Benioff, Weiss On Board for 2 More Years

[Ran]

AFFC's actually quite beautifully structured around a thematic thread that ties just about every narrative in that far-flung narrative together. ADwD is more typically structured, and certainly there is a problem in that in the end of the Meereenese Knot required stretching things out a bit so that various character could catch up.

I'm not sure many dislike the Aegon plot line. Mostly those who seem to come down on the, "Oh, he didn't foreshadow it" line of reasoning, despite the fact that people had twigged to something like this a decade and a half ago.

[Ran]

Oh, and, past 400 posts I see. Locking this one down. On to a new thread!

[JagLover]

Yes, he probably should have stayed with that inclination...doing so would have given us a story that always revolves around someone who is established as well as someone we care about. It would have also created a tighter plot, not allowing for much superfluous storylines. Adding more characters doesn't make a story stronger- in fact, it can weaken it significantly. Which is what some of the people here (myself included) feel happened in the last two books. The more the story wanders around with people we just don't have any connection to, the weaker it becomes. The shorter a bridge, the more stable it is...the danger is when you keep stretching it out without the same kind of support system to hold it up. Keep doing that and eventually, it'll all collapse.

And it's not JUST a matter of taste. It's a matter of "does this really help the story"? Is it worth spending as much time as we do in Dorne with no established characters to help us transition into this brand new story? Or is it alienating readers because they have real no connection to these people? It's a fair criticism, and one that has been brought up many times. How does Quentyn REALLY help the story, and could it have been done by means that the readers enjoy better? Those are all questions that should be asked when critiquing these books.

We see that the show has decided that the viewers DO need an established character in Dorne, so they are putting Jaime there. Will that help? We shall see.

I think an interesting discipline would have been if GRRM had to keep roughly the same number of POV characters throughout (except in prologues & epilogues) . As one dies (Cat at RW) he could then bring in one of all the characters introduced in AFFC/ADWD. If, say, he could only have brought in two more who would have been included?. My guess is Cersei and Arianne and think of how much tighter AFFC/ADWD would have been as a story as a result.

[Frey Pies]

I don't get why Martin felt the need to stretch things out at all. He could have just made time mov quicker, which is perfectly acceptable. After all, in a matter of a few chapters, characters in GoT went to King's Landing and ended up back in the Riverlands. The travelogues could have easily been sped up in order for him to be able to resolve the cliffhangers.

[oierem]

I don't get why Martin felt the need to stretch things out at all. He could have just made time mov quicker, which is perfectly acceptable. After all, in a matter of a few chapters, characters in GoT went to King's Landing and ended up back in the Riverlands. The travelogues could have easily been sped up in order for him to be able to resolve the cliffhangers.

Chapters in GoT were much shorter and moved the story much faster than in later books.

[Miodrag]

Yeah, I know about his original structure, but with the new structure Aegon certainly appears late in the game. I think a lot of the criticisms could be dealt with if they had done some editing down and combined the stories of AFFC/ADWD into one book. Aegon appearing in book 4 out of 6 doesn't seem as bad as appearing in book 5 out of 7.

Hello there. Long time no see. Remember the last time we communicated? We were discussing certain editing techniques used in the first two seasons of the show. In particular, speeding up of the raw footage, in order for fight scenes to appear more effective. It was about Ned/Jaime fight in episode 5, and Brienne/guards fight in episode 15. Perhaps you'll remember that you thrown various insults at me back then, called me foolish and incompetent and whatnot. And you strengthened you claim by saying you're a professional editor, and that you were to be presented with an award (hope it went well), and that my complaint was utter nonsense.

In the meantime, episode 9 of this season happened. And in "Inside the episode" video, Dan Weiss talks about the very issue we discussed back then - speeding up the raw footage. Literally, he says that at one instance they thought Kit's moves were sped up in a fighting scene of this episode, and it looked "faked and too fast" to them, and they asked a special effect guy to fix it by bringing the speed of the scene back to normal. Here's the link, and Weiss talking about the issue is at 04:20 mark:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tspDoDxxOnA

Eventually, it turned out nobody sped up anything this time around, Kit was just that good and that fast with his sword. But, it'd be interesting to find out what do you think about Weiss' words. Looks like he disagrees with your professional self that speeding up the raw footage is a legitimate and regular thing in editing. Again, he called it "fake". Of course, it'd be interesting to ask him why did he and Benioff allow such poor editing in earlier seasons, but, unfortunately, probably nobody's going to bother D&D with that. Seems they're continually spared of any questions that could be tricky. Hope that, opposite to them, you are not unavailable for such questions.

[Mr Fixit]

Chapters in GoT were much shorter and moved the story much faster than in later books.

In my copy of the books, AGoT's chapters are 8.5 pages long on average as opposed to 14 for AFfC.

[Cas Stark]

In my copy of the books, AGoT's chapters are 8.5 pages long on average as opposed to 14 for AFfC.

I'd say that is much shorter, AFfC chapters are almost twice as long.