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Do we think George passed 1500 manuscript pages?


Quaithe from Asshai

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4 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

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I'd argue characters like Areo Hotah, Jon Con, Mel, Aeron Grejoy and so on, have few chapters, because they're plot driven POV's and not character driven ones. I mean you're right Davos was this way in ACoK's, but he evolved out of it, however the former characters I've mentioned have not and I'm not sure if they will; like Quentyn Martell. I mean heck their chapters don't even have their proper names, they're just given generic titles like "The Watcher" or "The Lost Lord".

 

I personally find it strange that all of a sudden GRRM started creating these plot driven POV characters. I get that he wanted to expand his universe, but you'd think he could find a better way than making "random character A" a main character for one chapter and "random character B" a main character for another. The Arys Oakheart chapter makes little to no sense to me. He basically made a random KG knight into a main character for a chapter, just to violently murder him in the next chapter he showed up in. Prior to the "Soiled Knight" chapter the most we saw from this guy was in Sansa's first chapter in ACoK's, where he's nice to her for a few pages.

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11 hours ago, sifth said:

I'd argue characters like Areo Hotah, Jon Con, Mel, Aeron Grejoy and so on, have few chapters, because they're plot driven POV's and not character driven ones. I mean you're right Davos was this way in ACoK's, but he evolved out of it, however the former characters I've mentioned have not and I'm not sure if they will; like Quentyn Martell. I mean heck their chapters don't even have their proper names, they're just given generic titles like "The Watcher" or "The Lost Lord".

Mel isn't plot-driven at all - plot-wise her chapter could have been another Jon chapter. And she doesn't have a strange title, and neither do quite a few characters in late ADwD, early TWoW - both Baristan and Victarion got their proper names as titles in their most recent chapters.

There is supposed to be a system to that, according to George, but I don't get it.

But as I said - Aeron and Vic and Asha really grow on your (or can grow on you), and one imagines it can go the same way with Areo, Barristan, Jon Connington, etc. Arianne is pretty much a main character already, I'd say, and any future Mel chapter can only be interesting.

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I personally find it strange that all of a sudden GRRM started creating these plot driven POV characters. I get that he wanted to expand his universe, but you'd think he could find a better way than making "random character A" a main character for one chapter and "random character B" a main character for another. The Arys Oakheart chapter makes little to no sense to me. He basically made a random KG knight into a main character for a chapter, just to violently murder him in the next chapter he showed up in. Prior to the "Soiled Knight" chapter the most we saw from this guy was in Sansa's first chapter in ACoK's, where he's nice to her for a few pages.

This originated with a kind of extended Prologue George wrote for AFfC/ADwD along the lines of what happened in Dorne and on the Iron Islands during/at the end of ASoS. Those became multiple chapters, no longer a long Prologue, and thus they were included into the novel.

I'd agree that Arys Oakheart wasn't necessary as a POV, but he doesn't really slow down the story all that much. And from what we fathom his chapter would have been part of the Prologue project, like 'The Prophet' and 'The Captain of Guards'.

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7 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Do you think he reached any point of the story he should have reached in a book named 'A Dance with Dragons'?

No, he did not. That is why I believe it was an error to release the book when he had the count of pages. Even if I was glad at the time to have another book. Time was passing, count of pages was increasing. But the achievement was not there.

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8 hours ago, BalerionTheCat said:

No, he did not. That is why I believe it was an error to release the book when he had the count of pages. Even if I was glad at the time to have another book. Time was passing, count of pages was increasing. But the achievement was not there.

And how do you think he could reach the theme much less the finale of the book named 'The Winds of Winter' when, according to the original plan, said book was to take place after Dany's conquest of Westeros - or at least after the war her arrival to Westeros in the original 'A Dance with Dragons' was to cause?

That just doesn't seem likely at all. Those books never fit with the original planning. TWoW is very unlikely to cover the events ADwD was to cover, much less those TWoW was to cover.

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1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

That just doesn't seem likely at all. Those books never fit with the original planning.

The original planning is I believe long (and thankfully) forgotten.

But yes, he changes his plans often. If publishing is "sticking to what is already out, and go on with that", while not publishing is "great, I've a new idea, I should rewrite all again, And I can because it's not yet published". Then yes delaying publication would not help.

But he must now find a way to reach his destination without adding whole new books because the previous ones are not providing the foundations he need now. Whatever is the best way, I believe he has to stick to minimum of stability if he want one day finish the job.

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3 hours ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

Let's just hope that it does. A 1000 page novel must cover something, after all.

Sure, it will cover something, but obviously less than ADwD did since it is not likely to have many more pages, yet ADwD had fewer POVs for half or more of the novel, and even later not all main POVs popped up with many chapters. And Bran and Davos didn't even appear in the second half.

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59 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Sure, it will cover something, but obviously less than ADwD did since it is not likely to have many more pages, yet ADwD had fewer POVs for half or more of the novel, and even later not all main POVs popped up with many chapters. And Bran and Davos didn't even appear in the second half.

I hope that we at least get an end to the JonCon/Aegon arc in TWOW.

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38 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

I hope that we at least get an end to the JonCon/Aegon arc in TWOW.

Most definitely not. That arc has just started, and won't end until Daenerys arrived in Westeros ... which isn't very likely to happen in TWoW. And even if it did - their conflict won't end there, just as the War of the Five Kings didn't end in AGoT.

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On 6/25/2020 at 2:20 PM, Lord Varys said:

There is no chance he writes two books without publishing the first half of it if that's a book in its own right. That would be insane.

This statement makes it clear what was going on - that there are enough chapters for a AFfC/ADwD-like split, i.e. some POVs have enough chapters for an entire 1,500 book, others don't. That is what triggered the AFfC/ADwD split. If he had 1,500 completed pages the book would be published - if there were enough from every POV to warrant that.

I think that George is fully cognisant of the fact that the level of his fame and the sales expectations of his books are at a completely different level in 2020 to what they were in 2011, including the fact he can complete a book that's longer and the publishers will move heaven and Earth to get it out anyway (the fact that Brandon Sanderson, who is not in George's sales league, can publish books that are 50,000 words longer than ASoS and ADWD shows that). So if TWoW ends up being between 1,500 and 2,000 MS pages, I wouldn't be surprised, and if the publisher split the book into two AGoT-ish-sized books or somewhat shorter, I wouldn't be surprised. Significantly longer than that seems unlikely, as George knows that even with his increased fame, there are still limits on what can be done. I think he also uses the ~1,500 MS page limit as a benchmark and target for himself, even if it's not strictly true that the book needs to come in at that page limit any more.

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Split was a far worse decision that abandoning the 5 year gap. It almost irreparably doomed the series. In hindsight, GRRM should have spent 10 years or more after ASoS while trying to fit the entire AFfC/ADwD into a single volume. He did not do that back then but he is doing it now whether he likes it or not.

The importance of the 5 year gap is overstated. AGoT and some or most of ACoK were not written with a gap in mind. It was introduced around 1997 or 1998 and then summarily dismissed in 2001, so the time it was around was way less than either the time before (1991-97) or after (2001-now).

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Why not decide to release TWoW only when the story reaches a given point?

Because the books are not written like that. George writes by POV, so if he's on a roll with Tyrion he'll keep writing Tyrion and may end up writing 3-4 Tyrion chapters in a row. Then he switches to someone like Daenerys and might write 3 or 4 chapters from her POV. Then Jon etc. That's what's caused both his fast bursts of writing - by some reports he wrote all of Tyrion's ASoS chapters during the ACoK period because he was on a roll with Tyrion and kept trucking - and his really slow ones - during ADWD he kept rewriting already-completed chapters because what he was writing in new material was changing things in old ones.

Right now he might be sitting on 1,500+ MS pages, have complete story arcs for Jon, Tyrion, Dansa, Sansa and Arya, but might only have three of five planned Jaime chapters and only one of six planned Bran chapters done, and those Bran chapters all have to fall in the first half of the book so even if the book is split, it can't be published until those chapters are done. I think this is why GRRM has problems with the third quarter or so of the writing process for every book, since he has to stop writing characters he's "in the zone" with and start doing legwork in getting everyone into the right place and synching all the chapters up. All without a detailed outline.

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They came out pretty quickly after one another, but George started writing them in 1993

1991.

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He isn't the kind of writer whose prose and plots and dialogues look good in a first or second draft

I think it varies, and again on "how in the zone" he is. ASoS is the fastest-written book, had the least amount of rewrites and most people seem to think it is the best in the series.

 

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I personally find it strange that all of a sudden GRRM started creating these plot driven POV characters. I get that he wanted to expand his universe, but you'd think he could find a better way than making "random character A" a main character for one chapter and "random character B" a main character for another. The Arys Oakheart chapter makes little to no sense to me. He basically made a random KG knight into a main character for a chapter, just to violently murder him in the next chapter he showed up in. Prior to the "Soiled Knight" chapter the most we saw from this guy was in Sansa's first chapter in ACoK's, where he's nice to her for a few pages.

As LV said, the original plan for the pre-split AFFC was to open with a Wheel of Time-style super-prologue, over 100 pages long, including multiple short-fire POVs who were not going to become "full" POVs. Victarion, Aeron, Asha, Areo Hotah, Arys Oakheart, Quentyn and Arianne were all part of that super-prologue (which is why they have those titles rather than names, the titles would have been paragraph dividers in the text). When George finished the prologue it was over 250 pages long, so he realised that wasn't going to work and broke the prologue up into individual chapters. He kept the titles as a new format which would allow him to "retire" characters (i.e. just bow out on them once their story purpose was fulfilled) rather than kill them or keep covering them until the end of the series but ultimately decided that was out of keeping with the rest of the series. Hence they became regular POVs (and as they stopped using titles and snapped back to using their names, that became clearer).

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On 6/26/2020 at 6:42 AM, sifth said:

The Arys Oakheart chapter makes little to no sense to me. 

GRRM probably thought that it was too early to get into Arianne's mind at that point, as he wanted her Queenmaker plot to be a surprise to the readers. And on the whole, GRRM has created a whole bunch of POV's because he doesn't want to get into the minds of characters who know too much. He created Davos because he didn't want Stannis as a POV and so on. 

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3 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think that George is fully cognisant of the fact that the level of his fame and the sales expectations of his books are at a completely different level in 2020 to what they were in 2011, including the fact he can complete a book that's longer and the publishers will move heaven and Earth to get it out anyway (the fact that Brandon Sanderson, who is not in George's sales league, can publish books that are 50,000 words longer than ASoS and ADWD shows that). So if TWoW ends up being between 1,500 and 2,000 MS pages, I wouldn't be surprised, and if the publisher split the book into two AGoT-ish-sized books or somewhat shorter, I wouldn't be surprised. Significantly longer than that seems unlikely, as George knows that even with his increased fame, there are still limits on what can be done. I think he also uses the ~1,500 MS page limit as a benchmark and target for himself, even if it's not strictly true that the book needs to come in at that page limit any more.

That I can see, too. And I actually hope we don't get weird things like pushing those Arianne and Aeron chapters into the next book for conceptual reasons (if that's why this was done) like we got with ADwD. That feels like one is cheated. I'd also hope if we got a scenario with 1-2 or more battles brewing as TWoW draws to close, that said battles will be depicted this time to end the book with a climax, but I very much doubt we are getting a book that's intentionally and deliberately written as a two volume novel (i.e. 3,000 or more manuscript pages) which is only published when both volumes are completed.

If something like that were about to happen I'd expect them to publish the first half as soon as that one is finished, not only when all the chapters for the second half are finished.

I get it that technically George could have written chapters for two books for a couple of POVs, perhaps even many, before finishing sufficient chapters for the more problematic/difficult POVs, preventing them from publishing the first half of the book. But I'd expect him to really focus on said problematic characters rather than rushing on and on with other characters while the main problem to wrap the first book up are, say, only a couple of chapters of 2-3 POVs or so.

If I had to guess I think Meereenese Knot-like problems are much more prevalent in TWoW than they were in ADwD. Because a lot of characters have hooked up and will hook up in the book, and George might not know when and how most of those meetings are going to take place, especially with events that will have ripple effects around the world.

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

The importance of the 5 year gap is overstated. AGoT and some or most of ACoK were not written with a gap in mind. It was introduced around 1997 or 1998 and then summarily dismissed in 2001, so the time it was around was way less than either the time before (1991-97) or after (2001-now).

Yes, that was never a core part of the concept, and while I'm very interested to read those gap chapters one day and compare how things changed, I most definitely like the story better without an artificial break.

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Right now he might be sitting on 1,500+ MS pages, have complete story arcs for Jon, Tyrion, Dansa, Sansa and Arya, but might only have three of five planned Jaime chapters and only one of six planned Bran chapters done, and those Bran chapters all have to fall in the first half of the book so even if the book is split, it can't be published until those chapters are done. I think this is why GRRM has problems with the third quarter or so of the writing process for every book, since he has to stop writing characters he's "in the zone" with and start doing legwork in getting everyone into the right place and synching all the chapters up. All without a detailed outline.

As I said above, this very well could be - but keep in mind that he didn't produce that much TWoW material prior to finishing ADwD. There were 400 manuscript pages, I think, about 200 pages finished chapters from ADwD which were moved, and 200 draft chapters not completely finished.

It would be great, in a sense, if after ten years work on TWoW he would have many chapters reaching beyond TWoW for quite a few POVs. But the time to assume something like that would be if he was dropping hints in that direction - which he might when the book his finally finished. Right now I'd go with the assumption that writing is difficult as usual, and that he certainly has more chapters for some POVs than others, but with him never stating he had a rush with anyone it is really difficult to hope this is the case.

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think it varies, and again on "how in the zone" he is. ASoS is the fastest-written book, had the least amount of rewrites and most people seem to think it is the best in the series.

ASoS had the advantage, I think, that it resolved/finished a lot of the plot lines from the first novel. I think once George reaches the point where the original ADwD plot (Dany's conquest/the Second Dance of the Dragons is finished - which may also coincide with the fall of the Wall) wraps up, he might be able to write much faster, too. But that's nowhere in sight right now. The Dany plot is still in the setting up stage, and depending how exactly he intends the situation in Westeros to be when she finally arrives he might face a very entangled 'Westerosi Knot' there, especially when things enter the final phase.

If he has a clear concept already how the war in Westeros upon Dany's arrival is to unfold, it might be very hard to get certain characters to the points where they have to be. In a sense, we see him struggling with this throughout AFfC already, with this, in a sense, very artificial plot about Cersei's fast downfall and the (passing?) weakening of the Lannisters and Westermen, caused by the completely uncalled for sending home of the troops while the Tyrell armies are still in the city and in the field.

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

As LV said, the original plan for the pre-split AFFC was to open with a Wheel of Time-style super-prologue, over 100 pages long, including multiple short-fire POVs who were not going to become "full" POVs. Victarion, Aeron, Asha, Areo Hotah, Arys Oakheart, Quentyn and Arianne were all part of that super-prologue (which is why they have those titles rather than names, the titles would have been paragraph dividers in the text). When George finished the prologue it was over 250 pages long, so he realised that wasn't going to work and broke the prologue up into individual chapters. He kept the titles as a new format which would allow him to "retire" characters (i.e. just bow out on them once their story purpose was fulfilled) rather than kill them or keep covering them until the end of the series but ultimately decided that was out of keeping with the rest of the series. Hence they became regular POVs (and as they stopped using titles and snapped back to using their names, that became clearer).

I think he should have actually used more of the Dornish/Ironborn chapters for a Prologue, since quite a few of them actually take place before ASoS ends ('The Prophet' and 'The Captain of Guards' most definitely, and I think one can also make a case that 'The Soiled Knight' and 'The Kraken's Daughter' do).

I must say, I'm not most interested in those Areo chapters George has mentioned repeatedly - how important is he going to be? Will this be the beginning of some Dayne plot, or is he eventually going to return to Doran and give us the POV for an attack on Sunspear and/or the Water Gardens by the Ironborn which I think Euron is going to command once he learns about Aegon and that the Dornish joined him?

Insofar as arcs are concerned:

If one looks at the great arcs of some of the main characters in AFfC - Jaime and Cersei - then I'd say their arcs are not finished at all in both AFfC/ADwD. Cersei's finale would be the decision of her fate, i.e. the trial-by-combat and its outcome if that takes place, and Jaime's finale would be his confrontation with Lady Stoneheart. Those are the climaxes those two stories moved towards since Cersei started to plot and Jaime left for the Riverlands. AFfC has very much botched endings for most characters. And Sansa's and Arya's arc in their training end when said training is over, i.e. when Arya becomes a fully fledged Faceless Girl and gets her own solo mission as an assassin after being fully initiated into all the secrets and magics and teachings of the cult and/or decides to leave the Faceless Men, and Sansa's story would end when she reveals her true identity to the Vale and starts to really influence policy there and elsewhere (breaking with or strengthening her bond with Littlefinger in the process of that).

The big flaw of AFfC was that it was really an unfinished book even for many of the characters it depicted. With ADwD Cersei's story works much better, even if we still don't know what happens to her.

But if George was focusing on arcs and getting to certain points we would have gotten the trial(s) of the queen(s) in AFfC, and the two battles in ADwD, possibly even Aegon taking the Iron Throne if that is the plan. All that would have been much better ways to end the books.

The fact that this didn't happen very much shows that the story is so big now that conceptually one cannot write them to finish arcs or reach the necessary high points and climaxes in just one book - even if it is pretty big. Because even AFfC and ADwD combined don't finish many of the arcs started in them.

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On 6/25/2020 at 3:53 PM, QhorinQuarterhand said:

Edit: I agree abandoning the 5 year gap wasn't nearly as bad as the split. The biggest problem with abandoning the 5 year gap is it has been 20 years in real time since the story has flowed normally like it did AGOT-ASOS. Plot progression has ground to a halt for some characters. Arya has 5 chapters in the last 20 years. Only 2 in the last 15 years. Sansa has 3 in 20 years and ZERO in 15 years. Bran has 3 chapters in 20 years. 

When you put it like this, things really come into perspective.... :/

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10 hours ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

GRRM probably thought that it was too early to get into Arianne's mind at that point, as he wanted her Queenmaker plot to be a surprise to the readers. And on the whole, GRRM has created a whole bunch of POV's because he doesn't want to get into the minds of characters who know too much. He created Davos because he didn't want Stannis as a POV and so on. 

A surprise for when exactly? He reveals it in that very chapter and could have easily have revealed it in the exact same way only from Arianne's POV.

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12 hours ago, sifth said:

A surprise for when exactly? He reveals it in that very chapter and could have easily have revealed it in the exact same way only from Arianne's POV.

That storyline was pretty heavily foreshadowed and set up in ACoK and ASoS anyway. Oberyn directly says it's a plan Dorne could enact in ASoS, so it's not really coming out of left field.

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On 6/25/2020 at 4:45 PM, sifth said:

I don't agree with that at all, in fact I'd say nearly every character in the first book has a story arc. Jon Snow has one, in regrades to learning to accept his new place in life as a brother of the Nights Watch. Dany has one in regards to gaining the confidence to stand up for herself and be a strong leader. Ned has a tragic arc, which is him failing as Hand of the King, that basically leads to his ruin. Sansa has a story arc, which is coming to accept the real world, outside of stories and songs. I could go on, but it's honestly been a few years since I last read the book, so my memory isn't so great.

My point is, many of GRRM's newer characters don't have story arcs and are just in a certain place, because the plot needs them to be. Take Areo Hotah for example, the guy is basically just a walking camera and only exists to remind us that stuff is going on in Dorne. Same with Aeron Grejoy; the guy only exists to tell us what's happening in the Iron Island and what Euron is up to. Jon Con is pretty much the same as well, a character who's only purpose is to tell us what team Faegon is up to. These are not character driven POV's, these are plot driven ones and you can very easily see the difference in the quality in which they are written.

The way George does strict third person pov that rotates characters each chapter is my absolute favorite way to read books. But one flaw seems to be that we get some chapters that are 20 pages long with backstory on this new character just give to us a few paragraphs of plot progression. Because he has to have POVs, but they can't be people that know more than he wants to tell at the time.

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How long was it between George deciding to split and him delivering AFFC? I have the thought that it probably suffered alot from because George essentially hit print on what he had at the time. And that that decision was largely influenced by whatever convinced him he'd have ADWD out a year later. 

So he hit print on chapters expanded from the mega POV that could have used editing to feel more like the previous books. To be less like cameras with thoughts. And he hit print on travelogue-of-a-failed mission Breinne getting the most chapters. 

The worst part though is that it just can't feel the same with the characters split between books. Especially since that included the introduction of so many new POVs.

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22 hours ago, QhorinQuarterhand said:

How long was it between George deciding to split and him delivering AFFC? I have the thought that it probably suffered alot from because George essentially hit print on what he had at the time. And that that decision was largely influenced by whatever convinced him he'd have ADWD out a year later. 

So he hit print on chapters expanded from the mega POV that could have used editing to feel more like the previous books. To be less like cameras with thoughts. And he hit print on travelogue-of-a-failed mission Breinne getting the most chapters. 

The worst part though is that it just can't feel the same with the characters split between books. Especially since that included the introduction of so many new POVs.

5 months. He announced the decision in May 2005 and the book was published in October.

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2 hours ago, Werthead said:

5 months. He announced the decision in May 2005 and the book was published in October.

Thank you. That isn't very long considering he'd have to have delivered it around the middle point of those dates. 2-3 months more work on AFFC before delivering it. That isn't very long at all. 

Yep. I think he thought "I'll get AFFC out now and it's ok that it's not 100% of to standard because ADWD will be out a year later and boom I'm already on to book 6 after that". 

And the real life time is the worst part by far. The issues of AFFC and ADWD wouldn't stand out near as much in fans minds if George hadn't instead taken 6 years to deliver Dance and has already gone over 9 years without delivering Winds. If we were waiting on Book 8 or ASOIAF was already over? The AFFC and ADWD issues would hardly be talked about except when you or someone else gives an ASOIAF history lesson.

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