Jump to content

Will TWOW feel completely different from the earlier books?


Recommended Posts

People will complain because people always complain, but i will agree to say that WoW will be differnt from the other books because after such time gaps since the beginning of the series GRRM has evolved as a person and his writing will aswell, WoW will be different but I truly believe it will be as good if not better than any thing we have read so far :)

 

That's an interesting point. But I don't really agree with you there. :laugh:

 

I guess we should be grateful that George started this when he was already past forty. That means the whole thing is amazingly homogeneous even though the five books were written over a span of 20 years. If you want to know how much the quality of writing can improve over an author's life, read Asimov's extended Foundation series, he started that in his early twenties and it took him more than 50 years.

 

Having read some of his earlier stuff by now, I think ASOIAF profits a lot from

 

  • him already having published several novels earlier
  • him having written so many short stories. He is incredibly good at condensing and getting things done on a few pages. Most ASOIAF chapters would work as short stories in their own right. ASOIAF is not just complex because it's long, it's also amazingly dense.
  • his experience as a screenwriter. Every chapter ends in some mini-climax or cliffhanger, so we know when to take a leak.
  • his experience as the editor for Wild Cards. I'm the first to resent it when he does this again instead of writing TWOW, but I have to concede that thing must have helped to develop the ASOIAF POV structure.

 

I'm with you concerning his development as a  person though, he must have gained some life experience since 1996 that went into his characters. Who knows if he could have pulled off, say, the Broken Men Speech* or the Varamyr Prologue back in the nineties. But his writing was already top notch in AGOT and it's not going to improve much more.

 

*(Yes, I know, he never fought in any war himself :P. But as they say, a reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, and he reads a lot :D.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your right with the evolution of the writing, it has been solid from the start, and he made his experience well before ASOIAF, but I truley believe he would change certain things in the first 3 books (ex: Tyrion jumping and tumbling from a ledge in AGOT) if he could. 

 

After finishing my re-read of ADWD, I started over AGOT, and I can sense a difference in the overall reading experience (Very small evolutions of course). 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your right with the evolution of the writing, it has been solid from the start, and he made his experience well before ASOIAF, but I truley believe he would change certain things in the first 3 books (ex: Tyrion jumping and tumbling from a ledge in AGOT) if he could. 

 

After finishing my re-read of ADWD, I started over AGOT, and I can sense a difference in the overall reading experience (Very small evolutions of course). 

 

He certainly would change some things, he said as much concerning the Tyrion introduction IIRC.

 

He also basically admitted to dropping the ball when he decided not to make Robb a POV.

 

On my first reread it struck me as completely incongruous when Stannis tells Cressen to put Patchface's helmet on. Cressen even thinks as much himself, so George is trying to tell us something there, but there is never any kind of follow-up. I guess he wrote that early on when he only developed Stannis and never changed it.

 

AGOT is very different from ADWD, to be sure, but I always put it down to the world and the characters being different before disaster strikes, not to changes in his writing. So this is something I actually enjoy and appreciate.

 

Do you have any examples for changes in his writing?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Most ASOIAF chapters would work as short stories in their own right. ASOIAF is not just complex because it's long, it's also amazingly dense.

I've recently taken to watching the Game of Thrones series again after reading all the books, and I'm only on a re-watch of the first season so far. I must say that a lot of scenes feel as though they're mere notes about the event in question - it must be the sheer density of the text that makes it feel that way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've recently taken to watching the Game of Thrones series again after reading all the books, and I'm only on a re-watch of the first season so far. I must say that a lot of scenes feel as though they're mere notes about the event in question - it must be the sheer density of the text that makes it feel that way.

While we have pages and pages describing food and clothing, in the show you can just see them, no need for a description.

 

Also hundreds of characters/plotlines cut out/combined.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

While we have pages and pages describing food and clothing, in the show you can just see them, no need for a description.

 

Also hundreds of characters/plotlines cut out/combined.

Considering most people can't even remember what they had for breakfast two days ago, and therefore most of us could care less about the food and travel log infesting the pages of DWD and FFC, hopefully GRRM and his editors will have stepped up and nipped that aspect in the bud before Winds of Winter gets published.

 

Besides if a decade of winter coupled with a zombie apocalypse is in store for us, how much freakin' food can there be left to describe? Westeros better start planting potatoes, which thankfully don't warrant much of a description when eaten.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I base this purely on the title, but I do expect this book to differ from the others. Each book in the Song series has had the title A ... of/for ... The fact that this latest book carries the title THE Winds of Winter makes me think GRRM has a finale-based purpose to his use of the definite article.

 

Hey, he could still change the title, if he doesn't make enough story progress ...

 

A Whiff of Winter

A Boreal Breeze
A Polar Puff

An Annex to Autumn 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

He certainly would change some things, he said as much concerning the Tyrion introduction IIRC.

 

He also basically admitted to dropping the ball when he decided not to make Robb a POV.

 

On my first reread it struck me as completely incongruous when Stannis tells Cressen to put Patchface's helmet on. Cressen even thinks as much himself, so George is trying to tell us something there, but there is never any kind of follow-up. I guess he wrote that early on when he only developed Stannis and never changed it.

 

AGOT is very different from ADWD, to be sure, but I always put it down to the world and the characters being different before disaster strikes, not to changes in his writing. So this is something I actually enjoy and appreciate.

 

Do you have any examples for changes in his writing?

 

-The length of the chapters in AGOT are shorter

-The overall pace of AGOT feels faster, I believe with the years going by GRRM has slowed down the pace of his books

-The in depth character developpement is stronger in the recent books

-More of a "grey" feeling in ADWD with Jon, Tyrion and Dany, AGOT was more black and white (Starks & Lannisters)

 

This is what comes to mind right now

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

He certainly would change some things, he said as much concerning the Tyrion introduction IIRC.

 

He also basically admitted to dropping the ball when he decided not to make Robb a POV.

 

On my first reread it struck me as completely incongruous when Stannis tells Cressen to put Patchface's helmet on. Cressen even thinks as much himself, so George is trying to tell us something there, but there is never any kind of follow-up. I guess he wrote that early on when he only developed Stannis and never changed it.

 

AGOT is very different from ADWD, to be sure, but I always put it down to the world and the characters being different before disaster strikes, not to changes in his writing. So this is something I actually enjoy and appreciate.

 

Do you have any examples for changes in his writing?

What did he say he would change regarding Tyrion's intro?

 

Also why did he wish he had made a Robb Stark POV?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

What did he say he would change regarding Tyrion's intro?

 

Also why did he wish he had made a Robb Stark POV?

 

 

I don't have links to the quotes, sorry.

 

 

The first time we hear Tyrion speak is after Jon Snow leaves the feast and meets Tyrion outside:

 

He pushed himself off the ledge into empty air. Jon gasped, then watched with awe as Tyrion Lannister spun around in a tight ball, landed lightly on his hands, then vaulted backward onto his legs.

 

I guess that was meant to tie into Tyrion learning to tumble as a kid back at Casterly Rock, and George returns to showing that "Tyrion as a dwarf entertainer" angle in ADWD after he meets Penny. It's part of the greater theme of him wanting to be loved but sucking at selling himself, which leads to the "twisted monkey demon" image as Hand in ACOK.

 

George basically said that this introduction doesn't work for him today, though. I agree, it just doesn't fit with the constant waddling and the cramping legs that are described in Tyrions own chapters later.

 

 

I don't remember him specifying the reasons he gave for the Robb POV, but it was probably something like this:

 

  • to make the decision to marry Jeyne Westerling comprehensible. A lot of people, me included, were simply  :bang: (where's :facepalm: when you need it?). On second thought, it's not that far-fetched though.
  • to actually show some of the battles he fights in, not just have all kinds of people tell us about it (although this probably not very important to George; all these cavalry surprise attacks with Grey Wind can get repetitive I guess)
  • to show his story through a POV with actual agency (Catelyn is mostly passive after her return to Riverrun, except for her releasing Jaime). Cat's story is basically that of an initially happy woman gradually losing everyone she loves until she is killed herself. Let's face it, it's depressing. That is probably the real reason so many people don't like her.
  • to simply show his inner thoughts and the pressure he's under.

 

I'm not sure I agree, I somehow like the whole WOT5K being told indirectly. There are surprisingly few examples of POVs fighting in battles in the whole series, it's not what the books are about. I have no idea where else he thinks he could have taken the plot with a Robb POV of course.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

He certainly would change some things, he said as much concerning the Tyrion introduction IIRC.

 

He also basically admitted to dropping the ball when he decided not to make Robb a POV.

 

On my first reread it struck me as completely incongruous when Stannis tells Cressen to put Patchface's helmet on. Cressen even thinks as much himself, so George is trying to tell us something there, but there is never any kind of follow-up. I guess he wrote that early on when he only developed Stannis and never changed it.

 

AGOT is very different from ADWD, to be sure, but I always put it down to the world and the characters being different before disaster strikes, not to changes in his writing. So this is something I actually enjoy and appreciate.

 

Do you have any examples for changes in his writing?

 

 

I think Robb is such a powerfully emotional character for the reader because he does not have a POV. He represents hope for the Starks.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Interesting. I still believe it will be out in March 2016, based on the EW interview. I'd read that "paper mines" post, but that only made me scratch my head. Last time he was much clearer:

 

http://grrm.livejournal.com/2011/04/27/

 

I always understood that as him telling the world the moment he was done writing. Now the "paper mine" comment (in the optimist's view) suggests he's already past that point and other people have taken over, maybe even him being done editing. Hard to imagine.

 

http://grrm.livejournal.com/2011/05/19/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...