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Is GRRM As Complex As You Believe He Is?


bazookahead

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I would venture that is he just better at writing First-Person Limited POV across many characters than most readers are used to. Also, he refuses to do simple.  Most readers want to be spoon-fed simple mysteries or have simple dilemmas (will our hero choose the princess or the adventuress?). He does not do those.

ETA: 'Not simple' does not necessarily mean 'complex.'

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To himself, I don't think George is complex. Only to us, it seems like it.

The simplest way to put it: he knows where he wants to go with the story, and we don't.

Like the OP said, he writes backwards.

And to make his work different than others, he hides little Easter Eggs here & there to foreshadow the future ... even foreshadow major plot points in the final book. The goal of these Easter Eggs is to make his readers re-read the books once ASOIAF is finally done. Once we discover these Easter Eggs here & there, we can truly appreciate how much heart GRRM has put in each sentence by sentence.

I bet all the HBO scripts that GRRM wrote personally has Easter Eggs for the ASOIAF books too.

 

There was an conversation between GRRM and Stephen King.

  • Stephen King writes at a rate of 6 pages a day
  • GRRM writes sentence by sentence

 

Examples:

Quote

"What does [Lady Stoneheart] want of me?"

"She wants her son alive, or the men who killed him dead," said the big man. "She wants to feed the crows, like they did at the Red Wedding. Freys and Boltons, aye. We'll give her those, as many as she likes. All she asks from you is Jaime Lannister."

Brienne VIII AFFC

In context of the moment, they are talking about Robb.
But what if this is where GRRM hides an Easter Egg where LSH tells Brienne to go rescue Bran or Rickon in later books?

Quote

"I am looking for my sister. She's highborn, only three-and-ten, a pretty maid with blue eyes and auburn hair. You may have seen her traveling with a man. A knight, perhaps a fool. There's gold for the man who helps me find her."

Brienne II AFFC

In context of the moment, they are talking about Sansa.
But what if the 'maid with blue eyes & auburn hair' = Bran; three = Bran, Brienne & Jaime (sorry Pod); ten = Bran's age; knight/fool/gold = Jaime?
What if this foreshadows a journey between Brienne, Bran & Jaime in later books?

Trying to write a current story in a current book AND hiding Easter Eggs for future books is tough work. Definitely can't do 6 pages a day.

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I think that an awful lot of posters make the series out to be a lot more complicated than it actually is.   And it is already one of the most complex stories that I have ever read.  It has a ridiculous number of moving parts.

But not every word, description, event, etc. has a greater significance.  And not every character has a secret backstory, or indeed any backstory at all.  While it might be useful for an author to have some idea what his character has been up to before he is introduced, it is hardly necessary, and doesn't need to be put in print in any event.

In the absence of a reason to believe a complicated explanation for something, I am generally inclined to simple explanations.  Of course, George is great at giving us such reasons, but that is not always the case.  For example, I am inclined to believe that Jaqen is in the black cells because George put him there, without necessarily thinking about why he was there, specifically.

I am also inclined to think that one of the reasons that the new book is taking so long is that he has to be more careful about closing off holes and unexplained events, so readers don't keep going down blind alleys in search of explanations that don't exist.

  

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14 hours ago, Nevets said:

I think that an awful lot of posters make the series out to be a lot more complicated than it actually is. 

Read below.

On 5/9/2019 at 4:25 AM, The Map Guy said:

And to make his work different than others, he hides little Easter Eggs here & there to foreshadow the future ... even foreshadow major plot points in the final book.

This scene is a foreshadowing of who is going to become riders of Drogon, Rhaegel and Viseryon:

"She heard a crack, the sound of shattering stone. The platform of wood and brush and grass began to shift and collapse in upon itself. Bits of burning wood slid down at her, and Dany was showered with ash and cinders. And something else came crashing down, bouncing and rolling, to land at her feet; a chunk of curved rock, pale and veined with gold, broken and smoking. The roaring filled the world, yet dimly through the firefall Dany heard women shriek and children cry out in wonder.

Only death can pay for life.

And there came a second crack, loud and sharp as thunder, and the smoke stirred and whirled around her and the pyre shifted, the logs exploding as the fire touched their secret hearts. She heard the screams of frightened horses, and the voices of the Dothraki raised in shouts of fear and terror, and Ser Jorah calling her name and cursing. No, she wanted to shout to him, no, my good knight, do not fear for me. The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons, don't you see? Don't you SEE? With a belch of flame and smoke that reached thirty feet into the sky, the pyre collapsed and came down around her. Unafraid, Dany stepped forward into the firestorm, calling to her children.

The third crack was as loud and sharp as the breaking of the world."

The dragon that will be awakened from stone, the great winged beast from the third vision in the slayer of lies - Jon Snow, Viseryon's rider.

When Dosh Khaleen were predicting birth of the Stallion that mounts the world, they said that they hear thunder of his hooves. Rhaego - Rhaegel.

And the breaking of the world is obvious - Dany is the first even khaleese in her own right, not just wife of Khal, and she gave freedoom to thousands slaves, by this act breaking existing world order. Dany - Drogon.

So GRRM is so complex, that he's even hiding major key points of the plot, in SOUND EFFECTS! ^_^

 

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@Megorova Since you posted this, I'll put up the whole thing:
 

Quote

She heard a crack, the sound of shattering stone. The platform of wood and brush and grass began to shift and collapse in upon itself. Bits of burning wood slid down at her, and Dany was showered with ash and cinders. And something else came crashing down, bouncing and rolling, to land at her feet; a chunk of curved rock, pale and veined with gold, broken and smoking. The roaring filled the world, yet dimly through the firefall Dany heard women shriek and children cry out in wonder.

Only death can pay for life.

And there came a second crack, loud and sharp as thunder, and the smoke stirred and whirled around her and the pyre shifted, the logs exploding as the fire touched their secret hearts. She heard the screams of frightened horses, and the voices of the Dothraki raised in shouts of fear and terror, and Ser Jorah calling her name and cursing. No, she wanted to shout to him, no, my good knight, do not fear for me. The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons, don't you see? Don't you SEE? With a belch of flame and smoke that reached thirty feet into the sky, the pyre collapsed and came down around her. Unafraid, Dany stepped forward into the firestorm, calling to her children.

The third crack was as loud and sharp as the breaking of the world.

When the fire died at last and the ground became cool enough to walk upon, Ser Jorah Mormont found her amidst the ashes, surrounded by blackened logs and bits of glowing ember and the burnt bones of man and woman and stallion. She was naked, covered with soot, her clothes turned to ash, her beautiful hair all crisped away … yet she was unhurt.

The cream-and-gold dragon was suckling at her left breast, the green-and-bronze at the right. Her arms cradled them close. The black-and-scarlet beast was draped across her shoulders, its long sinuous neck coiled under her chin. When it saw Jorah, it raised its head and looked at him with eyes as red as coals.

Wordless, the knight fell to his knees. The men of her khas came up behind him. Jhogo was the first to lay his arakh at her feet. "Blood of my blood," he murmured, pushing his face to the smoking earth. "Blood of my blood," she heard Aggo echo. "Blood of my blood," Rakharo shouted.

And after them came her handmaids, and then the others, all the Dothraki, men and women and children, and Dany had only to look at their eyes to know that they were hers now, today and tomorrow and forever, hers as they had never been Drogo's.
As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and added their voices to the call, translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.

Daenerys X AGOT

Awesome scene, but Easter Eggs Easter Eggs Easter Eggs!

The last sentence of A Game of Thrones - A Song of Ice & Fire ... "the night came alive with the music of dragons" ... Easter Egg for ADOS!

 

3 hours ago, Megorova said:

And the breaking of the world is obvious - Dany is the first even khaleese in her own right, not just wife of Khal, and she gave freedoom to thousands slaves, by this act breaking existing world order. Dany - Drogon.

Agreed

3 hours ago, Megorova said:

The dragon that will be awakened from stone, the great winged beast from the third vision in the slayer of lies - Jon Snow, Viseryon's rider.

To each his/her own.

I think Jon Snow will ride a dragon, but it won't be his own ... he would just be hitch-hiking.
"The sound of shattering stone" can mean the "sound of shattering ice"
"The roaring filled the world, yet dimly through the firefall Dany heard women shriek and children cry out in wonder" could be Jaime, Brienne & Bran

 

3 hours ago, Megorova said:

When Dosh Khaleen were predicting birth of the Stallion that mounts the world, they said that they hear thunder of his hooves. Rhaego - Rhaegel.

To each his/her own again.

"DON'T YOU SEE" can mean RhaegaL has a blind rider, with Rhaegal mounting the world

 

17 hours ago, Nevets said:

But not every word, description, event, etc. has a greater significance.  And not every character has a secret backstory, or indeed any backstory at all.  While it might be useful for an author to have some idea what his character has been up to before he is introduced, it is hardly necessary, and doesn't need to be put in print in any event.

Agreed ... but some moments do have a higher meaning or double meaning

 

Quote

So GRRM is so complex, that he's even hiding major key points of the plot, in SOUND EFFECTS! ^_^ - Megorova

ABSOLUTELY AGREED! :cheers:

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Thank you for those that responded. That is why I value this site so much. I do appreciate the time you took to answer my question. It will be very interesting to see what flowers "the gardener" meticulously seeded versus the flowers that he had already dug holes for in his soil and we'll never know their origin....

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In the end, I'm not sure it matters- the hours of enjoyment I have had reading the theories of others and polishing up my own bits of tinfoil are real even if I and the others are simply projecting a depth that isn't really there onto a less elaborately imagined Song. We've seen that GRRM is capable of a great deal of interweaving in this and other works, IMHO, so the question of how much of this is intentional and how much a kind of literary pointillism is interesting but I don't let it ruin my fun.

To quote from another favorite series of mine:

Quote

“Joy is in the ears that hear, not in the mouth that speaks. The world has few stories glad in themselves..."

Stephen R. Donaldson

 

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I think GRRM has complex themes that seem simple. For example - what is a knight? We see this play out with Sandor and Gregor, Brienne, Dunk, Jaime and his thoughts on the Smiling Knight and Arthur Dayne, Barristan, Arys Oakheart etc. The idea is simple - ideals rarely live up to the reality. But he executes this beautifully weaving it into so many threads and in so many ways that you can't avoid it, yet you rarely feel hit over the head with it. The closest he comes to being completely blunt with it is Jaime reflecting on his past and the path he ended up taking. It is a beautiful moment of self-reflection that is timed perfectly and is completely in character.  The broken man speech is an overt recitation of a theme he has been building throughout the books the whole time.

He does have some tricks up his sleeve and fun reveals, but those are secondary to the themes the characters reveal to us in their inner thoughts. So no, I don't believe that Jaquen in the black cells is part of a larger scheme. He just needed him to be there for Arya (and beyond) and it's ok for it to be just that.

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The story can be as simple as a princess in exile who found a worthy cause.  Across the sea, the lords of a medieval kingdom are failing the people because they are more interested in advancing their own families instead of bettering the lives of their small folk.  Those who want to dig into what drives the human heart to do idiotic things will find complexity.

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The prospect of a final showdown between Fire and Ice could get simple real quick.    For that reason I don't like the idea of ice army vs fire army in the finale.  It'd undercut the complexity that's been built up.  The realworldishness would suffer.

Here's an example of the dangers of duality.  It examines Light and Dark in place of fire and ice, but the problems for the writer are the same:

 

 

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