Do we have much specific information on the aborted "five year gap" that Martin originally planned?

[WhatAnArtist!]

I'm curious at to how Martin intended on implementing this in the series, because it seems that, while it would work well and make sense for some characters - mostly Daenerys, Jon and Bran - I don't see how it could have possibly worked with others. Like, what exactly was Tyrion supposed to be doing for half a decade? Bumming around Illyrio's manse, drinking himself stupid every day? And what about Stannis? Do the Lannisters and Boltons just let him chill with his army in the North, leaving him alone? This gap would also disrupt the "redemption" arc of Jaime, having lost all the momentum from his time with Brienne in ASoS. 

It's interesting to consider just how differently the books might have been had Martin stuck to this plan.

[Canon Claude]

Well, wasn’t there an original plan for the story where Jaime is evil and murders his way to becoming king? Presumably he’d be sitting on the Iron Throne for five years. 
I can only assume that Brienne wasn’t going to be as prominent a character back then as she is now, as with Stannis.

[Daenerysthegreat]

1 hour ago, WhatAnArtist! said:

I'm curious at to how Martin intended on implementing this in the series, because it seems that, while it would work well and make sense for some characters - mostly Daenerys, Jon and Bran - I don't see how it could have possibly worked with others. Like, what exactly was Tyrion supposed to be doing for half a decade? Bumming around Illyrio's manse, drinking himself stupid every day? And what about Stannis? Do the Lannisters and Boltons just let him chill with his army in the North, leaving him alone? This gap would also disrupt the "redemption" arc of Jaime, having lost all the momentum from his time with Brienne in ASoS. 

It's interesting to consider just how differently the books might have been had Martin stuck to this plan.

Thats a bit incorrect. Bran's story worked fine with the gap. But jon's and dany's storylines required a lot of flashbacks which is the reason the gap was aborted. 

The gap was aborted since it was very difficult to work most of the characters storylines. Why did the Ironborn wait 5 years for the kingsmoot? Why did arianne wait five years for the queenmaker plot? Did nothing happen in kings landing? 

[EggBlue]

I'm not sure but I think the 5 year gap plan was only planned early on. I doubt Martin had the gap in mind whilst writing swing of swords . there are only a handful of characters that this plan works for : Bran , Rickon , Arya and Sansa. characters who were all introduced in the first book . I really think Martin had realized by end of the clash of kings that he can't age his characters up the way he wanted to , so he just wrote and wrote and decided to deal with the difficulties later on which was at the beginning of feast/dance and that took him so long to write.

[Lord Lannister]

1 hour ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

Thats a bit incorrect. Bran's story worked fine with the gap. But jon's and dany's storylines required a lot of flashbacks which is the reason the gap was aborted. 

The gap was aborted since it was very difficult to work most of the characters storylines. Why did the Ironborn wait 5 years for the kingsmoot? Why did arianne wait five years for the queenmaker plot? Did nothing happen in kings landing? 

I always thought the gap was a missed opportunity. We basically got the entire story of Robert's rebellion via flashback in the first three novels. That's not a difficulty. In fact in Dany's case unraveling the Mereenese knot off screen is probably preferable.

As for dealing with the other "difficulties" it's not really insurmountable. Have the various factions actively struggling with one other for those five years before Damphair calls for unity with the kingsmoot to chose their king. That would actually make more sense than Damphair just pulling that ancient tradition out of no where for reasons.

With the Queenmaker, have Arianne's frustration slowly build up over five years before she finally acts. That would make her a more sympathetic and believable character rather than this impulsive hothead out for blood. WIth the added benefit of Myrcella actually being old enough to be taken serious. 

The King's Landing plot also would benefit over five years. Tommen gets old enough to become more than a plaything for tug of war between Margaery and Cersei, the sparrows could slowly build up strength in that time period instead of just coming out of no where. Not to mention five years of interest accumulating makes the crown's debt a more urgent concern.

Almost everyone would benefit. Sansa would be old enough to be a player in her own right, Bran and Arya's respective trainings can run their course and they can be active participants in the plot again. 

Honestly I always thought it was a shame it didn't happen, but it is what it is now. 

[The hairy bear]

In an interview from 2013 that I can't find online anymore Martin gives a detailed explanation on the matter:

I'm obsessed with the five-year gap you originally planned in the middle of the series. How would that have happened?

Originally, there was not supposed to be any gap. There was just supposed to be a passage of time, as the book went forward. My original concept back in 1991 was, I would start with these characters as children, and they would get older. If you pick up Arya at eight, the second chapter would be a couple months later, and she would be eight and a half and [then] she'd be nine. [This would happen] all within the space of a book.

But when I actually got into writing them, the events have a certain momentum. So you write a chapter and then in your next chapter, it can't be six months later, because something's going to happen the next day. So you have to write what happens the next day, and then you have to write what happens the week after that. And the news gets to some other place.

And pretty soon, you've written hundreds of pages and a week has passed, instead of the six months, or the year, that you wanted to pass. So you end a book, and you've had a tremendous amount of events — but they've taken place over a short time frame and the eight-year-old kid is still eight years old.

So that really took hold of me for the first three books. When it became apparent that that had taken hold of me, I came up with the idea of the five-year gap. "Time is not passing here as I want it to pass, so I will jump forward five years in time." And I will come back to these characters when they're a little more grown up. And that is what I tried to do when I started writing Feast for Crows. So [the gap] would have come after A Storm of Swords and before Feast for Crows.

But what I soon discovered — and I struggled with this for a year — [the gap] worked well with some characters like Arya — who at end the of Storm of Swords has taken off for Braavos. You can come back five years later, and she has had five years of training and all that. Or Bran, who was taken in by the Children of the Forest and the green ceremony, [so you could] come back to him five years later. That’s good. Works for him.

Other characters, it didn’t work at all. I'm writing the Cersei chapters in King's Landing, and saying, "Well yeah, in five years, six different guys have served as Hand and there was this conspiracy four years ago, and this thing happened three years ago." And I'm presenting all of this in flashbacks, and that wasn't working. The other alternative was [that] nothing happened in those five years, which seemed anticlimactic.

The Jon Snow stuff was even worse, because at the end of Storm he gets elected Lord Commander. I'm picking up there, and writing  "Well five years ago, I was elected Lord Commander. Nothing much has happened since then, but now things are starting to happen again." I finally, after a year, said "I can't make this work."

So you had to have change it, so that Arya was not as seasoned, Jon Snow not as experienced as lord commander.

I know not all my readers are happy with that, but I think I made the right decision.

The readers are unhappy with leaving out the five-year gap?

Well no, some of the storylines from Feast for Crows. I get complaints sometimes that nothing happens — but they're defining "nothing," I think, differently than I am. I don't think it all has to battles and sword fights and assassinations. Character development and [people] changing is good, and there are some tough things in there that I think a lot of writers skip over. I'm glad I didn't skip over these things.

[For example], things that Arya is learning. The things Bran is learning. Learning is not inherently an interesting thing to write about. It's not an easy thing to write about. In the movies, they always handle it with a montage. Rocky can't run very fast. He can't catch the chicken. But then you do a montage, and you cut a lot of images together, and now only a minute later in the film, Rocky is really strong and he is catching the chicken.

It’s a lot harder [in real life]. Sometimes in my own life, I wish I could play a montage of my life. I want to get in shape now. So let’s do a montage, and boom — I'll be fifty pounds lighter and in good shape, and it will only take me a minute with some montage of me lifting weights and running, shoving away the steak and having a salad. But of course in real life, you don't get to montage. You have to go through it day by day.

And that has been interesting, you know. Jon Snow as Lord Commander. Dany as Queen, struggling with rule. So many books don't do that. There is a sense when you're writing something in high fantasy, you're in a dialogue with all the other high fantasy writers that have written. And there is always this presumption that if you are a good man, you will be a good king. [Like] Tolkien — in Return of the King, Aragorn comes back and becomes king, and then [we read that] "he ruled wisely for three hundred years." Okay, fine. It is easy to write that sentence, “He ruled wisely”.

What does that mean, he ruled wisely? What were his tax policies? What did he do when two lords were making war on each other? Or barbarians were coming in from the North? What was his immigration policy? What about equal rights for Orcs? I mean did he just pursue a genocidal policy, "Let’s kill all these fucking Orcs who are still left over"? Or did he try to redeem them? You never actually see the nitty-gritty of ruling.

I guess there is an element of fantasy readers that don't want to see that. I find that fascinating. Seeing someone like Dany actually trying to deal with the vestments of being a queen and getting factions and guilds and [managing the] economy. They burnt all the fields [in Meereen]. They've got nothing to import any more. They're not getting any money. I find this stuff interesting. And fortunately, enough of my readers who love the books do as well.

[Universal Sword Donor]

The gap was supposed to be approximately five years 

[Daenerysthegreat]

8 hours ago, Lord Lannister said:

I always thought the gap was a missed opportunity. We basically got the entire story of Robert's rebellion via flashback in the first three novels. That's not a difficulty. In fact in Dany's case unraveling the Mereenese knot off screen is probably preferable.

 

No we didn't, it was only in descriptions. 

And it would take the fun away from the books. Who wants to read a book only filled with plot and zero character development. We will see the characters changed but why did they change do we know that? 

[WhatAnArtist!]

2 hours ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

Who wants to read a book only filled with plot and zero character development

Presumably the people that criticise Feast and Dance because they're too slow and not enough happens.

[The hairy bear]

On 10/2/2021 at 5:15 AM, Daenerysthegreat said:

Who wants to read a book only filled with plot and zero character development. We will see the characters changed but why did they change do we know that? 

Who wants to read a book with only character development and zero plot? That one is also a straw man, and luckily there's no one around arguing for such extreme absurd positions. We all agree that it's a matter of finding a good balance of both.

Character development doesn't need to happen at a constant continuous pace. It's fine the leave a story at a point where things are more or less stable, and reprise it later. Movies do it all the time: The Empire Strikes Back starts 3 years after A New Hope and I've never seen anyone complaining that character development of Luke, Leia and Han where harmed by not seeing the interim. We learn everything we need to know about what those characters have been doing and how they have evolved in the past years with a few scenes at the begining of Empire.

On 10/1/2021 at 8:34 PM, Lord Lannister said:

I always thought the gap was a missed opportunity. We basically got the entire story of Robert's rebellion via flashback in the first three novels. That's not a difficulty.

I share this feeling. I'd be fine with Jon's chapters starting with thousands of wildlings already settled in the Wall and half the Night's Watch openly opposing the Lord Commander. I'd be fine with Cersei's chapters starting with her thoughts about how difficult is to find competent underlings now that she is replacing her fifth Hand. It would all be in-character, and not much in deep explanation would be required.

I believe I'd preferred the books if the five year gap had been retained. I understand that this would have harmed some storylines, but I think the benefits would have outweighed the negatives. But I guess it's a matter of taste. And in any case, what irks me with this issue is not that George decided to scrap the five year gap, but the two [IMHO] mistakes the he made in the process:

• It may not be credible that in some places nothing of importance happened in five years. But why not try at least to skip one year? Or six months? Or least a few weeks?? If you wanted the young characters to get older, at least try to make feast advance as much time as possible. No need to begin half the storylines before the end of Storm, seeing the immediate reaction to Oberyn's and Balon's deaths. No need to start with Tyrion still on the boat to Pentos or Cersei on the night Tywin is killed. No need to dwell on Tywin's vigil and funeral.
• If there were some characters like Arya or Bran where the time skip did work, those ones should not have been included in Feast. That book should have been used to move forward the stories that could not wait, in order to reunite with the characters that would benefit from the gap in the next book.

[Tucu]

We have "gardener" GRRM breaking the fourth wall in this scene to talk about the gap:

Quote

He did not hold her kiss against her. "You would not believe half of what is happening in King's Landing, sweetling. Cersei stumbles from one idiocy to the next, helped along by her council of the deaf, the dim, and the blind. I always anticipated that she would beggar the realm and destroy herself, but I never expected she would do it quite so fast. It is quite vexing. I had hoped to have four or five quiet years to plant some seeds and allow some fruits to ripen, but now . . . it is a good thing that I thrive on chaos. What little peace and order the five kings left us will not long survive the three queens, I fear."

 

[WhatAnArtist!]

5 minutes ago, Tucu said:

We have "gardener" GRRM breaking the fourth wall in this scene to talk about the gap:

 

Pretty funny, although I actually find it more believable that Cersei created a mess so quickly than over four or five years, so long as she insisted on ruling rather than someone like Kevan or Mace.

[Daenerysthegreat]

33 minutes ago, The hairy bear said:

Who wants to read a book only character development and zero plot? That one it's also a straw man, and luckily there's no one around arguing for such extreme absurd positions. We all agree that it's a matter of finding a good balance of both.

Character development doesn't need to happen at a constant continuous pace. It's fine the leave a story at a point where things are more or less stable, and reprise it later. Movies do it all the time: The Empire Strikes Back starts 3 years after A New Hope and I've never seen anyone complaining that character development of Luke, Leia and Han where harmed by not seeing the interim. We learn everything we need to know about what those characters have been doing and how they have evolved in the past years with a few scenes at the begining of Empire.

I share this feeling. I'd be fine with Jon's chapters starting with thousands of wildlings already settled in the Wall and half the Night's Watch openly oposing the Lord Commander. I'd be fine with Cersei's chapters starting with her thoughts about how difficult is to find competent underlings now that she is replacing her fifth Hand. It would all be in-character, and not much in deep explanation would be required.

I believe I'd preferred the books if the five year gap had been retained. I understand that this would have harmed some storylines, but I think the benefits would have outweighted the negatives. But I guess it's a matter of taste. And in any case, what irks me with this issue is not that George decided to scrap the five year gap, but the two [IMHO] mistakes the he made in the process:

• It may not be credible that in some places nothing of importance happended in five years. But why not try at least to skip one year? Or six months? Or least a few weeks?? If you wanted need the young characters to get older, at least try to make feast advance as much time as possible. No need to begin half the storylines before the end of Storm, seeing the immediate reaction to Oberyn's and Balon's deaths. No need to start with Tyrion still on the boat to Pentos or Cersei on the night Tywin is killed. No need to dwell on Tywin's vigil and funeral.
• If there where some characters like Arya or Bran where the time skip did work, those ones should not have been in included in Feast. That book should have been used to move forward the stories that could not wait, in order to reunite with the characters that would benefit from the gap in the next book.

The main issue is that Mr Martin spent a year on it and reached a conclusion that it would be bad. Arguably it would have been extremely bad written

[The hairy bear]

14 minutes ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

The main issue is that Mr Martin spent a year on it and reached a conclusion that it would be bad.

Fair enough. Martin tried, and he felt it didn't work, and he knows best that any of us. It's his call, of course. That's why I say that I'm OK with George scraping the 5 year gap, while pointing out two aspects of how he dealt with his decision where I think he erred.

[SeanF]

I think Dany's story would have benefitted if Daznak's Pit was her first chapter, as originally intended, set five years after she settled in Meereen.

Realistically, I think it would have taken longer than a matter of weeks for the masters to begin an insurgency against her, and to assemble an external coalition.  They'd have been very frightened, after the events of ASOS, and would have started off by flouting her authority in small ways, IMHO, trying to see what they could get away with.  It doesn't really seem credible to me that she would not respond to Yunkai breaking its treaty, and resuming slave-trading, without bringing them fire and sword.