How do you figure Martin plots so well when he’s a gardener?

[Mwm]

I’m hesitant to say I’ve seen any better than him at it; and the freaking man doesn’t outline!

Is reading large amounts of historical fiction considered a super drug at inducing such?

[chrisdaw]

He knows the character arcs. So I would guess this. He sits and writes, and if the characters aren't getting organically to where the arc needs them he stops and realigns circumstances that bring the character to different decisions, and back on their arc.

He knows well enough the future of a character as minor as Hodor but probably never wrote it down until he had to pass it on. It may as well be an outline, just in his head. And if he's got Hodor sorted, the question becomes more who and what doesn't he have lined up rather than who/what he does.

[Lollygag]

http://time.com/3994289/george-rr-martin-game-of-thrones-song-of-fire-and-ice-ending/

 

George R.R. Martin Says He Doesn't Know the Ending of A Song of Ice and Fire Yet

 

“I haven’t written the ending yet,” he said. “I’ve said before that the tone of the ending that I’m going for is bittersweet. I mean, it’s no secret that Tolkien has been a huge influence on me, and I love the way he ended Lord of the Rings. It ends with a victory, but it’s a bittersweet victory…All I can say is that’s the kind of tone I will be aiming for. Whether I achieve if or not, that will be up to people like you and my readers to judge.”

[Mwm]

1 hour ago, Lollygag said:

http://time.com/3994289/george-rr-martin-game-of-thrones-song-of-fire-and-ice-ending/

 

George R.R. Martin Says He Doesn't Know the Ending of A Song of Ice and Fire Yet

 

“I haven’t written the ending yet,” he said. “I’ve said before that the tone of the ending that I’m going for is bittersweet. I mean, it’s no secret that Tolkien has been a huge influence on me, and I love the way he ended Lord of the Rings. It ends with a victory, but it’s a bittersweet victory…All I can say is that’s the kind of tone I will be aiming for. Whether I achieve if or not, that will be up to people like you and my readers to judge.”

Not sure what your point is in correlation.

I didn’t mean plot as in outline...

[Lollygag]

1 hour ago, Mwm said:

Not sure what your point is in correlation.

I didn’t mean plot as in outline...

 

I know what you mean by plot / outline, or at least I think I do. But I was really providing a counter point.

If you take a closer look, you'll notice a contradiction between the post above mine's (especially the signature content) and the Time article with GRRM's own words. There are differing views on just how planned out the series really is on this forum. Some still swear by that outline from 25 years ago when there were only 3 books planned . As such, you'll draw very different speculations about your question. I prefer going with GRRM's own words and the more recent, the better, though as he's contradicted himself, that in itself is uncertain.

Basically, we can speculate, but we should be careful to not put words into the author's mouth.

 

[Mwm]

3 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

 

I know what you mean by plot / outline, or at least I think I do. But I was really providing a counter point.

If you take a closer look, you'll notice a contradiction between the post above mine's (especially the signature content) and the Time article with GRRM's own words. There are differing views on just how planned out the series really is on this forum. Some still swear by that outline from 25 years ago when there were only 3 books planned . As such, you'll draw very different speculations about your question. I prefer going with GRRM's own words and the more recent, the better, though as he's contradicted himself, that in itself is uncertain.

Basically, we can speculate, but we should be careful to not put words into the author's mouth.

 

I was referring to the complex breadth and interweaving tapestry of the current five books, not necessarily on what comes next. 

Because i know that he doesn’t plan ahead I was wondering how he managed to have done so on this scale already barring such.

[Trigger Warning]

I'd say the garden's getting out of control more than anything if I'm honest. 

[Lollygag]

5 minutes ago, Mwm said:

I was referring to the complex breadth and interweaving tapestry of the current five books, not necessarily on what comes next. 

Because i know that he doesn’t plan ahead I was wondering how he managed to have done so on this scale already barring such.

This is good to clarify. There are those who disagree and believe that the ending has already been determined and they will have a very different view than those who believe what GRRM says in this article in that the ending is unknown. Just sayin' this should be kept in mind when reading speculation on this.

 I've heard that ADWD was rushed to print ahead of the first season of GoT. It felt like that book was written by three different authors and the editing was incomplete. Some of the chapters were truly awful and awkward. I had to get whiskey and speed read through them like ripping a band aid off quickly. Some of the chapters were middling. Some like the Theon chapters were among the best writing in the entire series for me. So with that in mind, my impression is that chapters are written and rewritten with layers and layers added to them which is what creates the interweaving in the first 5 books and that the layering/fleshing out process is quite intensive. The poor chapters looked skeletal while the Theon chapters looked fully-fleshed. Just my impression though.

 

[Mwm]

16 minutes ago, Trigger Warning said:

I'd say the garden's getting out of control more than anything if I'm honest. 

More like fangorn forest these days, there’s the truth of it.

[Mwm]

16 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

This is good to clarify. There are those who disagree and believe that the ending has already been determined and they will have a very different view than those who believe what GRRM says in this article in that the ending is unknown. Just sayin' this should be kept in mind when reading speculation on this.

 I've heard that ADWD was rushed to print ahead of the first season of GoT. It felt like that book was written by three different authors and the editing was incomplete. Some of the chapters were truly awful and awkward. I had to get whiskey and speed read through them like ripping a band aid off quickly. Some of the chapters were middling. Some like the Theon chapters were among the best writing in the entire series for me. So with that in mind, my impression is that chapters are written and rewritten with layers and layers added to them which is what creates the interweaving in the first 5 books and that the layering/fleshing out process is quite intensive. The poor chapters looked skeletal while the Theon chapters looked fully-fleshed. Just my impression though.

 

These are good points...

[Walda]

He clearly does outline. He had to outline to pitch. Remember the October 1993 three page outline that Waterstones plastered on the walls of their front lobby, much to his distress?

Quote

I find that if I know exactly where a book is going, I lose all interest in writing it.  I do however have some strong notions of the overall structure of the story I'm telling, and the eventual fate of many of the principle characters in the drama.

According to this letter, he had written the first thirteen chapters of Game of Thrones at the time, and he had planned for his trilogy to have three major plotlines

- The conflict between the Lannisters and the Starks for the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms (The main plotline of the first book, A Game of Thrones)

- The larger battle of the Dothraki invasion of the Seven Kingdoms by Danerys Targaryen and her Dragons (The main plotline of the second book, A Dance of Dragons)

- The largest battle of the Others, with their legions of unborn and neverborn, riding down on the winds of winter to destroy every living thing in the Seven Kingdoms (The main plotline of the third and final book, The Winds of Winter)

Note that, so far, he has only really developed the 'Game of Thrones' theme. Note too, he knew in 1993 that he would be releasing a book with the title 'The Winds of Winter'. He had figured out the world, the plot, and the characters in considerable detail by then.

He knew that Ned would get the chop. He intended Tyrion, Daenerys, Arya, Bran, and Jon Snow to survive to the last volume.

There were a number of things in that outline that didn't happen, or didn't happen in quite the same way: Sansa was going to marry Joffrey and bear his son, and choose her husband over her birth family.

Robb was going to die in battle, against Jaime and Tyrion combined, but he was going to maim Joffrey before he bowed out.

Uncle Benjen was going to be Lord Commander of the Night's Watch.

Jaime would become King on the Iron Throne by murdering everyone in the line of succession between Joffrey and himself, blaming Tyrion for his crimes.

Tyrion would go over to Catelyn's side and make Jon Snow an enemy.

Catelyn, Bran and Arya would seek shelter at the wall when Winterfell was sacked, but Jon would stay true to his Night's Watch vows and take no part, driving them beyond the Wall, into the arms of Mance Raydar. Bran would resent and Arya would forgive Jon for being a bastard, and the tormented passionate forbidden love between Arya and Jon would be a problem for both of them until the end of the last book when Jon's parents turn out to be [redacted].

The really remarkable thing is how much of this outline has made it into the books. It seems the books so far were  90% built by 1993. The massy foundations dug and set, the keystones in place, before he was a third of the way through writing the first book. It is a bit frightening looking at this outline again, because it reminds me that more than half of what this series is about hasn't actually happened yet. Only two books to go - how is he going to fit that into only two books?

Jane Johnson, a UK editor that read those thirteen chapters in 1993 recalls her reaction on reading them:

Quote

The writing was sharp and witty and immediate; the range of characters – all full of life – was breathtaking, the world-building impressive, with all the dirty, gritty details that made you feel you were reading well-researched historical fiction rather than a made-up fantasy world. But most of all was that intoxicating tangle of sex and power.

When he says he is a gardener, he means, he won't vacate the property for publication until the ivy has grown just as high on the edifice as he intended.  

Effort is relative. What one person regards as a hard slog is loafing to another. What one person thinks is planning to the nth degree is barely contained chaos to another.  GRRM is an experienced writer. He has written large novels before, he has written collaboratively, he has written for television, which is a very structured kind of writing, with very tight deadlines, as well as collaborative. He likes to be given time, he likes the luxury of writing more than he needs, and editing and rewriting a lot.  But he isn't a freshman trying to push out a 5000 word essay on a topic he has mastered only by reading all the books in the library he could find on the topic. It takes more than just reading to develop the craft like he has. Bear in mind that when he said he didn't plan much, he was comparing himself to Tolkien!

Looking at it, I think the difference between GRRM 'tending the seed' he planted, and Tolkien 'structuring the edifice' he built is mostly metaphorical. They sought out a publisher at different times in the writing process, but they both put a tremendous amount of their time into the process of consciously building worlds, characters and plots, and working out how they are going to tell the tale. Then writing and rewriting it.

GRRM went to the publishers when his world was a 'raft of ice' in comparison to Tolkien's full-formed 'iceberg'. That is to say, he went to the publisher with 13 chapters of the first book done, then he went to Hollywood with three of the then five books written.  Tolkien finished the entire book and all the rewrites before he submitted it for publication, and was adamant that Disney would not get Lord of the Rings while he had control of the copyright.

GRRM had no intention of going ten years with no new income from his writing to support him while he wrote the novel, or preceding it with thirty years of world-building. But while his background work on pitching were flimsy compared to Tolkein's efforts, he had put in a solid two years before offering up those thirteen chapters. Now, twenty-eight years after he began,  the Dothraki language has considerably more than the twenty-seven words it began with, and his world could more fairly be compared to a slightly smaller iceberg than Tolkeins.

I don't much like his gardener analogy myself. In the first place, it makes me think GRRM doesn't do much gardening, that he thinks gardens grow of their own accord. I think when he started using it he was making a virtue out of his necessity, and that a certain whiny undertone of fatalistic exceptionalism has crept in since.

Publishers like authors who can work to strict deadlines, authors they can depend on to punch out another best-seller in the same style as the last one by the end of June each year. Authors that will write on the plane on their way to the con, in an inexpensive hotel suite after hours of signing their arm off, as they work the circuit spruiking the last book. When a writer works on that treadmill, they don't have time to play around with alternatives to the outline they submitted. Very often, their books become formulaic, but their publishers like that because having a known quantity of a known quality available at a certain season is the key to building a brand. The market likes to know that John Grisham's new book is a legal thriller, Steven King's is a horror,  Jonathan Franzen's is a satire, and they are all due out at the end of October this year. 

Being a 'gardener' is the privilege of the less popular author, that won't be getting any shelf space or press-paper anywhere in the last half of the year, and also of the non-deadlined author who has the whole world as his bitch and can write what he wants, when he wants, if he wants.

When GRRM started A Game of Thrones, he was clearly in the former category. After four years hard work he got one of those tread-mill contracts for a trilogy. He had to get the books out ideally within a year, if not, two. If he didn't meet the deadlines, he would have to pay a penalty out of his advance.  When GRRM wrote Storm of Swords, he overshot the deadline by only a few weeks, and that would have hurt - his first book on the best-seller list, and some of his best work, sold at a discount to the heartless money-machine monsters because he was late by mere tens of weeks.  Luckily for him, though,  Storm of Swords was the last on that contract and it was his second book on the series on the best seller list, just as Lord of the Rings became a solid box office hit. He leveraged that to set himself up to write on his own terms for the rest of his life. 

He is really pretty generous with his time and his work for his publishers, considering he could retire right now if he wanted to. GRRM attends more cons than he has to, he has blogged steadily for over a dozen years, walks the red carpet for the Emmys. The publishers can't complain about his 'engagement'. He has written whole episodes of the TV series and tossed off thousands of new words in his 'fake histories' when he could have just left it to his publishers to produce The Wit and Wisdom of Hodor for the Christmas stocking-stuffers.

But the days when he was on the leash and had to write Dunk and Egg novellas to compensate for the deadline penalties, while touring bookstores and  doing interviews for whomever his editors have lined up - those days are long gone. 

The reason his use of the gardener-author metaphor grates on me now is that it implies that the 'gardener' author doesn't have a lot of control over the work - the seed will only grow to be a certain type of plant, at a certain season, at a certain rate, all he can do is give it the best chance. The architect-author represents all those other authors that meet their deadlines and get their work done. They have total control over their materials and stories. Any troubles they have building a plot indicate they are incompetent architects, drafting designs that cannot withstand gravity when rendered in three dimensions. Unlike the gardeners, they have total control over what they do. And what they do is artifice, while what gardeners do is natural and organic.

It is probably a helpful metaphor to apply to your own writing, if you have to write something. The 'plant the seed and watch it grow' metaphor is a good one for trusting the abundance of one's creativity,  and get those words on the page. It prevents you making writing feel like a big deal in your head. It makes it seem easy, effortless, flowing, as long as you keep doing a little bit every day to keep the weeds at bay and the seed growing. Also it is a reminder that building the world, considering the character, thinking through alternative plot scenarios, are not just procrastination. These are the compost, the water, the loam that nourishes the seed. 

What isn't helpful is when he comes out with a heap of gardener metaphors like he did in April 2015 when he announced that he was thinking of taking the books in a whole new direction to the show

Quote

It’s a great twist. It’s easy to do things that are shocking or unexpected, but they have to grow out of characters. They have to grow out of situations. Otherwise, it’s just being shocking for being shocking. But this is something that seems very organic and natural, and I could see how it would happen. And with the various three, four characters involved… it all makes sense. But it’s nothing I’ve ever thought of before. And it’s nothing they can do in the show, because the show has already—on this particular character—made a couple decisions that will preclude it, where in my case I have not made those decisions.

 I'm clinging to the hope that this 'twist' is a game changer, that it means whatever he had outlined or mentioned when he pitched the show is going to be drastically different from the book story. Now the lines of the final script have all been said (except for the ones the actors will have to come back and redo in post-production) GRRM is under no legal or moral obligation to make the book story end in the same place as the show. I'm hoping that is what his 'huge twist' means.  

One huge 'architect'-like advantage GRRM has when it comes to plotting - he was a chess master. If you treat a plot like a chess game, where the nature of the character determines their possible moves, it is possible to systematically consider thousands of different but credible scenarios that will ultimately get you a win. Of course it is harder when you are mid-way through the game, and it takes a lot of mental effort to consider all the pieces and their interactions. But the show has taken quite a few pieces off that board that are still in play in the books, and had fewer pieces on a smaller board to begin with.

Aw, but who knows. He is pretty shameless when it comes to trolling his would-be readers. The twist could be something simple like Mance or Stannis taking on some of the role that Jon did in the show. Or it could be a great twist, but not a great game-changer, like Robb dying at a wedding instead of on a battlefield. And GRRM can blow pretty hard when he wants to - like when he claims that passing on a couple of cons that he wasn't getting paid to go to was 'in order to get Winds finished' in 2015. And using this twist thing several times in the same year to give us the impression he was on the verge of finishing Winds, when clearly he was on the verge of delaying Winds until season eight of the TV series, or grooming his market for a Christmas bait and switch (Winds of Winter being the bait, Fire and Blood being the switch). In 2017 he was full of how he had given up his TV writing and Wildcards editing projects to work on Winds. Until it was time to reveal news of his exciting new Wildcard projects and his five exciting prequels, that won't be taking up any of his time, until he is fetching for an excuse for the delay in Winds, when he will find they took up more of his time than he anticipated.

He warned us  a couple of months ago that he was going to cut back on the blogging, but last I saw he was blogging still, about all the new WildCards and TV Prequels he is too busy juggling now, and wistfully about all the sequels and follow-ups for other projects that other people could do (and in fact did do) perfectly well without him, that he wished he could have found time to work on. Except he couldn't (except just one quick story and a reprint)  because he still has to keep working on Winds. Seriously resentful whiny tone about having to write his master work.

I think that is a good thing, because good writing usually isn't as easy as just pruning back a few wilful fronds to encourage another bough of rich ripe fruit to set of its own accord. Even gardening really isn't that easy ( especially in high, dry Santa Fe). If he feels he is being punished, he is probably putting quality effort into his master work.

The other hopeful sign this month is that he mentioned in particular that one of the prequels is about the Long Night, that he has been engaged in long discussions and emails  fleshing out what really happened in the Dawn Age and/or the Age of Heroes. It isn't the sort of thing one dashes off in a chipper mood. If he has any empathy for his characters it should be a bit depressing.

And it is good to know he has recently put some deep thought into the who, what, why and how of the Others who are fated to sweep down on the Winds of Winter.  When he was doing Clash and Storm he was fleshing out the story of Dunk and Egg a century earlier. Now he is fleshing out the backstory of the Dawn age, which is not only exactly where he needs to go to complete Winds, it also indicates that, as far as exploring backstory goes, he has gone about as far as he can go.

Collaborating with other writers on works set in the Dawn age,  Andal invasion, time of Aegon the Conqueror, and the Dance of Dragons, seems like a smart move too ... all these things are not exactly outlining, but are useful to have ready to refer to when he comes to doing the re-writing, and give him a guide when he is wondering how a character has been shaped, what they would naturally say or do in their circumstances. And gives him an extra 'expert' in that area of interest, to act as a pair of ears or eyes, another brain to ask questions and draw conclusions about what must have happened then. The other persons stories can always be handwaved as a mistellings if they don't fit his story. They won't be canon by the time the movie gets to the screen, anyway.

Hopefully all his sulky wishes about dashing off and doing some TV writing himself or of all those editing projects he wants to do but can't, are indications that he isn't spending much time on easy side projects, and is instead doing a major and quite brilliant and unexpected restructure of Winds of Winter. Ars longa vita brevis, after all. 

TL;DR GRRM does a lot of outlining and re-writing. As well as a lot of reading and thinking through character moves and consequences. The 'Gardener' analogy is just an analogy. His brilliant plotting isn't effortless. It takes him years to do.

[Lollygag]

I have to say that I’ve always been very comfortable with GRRM describing himself as a gardener. I hated, hated, hated when teachers forced outlines for term papers and projects. I’ll say again, I hated it.

I start writing with ideas in my head pulled from things I’ve read, from both exploratory and targeted research, to flights of fancy and interests, but it isn't until I'm well along in the process of actually writing that any shape begins to take place.  A lot times I don’t know my theme until I'm well along in writing. That’s just how I work and it works for me, as my teachers were almost always very happy with the results.

Any outline generated before the actual writing begins is a waste of my time: any final result will inevitably deviate wildly and sometimes my forced pre-writing generated outlines were unrecognizable from the final result. I always have some idea of what I might do, but hell if I know just where in any outline anything would land or what would be structured around it. So outlines required as a part of a project before any substantial writing began were a combination of bs consisting of random stuff I had in my head to which I had very drastic degrees of commitment and interest along with crap to fill out any empty spaces so I wasn’t penalized.

Any strict outlines come at least mid-way through the writing and they served the purpose of imposing order and structure on what I had already created and to bring it into completion in a form that someone could actually follow and understand.

I don't really have a clue as to how GRRM writes, but when he says he's a gardener, that does make sense to some people. Sorry if this comes off as angry. I just bloody hate preliminary outlines.

[Lord Varys]

He constantly rewrites things. That's why everything looks as well planned as it does. But it isn't. It never was. The man starts with a less complex story and then, in the middle of the writing process he comes up with a better, more interesting idea, and then he goes back and rewrites the earlier chapters. And so on and so forth.

And it shows. I mean, in light of what we know now AGoT could need a good rewrite - not all that much in regards to plot lines, but in regards to world-building elements and background details.

Ned should think about his mother Lyarra Stark, when he visits Lord Rickard and the others in the crypts.

The idea that George knows character arcs doesn't seem to be the case. He knows he where he wants to go, but whether he ends up feeling the plants in his garden will suffer that design at this point is by no means clear. If the structure of the garden doesn't allow George to write the story he originally wanted to write he won't write that story.

That's why he abandoned the five-year-gap.

If you know character arcs and outcomes you basically have an outline. A very rough outline perhaps, but still an outline. And that's not the gardening approach. That's just writing along and looking where the story takes you, not taking the story where you want it to go.

[kissdbyfire]

@Walda, I think the whole "Martin doesn't do outlines" is not meant to be taken literally. I mean, he obviously does, or did, since we've all seen it. But he has said that that outline was him "making shit up" because his publishers (or whoever) were kind of demanding an outline. Remember, that outline is roughly from the time when the Bible got its first draft!  The story we are reading has clearly evolved very, very differently. 

Here's what he said on the subject a couple of yrs ago:

2. He then said that he is not good with writing outlines, making book deadlines, and that often in outlines he was "making shit up", and "characters changed along the way". Side note: I know he said other things in past interviews, so interpret this as you will. * “quoted” words are his words exactly.

[Lord Varys]

George might certainly make notes and stuff, writing down ideas (if that's how he works, he could also juggle things in his head and forget, misremember and change them without ever putting them to paper or screen), but it seems he really doesn't write the kind of things we would call proper outlines - which, by and far, are basically plans for an entire novel or even a series of novels, setting down the skeleton and a lot of flesh of the story that's supposed to be written.

Authors working with such outlines also tweak things here and there while they write, but if they stick to the outline the story doesn't change all that much.

George has gone on record that he doesn't like to know where his own stories go, he doesn't like wasting time and energy mapping out stuff in detail and having to go back and write all that out. For him that seems to be somewhat mechanical. He likes to work directly with the story he is writing, one word, page, chapter at a time.

But if you work that way, you simply do not have a proper outline.

I mean, we all can reasonably guess at what the story is about and where it is going in its very broad strokes. But we all have no clue what's going to happen to the main characters, and neither does George. Or rather: he doesn't know it with the same security as he would know it if he had already written and finished the series. Because he doesn't know how things do change on the way.

I don't doubt that there are arcs and plot elements that will remain - more or less - the same as George originally imagined them. But, quite frankly, I don't think those are all that many. The very fact that there was no five-year-gap (and prior to that no considerable passage of time during the first three books) might have made that impossible. Not to mention the introduction of many additional characters.

[Corvo the Crow]

Because his hands are Tyrell?

[The Sleeper]

He has had practice with the wild cards series. The greatest part of his job there is to turn the various stories into a single narrative.

Whether he does it in advance or he makes it up as he goes along is of less interest than the result. 

[Cas Stark]

I don't think he actually 'plots so well' anymore.  He seems to have lost or forgotten several flowers in his garden and has mistaken some weeds for flowers.  The plotting of the last two books can be graciously described as 'weak' a harsher critic might say atrocious.  And, given the delay of Winds, it seems a fairly safe conclusion that he continues to have trouble with the plot and the story.  What changed between Storm of Swords and Feast, I don't know, part of it is the loss of the 5 year gap, but surely there must be more to it than that, because if he had intended to simply write the story to fill the gap, rather than somehow accelerating things so the end ends when the characters are younger, then the story will take 8-10 books to complete.  

[Tagganaro]

On 6/23/2018 at 8:06 PM, Lord Varys said:

George might certainly make notes and stuff, writing down ideas (if that's how he works, he could also juggle things in his head and forget, misremember and change them without ever putting them to paper or screen), but it seems he really doesn't write the kind of things we would call proper outlines - which, by and far, are basically plans for an entire novel or even a series of novels, setting down the skeleton and a lot of flesh of the story that's supposed to be written.

Authors working with such outlines also tweak things here and there while they write, but if they stick to the outline the story doesn't change all that much.

George has gone on record that he doesn't like to know where his own stories go, he doesn't like wasting time and energy mapping out stuff in detail and having to go back and write all that out. For him that seems to be somewhat mechanical. He likes to work directly with the story he is writing, one word, page, chapter at a time.

But if you work that way, you simply do not have a proper outline.

I mean, we all can reasonably guess at what the story is about and where it is going in its very broad strokes. But we all have no clue what's going to happen to the main characters, and neither does George. Or rather: he doesn't know it with the same security as he would know it if he had already written and finished the series. Because he doesn't know how things do change on the way.

I don't doubt that there are arcs and plot elements that will remain - more or less - the same as George originally imagined them. But, quite frankly, I don't think those are all that many. The very fact that there was no five-year-gap (and prior to that no considerable passage of time during the first three books) might have made that impossible. Not to mention the introduction of many additional characters.

Pretty much this.  AFFC and ADWD don't happen the way they do if there is a proper outline.  You really get the sense of an author who is experimenting and adding plots and characters on the fly in those books.  You can also see how drastically the story and its characters have changed since AGOT.

[Lost Melnibonean]

On 6/23/2018 at 12:58 AM, Lollygag said:

I know what you mean by plot / outline, or at least I think I do. But I was really providing a counter point.

If you take a closer look, you'll notice a contradiction between the post above mine's (especially the signature content) and the Time article with GRRM's own words. There are differing views on just how planned out the series really is on this forum. Some still swear by that outline from 25 years ago when there were only 3 books planned . As such, you'll draw very different speculations about your question. I prefer going with GRRM's own words and the more recent, the better, though as he's contradicted himself, that in itself is uncertain.

Basically, we can speculate, but we should be careful to not put words into the author's mouth.

I suspect one reason for some of the contradictions is tha he's been writing this thing for more than 25 years. I am not the same man I was 25 years ago. I doubt the George is either.