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What do you think caused Martin to loose his grip on the material?


Mwm

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This is absurd. Why on the seven hells would Martin leave the saga unfinished willingly?

If greed was behind George's motives, he would have published the final volumes in quick succession before the show aired. He wouldn't even need to bother to write the books himself: he could pay a ghostwriter to do the job for him. Some may say that the quality dropped a little bit, but the books would be best sellers anyway.

The proposition that George doesn't publish books (his main source of income) because he is "greedy" has some very faulty logic, to say the least.

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1 hour ago, The hairy bear said:

This is absurd. Why on the seven hells would Martin leave the saga unfinished willingly?

If greed was behind George's motives, he would have published the final volumes in quick succession before the show aired. He wouldn't even need to bother to write the books himself: he could pay a ghostwriter to do the job for him. Some may say that the quality dropped a little bit, but the books would be best sellers anyway.

The proposition that George doesn't publish books (his main source of income) because he is "greedy" has some very faulty logic, to say the least.

He paid a ghostwriter to finish: the tv show.

 

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14 hours ago, alienarea said:

My feeling is that GRRM built a fanbase with the first three books, cashed in with HBO, enjoys fame and fortune, and shows us the finger.

Or, as the Ferengi know: Greed is eternal.

Although, I appreciate this is just a matter of opinion, and we are all entitled to those lol I find it a very harsh statment that doesn't seem to be backed up by anything tangible and is potentially defamatory. 

If what you say was his intention "me thinks" he would have wrapped up the plots concerning the main characters we all love or love to hate in his first 3 books cash in the money and retire from writing or something.  He has done the opposite!  In my humble opinion, he has gotten himself in more and more knots out of expanding and expanding and expanding some more (which is in fact my criticism) and I feel that he simply finds it hard to cut out, or leave for another story characters who weren't essential and distract from the mainline.

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6 hours ago, Morgana Lannister said:

Although, I appreciate this is just a matter of opinion, and we are all entitled to those lol I find it a very harsh statment that doesn't seem to be backed up by anything tangible and is potentially defamatory. 

If what you say was his intention "me thinks" he would have wrapped up the plots concerning the main characters we all love or love to hate in his first 3 books cash in the money and retire from writing or something.  He has done the opposite!  In my humble opinion, he has gotten himself in more and more knots out of expanding and expanding and expanding some more (which is in fact my criticism) and I feel that he simply finds it hard to cut out, or leave for another story characters who weren't essential and distract from the mainline.

He used to write for a living until he sold to HBO.

It's not that he stumbled into ASoIaF by chance and he got caught in something too big to handle. He could have chosen to complete it before publishing.

And while he was still writing it he made all the smart remarks about subverting tropes and having more realism with younger characters and I read many people claiming ASoIaF being superior to Lord of the Rings. Leaving it unfinished nullifies all this.

 

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1 hour ago, alienarea said:

He used to write for a living until he sold to HBO.

It's not that he stumbled into ASoIaF by chance and he got caught in something too big to handle. He could have chosen to complete it before publishing.

And while he was still writing it he made all the smart remarks about subverting tropes and having more realism with younger characters and I read many people claiming ASoIaF being superior to Lord of the Rings. Leaving it unfinished nullifies all this.

 

To me the problem is that he is still trying but giving way, way too much page time to characters that he is not developing very deeply or characters that are just not appealing, but speaking for myself, such as Quentyn, Victarion etc.  I reiterate that if he wanted to pull out of it, trying to create characters with stories that he had already done (say Quentyn as the not so favourite son) we have Sam for that, Tyrion even... and with zero charisma, to me proves he is trying to do something but mayhaps repeating himself.  It would be much easier to wrap it up and end up on top with characters like Sam and Tyrion without the need for boring Quentyn, Victarion and what not...

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1 hour ago, MostlyMoody said:

If any of you are feeling angry about a book because it hasn't come out yet, I suggest retreating from the forums and anything to do with the books, for your own mental well-being.
Maybe go for a jog, see a movie, get interested in a hobby etc.

Thank you very much. A life-changing advice from an anonymus user is exactly what a man needs. I am very gratefull. 

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I agree with much of what has been discussed here and I too am disappointed that GRRM hasn't seemed to find the discipline to finish his collection of doorstops, but I am hopeful nonetheless.

As well as his "garden" being overrun with weedy plotlines and meandering vines of lateral story/character "growth" in AFfC and ADwD, GRRM seems to have lost the idea that he is telling a story and grown close to the idea that he is reciting a history, with all the details and players involved duly recorded.

The problem with that is the fact that his style of writing is so densely packed with details and descriptions that it becomes laborious to work on. I can see why other projects seem like they are a lot more fun at this point to a writer that has been at it for decades. Still, he has a commitment to the readers and fans that brought him his success and it is time to start churning it out faster. GRRM said he really admired Stephen King for being able to write for at least three hours every day. At this point George, we'd settle for one.

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2 hours ago, T and A said:

Thank you very much. A life-changing advice from an anonymus user is exactly what a man needs. I am very gratefull. 

I don't mean to discredit your feelings. Just find other interests and when the book comes out you will be pleasantly surprised. At the end of the day, whats the point of stewing in your own anger for years over some book.

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I think I - and a couple of other people - had made this point earlier on in the thread.

Really, GRRM has to just sit down and write it out - bit by bit - and have someone or something to loom over him and make him hold to it.

Yes, he put himself into a hole in Dance...a hole that needs to be dealt with in Winds before we move onto the actual Winds material and deal with all of the climaxes and revelations and resolutions that will happen in Dream.

If getting out of the hole requires him to write another book, then so be it.

If he is stuck, then he should reach out and ask for help. His wife is a writer, isn't she? He has friends who are writers. He is widely respected by his writer peers.

Whatever the case may be, he should just sit down and write an outline for:

  1. the story and the ending that he has on the table
  2. the story and the ending that he wants to put on the table

Then, he should go back and forth between the two to write a final outline, incorporating the things that he has already laid out and the things that he wants to do that he hasn't finished laying the groundwork for.

And then, he should stick to it. He can add or take away minor elements but that final outline needs to be final.

Gardening is okay and all when you're in the planning stage or the very beginning of the writing stage. Gardening requires a lot of pruning and cleaning...and well, planning. Gardening looks spontaneous but it's not and that's Martin's problem.

The biggest difference between the gardener and the architect is that the gardener is working with nature (i.e. things that are far beyond his control) and the architect is working on his own and/or working against nature (i.e. things that are either predictable or within his control).

Gardening will work when you're in the very early stages of planning or writing...or when you're in the middle looking for themes, characters, settings to enrich or thicken the story that you already have. But we're at the very end of the story now: if you want to finish strong with a climax, a dénouement and an aftermath that makes sense, you need a concrete plan. Especially if you're dealing with something as expansive and rich as A Song of Ice and Fire.

J.K. Rowling actually wrote the core story and the ending of Harry Potter before the first book was published. It made everything fairly easy for her even when she got bogged down with parts of the fourth, fifth and seventh (especially the fourth) books. 

That's the problem. I don't think Martin knew exactly how he wanted the saga to end. It was all an idea or a fancy.

Because even gardeners know what they want their garden to look, be and smell like when they are finished planting...

 

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5 hours ago, MostlyMoody said:

I don't mean to discredit your feelings. Just find other interests and when the book comes out you will be pleasantly surprised. At the end of the day, whats the point of stewing in your own anger for years over some book.

To be honest, I meant my comment as a joke :D I actually do not really care about the books since years now. But it is still funny in the forums though :)

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11 hours ago, T and A said:

To be honest, I meant my comment as a joke :D I actually do not really care about the books since years now. But it is still funny in the forums though :)

Oh. I looked through your earlier posts in this thread, and I gotta say that's a long way to go for a joke, but kudos to you, ya got me.

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7 hours ago, MostlyMoody said:

Oh. I looked through your earlier posts in this thread, and I gotta say that's a long way to go for a joke, but kudos to you, ya got me.

LOL. No, not the previous Comments, just this one:

On 7/18/2018 at 2:20 PM, T and A said:

Thank you very much. A life-changing advice from an anonymus user is exactly what a man needs. I am very gratefull. 

But yeah, that would have been a long way for a joke :)

Again, I understand the readers who are mad (in all seriousness). I felt the same. But as time goes by, it changes. Trust me :). 

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On 7/17/2018 at 11:52 AM, Cas Stark said:

That's just kicking the can down the road, which is what he did when he split Feast and Dance, which is what , in my opinion, started him on the road to ruin.  He needs to solve whatever the problem is, not write more stuff that doesn't fix anything and then think about it tomorrow for 10 years.

Sorry If I didn't express my english well in my earlier posts ( its very difficult for me :) )..

I think very similar to you, by splitting TWOW, GRRM would be "kicking the can down the road", but as you said, and we all know, He have done it before, It might not be the solution to the "problem" but at least contributes in ending the books and solving partially the problem, my point is.. after several years of delay with TWOW.. Why not do it again?? I a pretty sure by now GRRM have enough content written and revised to split the book, publish it and continue writing to end of TWOW and start with ADOS.

IMHO, this book has a huge time length , many plots have to end, many characters have to die and all the main characters have to reunite in Westeros, the more I think about it, the more I believe he should have split the TWOW because is even longer than Feast and Dance together.

 

:)

 

 

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On ‎7‎/‎17‎/‎2018 at 11:52 AM, Cas Stark said:

That's just kicking the can down the road, which is what he did when he split Feast and Dance, which is what , in my opinion, started him on the road to ruin.  He needs to solve whatever the problem is, not write more stuff that doesn't fix anything and then think about it tomorrow for 10 years.

Why do you think it started him on the road to ruin?

Just curious.

Because he could've easily done this:

  1. focused on the adult and/or the new POV characters in Feast (i.e. Brienne, Cersei, Samwell, etc.)
  2. have those stories take place for a year (i.e. Cersei rules as Queen Regent for a year, Brienne searches the Riverlands and the Crownlands for a year, it takes at least six months for Samwell to get from Castle Black to Oldtown because life happens, etc.)
    • Jon, Dany and maybe Arya could possibly be cameos, seen through the eyes of Melisandre, Davos, Quentyn or Samwell
    • Sansa and Theon could maybe be hiding in plain sight as Robert Arryn's babysitter Alayne Stone and the Bolton manservant Reek, their true identities remaining a mystery until the final third of Feast
  3. and then in Dance, he can pick up exactly where he left off with the adults and the newbies and still get the time jump for the Stark kids, Theon, Dany, Jon and maybe even Tyrion that he coveted so much.
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5 minutes ago, Jabar of House Titan said:

Why do you think it started him on the road to ruin?

Just curious.

Because he could've easily done this:

  1. focused on the adult and/or the new POV characters in Feast (i.e. Brienne, Cersei, Samwell, etc.)
  2. have those stories take place for a year (i.e. Cersei rules as Queen Regent for a year, Brienne searches the Riverlands and the Crownlands for a year, it takes at least six months for Samwell to get from Castle Black to Oldtown because life happens, etc.)
    • Jon, Dany and maybe Arya could possibly be cameos, seen through the eyes of Melisandre, Davos, Quentyn or Samwell
    • Sansa and Theon could maybe be hiding in plain sight as Robert Arryn's babysitter Alayne Stone and the Bolton manservant Reek, their true identities remaining a mystery until the final third of Feast
  3. and then in Dance, he can pick up exactly where he left off with the adults and the newbies and still get the time jump for the Stark kids, Theon, Dany, Jon and maybe even Tyrion that he coveted so much.

He needed more than a year jump, he wanted a 5 year jump, and when he couldn't make that happen is where the road to ruin of adding new layers and povs that are there to mark time started.  His problem is that Feast and Dance didn't really accomplish much plot wise, and then added a whole new set of people and stories, so he actually compounded the problem, rather than solving anything.

And since he couldn't get any of it work, he basically gave up and that is why he did the crazy geographic split.  He just gave up and said, okay we'll publish something.  But that's me, I thought Feast was by far the weakest book of the series and that splitting the action was a tragic mistake.

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12 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

He NEEDED more than a year jump, he WANTED a 5 year jump, and when he COULDN'T make that happen is where the road to ruin of adding new layers and povs that are there to mark time started.

See what I did there.

What he wanted was not feasible and what he needed was something he didn't want. Where was his editor and why were they sitting on their hands?

But what makes you think that he needs more than a year time jump? I'm not opposed to the idea of a year and a half or two years but anything more than that? No. He could've easily told the stories of Cersei, Brienne, Stannis, Jaime and the first part of Tyrion's journey over a year's worth of time. Isn't Stannis waiting on a sellsword army anyways? Isn't Cersei's spectacularly fast, epic failure at ruling surprising even Varys? What did Brienne even do besides get yelled at by Randyll Tarly, fight Rorge and the Biter and get taken by the Brotherhood without Banners?

The stories that he added (Dorne, Free Cities, Iron Islands, Meereen, etc.) were stories that had he always planned on adding. So, even if we did get the 5 year time jump, we still would've gotten the new POVs and the different layers.

22 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

His problem is that Feast and Dance didn't really accomplish much plot wise, and then added a whole new set of people and stories, so he actually compounded the problem, rather than solving anything.

And since he couldn't get any of it work, he basically gave up and that is why he did the crazy geographic split.  He just gave up and said, okay we'll publish something.  But that's me, I thought Feast was by far the weakest book of the series and that splitting the action was a tragic mistake.

Actually, I disagree. Feast did actually accomplish a lot plot wise. Dance is the one that didn't do much. The only POV additions that I felt were superfluous were Quentyn and Arys. Arys' chapter easily could've been an Arianne chapter and Quentyn's story should have happened offscreen until he got to Meereen where his story would be told through the eyes of Daenerys and Barristan.

But yeah...

Dance, as popular as it is, is the problem

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If he had the 5 year gap then both Arya and Sansa are teenagers instead of children, so if he wants them to have any relationships, or take any leadership role, its much easier.  Same for Bran.  Other than allowing the Stark kids to grow up a bit, there was no reason that I can see, but he must have thought it important, since he says he wrote and rewrote until he found it unworkable.

I can't agree on Feast, literally almost nothing happens other than Cersei's arc, which actually progresses,  Brienne's last chapter and Jamie's last chapter.  But again that's me, I thought that adding Brienne, Arianne and the other Greyjoy POVS was a mistake.  We didn't need them, it adds nothing and they're not central to the story.  Same for Sam.  I thought that while grossly overwritten, that Dance at least moved some things forward, and resolved a few issues.

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5 hours ago, Jabar of House Titan said:

Actually, I disagree. Feast did actually accomplish a lot plot wise. Dance is the one that didn't do much.

 

5 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

I can't agree on Feast, literally almost nothing happens other than Cersei's arc, which actually progresses,  Brienne's last chapter and Jamie's last chapter.

 

Both books do manage to move things forward a little, but I guess it depends on whether you care or not about the plotline you are reading.

 

Cersi and Jaime move the most in AFfC as far as our "main" characters, but the Greyjoy clan (Asha, Victarion et al) do get a lot done. We just don't really care about Pyke at the moment, if at all. But that arc does leave us with an intriguing wildcard heading toward Slaver's Bay.


Brienne just goes for a useless jaunt around the countryside in order to reunite her with Catelyn. The poor part of this idea is that, as readers, we know it's a waste of time before she sets foot one out the door. She never even gets warm and has no idea what she is doing  in any case.


Arya and Sansa are just about in neutral plot wise, but we get some character development. A good thing for Sansa too, that girl's arc was about to bore me to death!


Sam is... traveling, with a plotline to be determined after we find out what all that muss was about in the prelude.


Areo... observes and only acts on orders. He serves to give us an ear in the Dornish court.


Anyone else is barely worth mentioning. There are plots and plans that fail. Plenty of people have pointed out the worthlessness of some POVs.

 


Tyrion is the worst part of ADwD for a couple of reasons. The first and foremost is his lack of consistent direction. He wanders laterally through the story getting nowhere, even moving backward for awhile, before looping around again and finally moving forward toward the end of the book. The other problem is the extreme elasticity of his narrative timeframe. During the chapters where his timeframe is really long (at times more than a month per chapter), the entire story has no choice but to orbit around him as the other timeframes are still in the standard a few minutes/a few hours/a few days mode. Since he isn't doing very much except being charmingly Tyrion, it really lags the pace down to a crawl.


The rest of the POVs, with the exceptions of Davos and Theon, are place holders that get a whole lot of nothing done or have open ended repercussions. And Davos' efforts are still up in the air at the end of the book. Events in ADwD don't even start rolling along until POVs from AFfC start jumping books. More happens in the last quarter of the book than happens in the first three.

 

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Yes, I disliked immensely, Tyrion and Dany's stories in Dance.  "Where do whores go"....yeah, whatever.  Repetitive, and over written.  I was a little more forgiving of Jon's POV, but still, there was a ton of fat that could have been cut there too.  Which is a shame.  A good editor could have whittled a couple hundred pages, maybe more, out of both books, if only he had not made the disastrous decision to split in the first place, there might have been a Feast/Dance as one book that also resolved more of the story.

I liked Vic's chapters, they were interesting, but I am not convinced they were necessary.  He could have been referred to in existing povs and then show up in Meereen, same for Quentyn...although his chapters were dull.

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