since the start of AGoT: a way of getting to Westeros relatively quickly. For me the question is whether Dany's storyline with the Dothraki can unfold and be resolved quickly enough to get her back to Meereen. The battle at Winterfell will also decide how Stannis, Theon, Asha and Ramsay's stories unfold and the fate of Winterfell, which are all clearly big parts of the main narrative.

And I would think both of these climaxes will result in shorter chapters, like the rapid fire, Tyrion Sansa Tyrion Sansa Tyrion Sansa structure of the Battle of Blackwater, which used shorter chapters to great effect. when POVs are in the same place, it makes the book move faster.

[Khal-a-bunga]

I can't speak to what Martin is or isn't having issues with, in terms of writing this series, but I will say that I seem to be more optimistic than many posters here about the last two books in the series. Mainly because I think this pressure will be a good thing for him. Sometimes that's what it takes - someone (or something) has to light a fire under your ass to get you motivated. Others may worry that he could sacrifice quality in order to release the novels before the show overtakes him, but I don't think Martin would do that - he'll either finish or he won't. I'm optimistic about The Winds of Winter being release before the end of next year, and (perhaps foolishly) that Martin will have a hard-and-fast plan or outline for how the series will end by the time it does, which would lead to a fairly fast turn-around for A Dream of Spring to be released. But it's all pure speculation at this point. It'll be finished when it's finished. If the show does overtake the novels, Martin really has no one to blame but himself. All that said, I don't have as big of a problem with both of the last two novels that many here seem to. I'd rank them...

1. A Storm of Swords

2. A Feast for Crows

3. A Game of Thrones

4. A Clash of Kings

5. A Dance with Dragons

[Colonel Green]

All that said, I don't have as big of a problem with both of the last two novels that many here seem to.

I don't either. ADWD definitely has bloat issues, but they're both good reads. How I experience them is undoubtedly influenced by how I read them. I read all the books in sequence over a period of about a month. If I'd waited years for them, that would have been very different.

[The Human Abstract]

If the show does overtake the novels, Martin really has no one to blame but himself.

This is not the first time I've seen this statement, and I have to admit I don't entirely agree with it. I think it's reasonable to say the show is also responsible. There are a number of variables they control as well, and there was never any doubt of the size/scope of this world and the speed at which Martin writes.

They determine the pace, the storylines to include, and the overall length of the program. It is absolutely their responsibility as well, and not Martin's singular blame if -- for instance -- they decide to skip over storylines and shorten the amount of material utilized.

It's interesting to me with all this talk of "ah, but actors will get expensive", "ah, but there are too many characters to cast and pay", "ah, but actors age" (seriously, this is ridiculous.. you have 30 years olds playing teenagers in the show already), "ah, but an HBO show can only run so long", etc. that somehow it's Martin's who seems to be 100% the scapegoat here. I'm sorry, but they had a lot of information about this book series. Depending on what they do, it may be completely fair to place blame for such an eventuality on them as well.

Yes, HBO has the right to skip forward and not defer to Martin's canon. It has the right to quicken the pace and limit the scope as well. So be it. But I am not prepared to level all the blame on Martin's verbiage and writing speed if they surpass him because they decide to do that. They knew all along what this series was. In such a case, it will be their fault as well.

[Faint]

If nothing else, the Slate article does well in giving a reasonable idea for how fast Martin would have to write in order to keep pace with the show, assuming there will only be two more books.

[Weeping Sore]

This is not the first time I've seen this statement, and I have to admit I don't entirely agree with it. I think it's reasonable to say the show is also responsible. There are a number of variables they control as well, and there was never any doubt of the size/scope of this world and the speed at which Martin writes.

They determine the pace, the storylines to include, and the overall length of the program. It is absolutely their responsibility as well, and not Martin's singular blame if -- for instance -- they decide to skip over storylines and shorten the amount of material utilized.

If you were tackling AFfC/ADwD, which I love, and trying to adapt them into a television series, would you attempt the most faithful adaptation you could and translate it into about 25-30 hours of television? If so, your television show would most likely be cancelled. So you're saying they have the choice, just means they have the choice to run the show into the ground.

If GRRM can deliver TWoW by 2015 it will beat some TWoW material at the end of S5, and delivering ADoS by Spring 2018 (not likely) would be ahead of the bulk of ADoS material in the final, 8th season.

Is it really so unreasonable to expect him to write books 2-7 in 22 years?

[The Human Abstract]

If you were tackling AFfC/ADwD, which I love, and trying to adapt them into a television series, would you attempt the most faithful adaptation you could and translate it into about 25-30 hours of television? If so, your television show would most likely be cancelled. So you're saying they have the choice, just means they have the choice to run the show into the ground.

If GRRM can deliver TWoW by 2015 it will beat some TWoW material at the end of S5, and delivering ADoS by Spring 2018 (not likely) would be ahead of the bulk of ADoS material in the final, 8th season.

The point is that it seems silly to blame Martin alone for not writing a book series more adaptable to television. It was equally HBO's choice to both begin when they did and to likely surpass him.

[Faint]

The point is that it seems silly to blame Martin alone for not writing a book series more adaptable to television. It was equally HBO's choice to both begin when they did and to likely surpass him.

I don't think we should be blaming anybody. It's Martin's property, he can do with it what he wants. By that same measure, he has no right to be angry with HBO. He knew what selling the property to HBO might entail.