Things you would have changed in the books?

[Moiraine Sedai]

Demote Sansa to non-pov status. Give half of Jon’s space to Theon. Less of Jon and more of Theon. Less Arya but more Robb. Promote Jorah to pov and increase the proportion of the Dothraki scenes at the expense of Bran and Cat.  We needed more scenes in Vaes Dothrak to learn about the people. 
 

Go to Asshai and Leng. Reduce the proportion of the KL scenes and create a pov in Asshai and Leng. 

[Aejohn the Conqueroo]

I would make the Catspaw dagger regular steel. Could have still been a hell of a knife, just not vs. 

 

 

[Mithras]

Well, I think the problem is that GRRM lost the control of the story. There is a small window for him to fix the most cancerous problems with TWoW. But every passing day I have lesser and lesser faith in him for doing that. At this point, TWoW will probably won't fix any problem but make everything worse. Then, instead of wasting time and effort for TWoW, I would replan the whole saga with a focus and rewrite the existing books without the filler or plot contrivances. And I would publish all the books at once after finishing the whole story, which would probably take around 3-5 books.

[Arthur Peres]

Balon attack on the north never made any sense... If I could change I would at least say that Tywin bribed him with gold and promises to keep the land he took to attack the Starks, it would show Lannisters wealth, Greyjoy opportunist, and would be more beliveble that an idiot attacking the only person willing to reconize his title and offering him a hand.

Sir Rodrik sparing a commoner but killing the noble bastard (or so he though) also never made sense. GRRM could just say that Ramsey was captured, and it would make Theon decision of trusting him to get him reiforcements more rational, and the tragedy would remain the same, there was no need for Ramsey secret identity.

Give Robbs campaing in the West a POV, could be Robb himself, but I would prefer to be the Blackfish.

Stannis play for the throne made more sense in the TV series... in the books he is the first person that knows about the bastards, but the level of preparation he had was the worst, Renly in much less time got a much bigger army, more alliances and a public coronation, Stannis was not even crowned when Robb was arguing for who he should declare...

Edmure be a widower, it's odd that Hoster that fought half of his family because he pushed them into marriages would ignore his heir.

Daenerys story should already be on Westeros.

[The Bard of Banefort]

The ages. GRRM is basically writing as if he went through with the five year gap at this point (just consider the Mercy chapter, where Arya is technically 11). I really think George should hire someone to go through the books and add 3-5 years to every character under the age of 16 and adjust the timeline accordingly, then have that be the version published during the next printing. It sounds crazy, but we now live in a world where the Snyder Cut premiered on HBO and where Disney bought Star Wars, completely canned the old EU and replaced it with a new one, and still publishes the old books as special editions. Go for it, George. Crazier things have happened.

 

[Willam Stark]

On 11/15/2021 at 3:52 PM, EggBlue said:

Arys would have given us a good view on Dorne through a foreigner's eyes and we could get to know dornish characters and their potential conflicts as early as Clash or SoS. we could see Oberyn and Arianne early on and connect with them in a way that Dorne's feast chapters don't inspire.   

I agree with that, it would have been awesome.

5 hours ago, Mithras said:

Then, instead of wasting time and effort for TWoW, I would replan the whole saga with a focus and rewrite the existing books without the filler or plot contrivances.

Could you elaborate on that?

3 hours ago, Arthur Peres said:

Balon attack on the north never made any sense... If I could change I would at least say that Tywin bribed him with gold and promises to keep the land he took to attack the Starks, it would show Lannisters wealth, Greyjoy opportunist, and would be more beliveble that an idiot attacking the only person willing to reconize his title and offering him a hand.

Sir Rodrik sparing a commoner but killing the noble bastard (or so he though) also never made sense. GRRM could just say that Ramsey was captured, and it would make Theon decision of trusting him to get him reiforcements more rational, and the tragedy would remain the same, there was no need for Ramsey secret identity.

Give Robbs campaing in the West a POV, could be Robb himself, but I would prefer to be the Blackfish.

Stannis play for the throne made more sense in the TV series... in the books he is the first person that knows about the bastards, but the level of preparation he had was the worst, Renly in much less time got a much bigger army, more alliances and a public coronation, Stannis was not even crowned when Robb was arguing for who he should declare...

Edmure be a widower, it's odd that Hoster that fought half of his family because he pushed them into marriages would ignore his heir.

Daenerys story should already be on Westeros.

Very good ideas!

18 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

The ages. GRRM is basically writing as if he went through with the five year gap at this point (just consider the Mercy chapter, where Arya is technically 11). I really think George should hire someone to go through the books and add 3-5 years to every character under the age of 16 and adjust the timeline accordingly, then have that be the version published during the next printing. It sounds crazy, but we now live in a world where the Snyder Cut premiered on HBO and where Disney bought Star Wars, completely canned the old EU and replaced it with a new one, and still publishes the old books as special editions. Go for it, George. Crazier things have happened.

 

Yep! The five year gap was definitely necessary, but this would require a complete rewrite.

I totally agree with the extension of the books to 9 instead of 7, I would add the extra books between ASOS and AFFC.

Another thing I would do is involving Doran to Aegon's plot from the beginning, his plan would be to marry Arianne to Aegon rather than Viserys. He didn't do anything to help him or Dany, this doesn't make sense, except if he planned to kill him and put his nephew and daughter on the Iron Throne.

[TheLastWolf]

Heathen > Heretic > Blasphemer 

Not a puritan, but poor George, would feel like Don Vito seeing Sonny and crying How they massacred my boy!

[Daenerysthegreat]

27 minutes ago, TheLastWolf said:

Heathen > Heretic > Blasphemer 

Not a puritan, but poor George, would feel like Don Vito seeing Sonny and crying How they massacred my boy!

What

Who's don vito and Sonny and which boy? 

[Daenerysthegreat]

37 minutes ago, Willam Stark said:

 

I totally agree with the extension of the books to 9 instead of 7, I would add the extra books between ASOS and AFFC

The material between the gap is covered by affc and adwd. So what would you add in between

Can you explain this

[Odej]

8 minutes ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

What

Who's don vito and Sonny and which boy? 

They are characters in The Godfather's books and movies. The boy is Sonny, who was killed in the story and his father, Vito, was devastated by his death.

[Willam Stark]

58 minutes ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

The material between the gap is covered by affc and adwd. So what would you add in between

Can you explain this

The content of canon AFFC and ADWD stays in book 4&5 with a rewrite of some storylines (the Lannisters pov for example), the new AFFC take the content of canon TWOW, so that ADWD can focus on Dany's conquest of Westeros and her conflict with fAegon, TWOW on the future Long Night and ADOS will be the epilogue.

[Odej]

Well, I would definitely do Daenerys, the Stark children and Jon older. And I think, as a result, so do Cersei's children. It's a fantasy world, I know, but most of what these kids have gone through is pretty absurd to me. Especially Dany and the Starks kids.

But that would compromise Arya's arc, since if she were older her femininity would be more developed and it would be difficult for her to pass for a boy.

[Willam Stark]

56 minutes ago, Odej said:

Well, I would definitely do Daenerys, the Stark children and Jon older. And I think, as a result, so do Cersei's children. It's a fantasy world, I know, but most of what these kids have gone through is pretty absurd to me. Especially Dany and the Starks kids.

But that would compromise Arya's arc, since if she were older her femininity would be more developed and it would be difficult for her to pass for a boy.

You would have to rewrite the entire story.

[The Bard of Banefort]

1 hour ago, Odej said:

Well, I would definitely do Daenerys, the Stark children and Jon older. And I think, as a result, so do Cersei's children. It's a fantasy world, I know, but most of what these kids have gone through is pretty absurd to me. Especially Dany and the Starks kids.

But that would compromise Arya's arc, since if she were older her femininity would be more developed and it would be difficult for her to pass for a boy.

 

29 minutes ago, Willam Stark said:

You would have to rewrite the entire story.

If the kids were 2 or 3 years older, they could just write it off as her hitting puberty late.  Sansa getting her period so late would be a stretch, but it also wouldn’t change the story that much if it were removed, since the Lannisters presumably had no intention of marrying her to Joffrey after Ned was beheaded.
 

Really, the bigger question is how more time hasn’t passed when you consider how much time the characters spend traveling. Keeping the story the same, just stretched out to accommodate the geography, would have fixed the age problem pretty easily. I wish one of GRRM’s editors pointed that out to him early on.

[Odej]

23 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

 

If the kids were 2 or 3 years older, they could just write it off as her hitting puberty late.  Sansa getting her period so late would be a stretch, but it also wouldn’t change the story that much if it were removed, since the Lannisters presumably had no intention of marrying her to Joffrey after Ned was beheaded.
 

Really, the bigger question is how more time hasn’t passed when you consider how much time the characters spend traveling. Keeping the story the same, just stretched out to accommodate the geography, would have fixed the age problem pretty easily. I wish one of GRRM’s editors pointed that out to him early on.

Yeah, it wouldn't be a big problem at all.

I would start the first book in 300AC, so Robb and Jon would be 16-17, Dany 15-16, Sansa 13-14, Arya 11-12, Bran 9-10, Rickon 5-6. I would change Joffrey's birthdate to 286AC so he and Sansa would be the same age, but I would keep Myrcella and Tommem original birthdate and they would be 9-10 and 8-9 years old respectively.

I also could slow Arya and Sansa's flowering. The age at which girl had her first menstrual period varies.

[Nathan Stark]

1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

 

If the kids were 2 or 3 years older, they could just write it off as her hitting puberty late.  Sansa getting her period so late would be a stretch, but it also wouldn’t change the story that much if it were removed, since the Lannisters presumably had no intention of marrying her to Joffrey after Ned was beheaded.
 

Really, the bigger question is how more time hasn’t passed when you consider how much time the characters spend traveling. Keeping the story the same, just stretched out to accommodate the geography, would have fixed the age problem pretty easily. I wish one of GRRM’s editors pointed that out to him early on.

All fair points. One does get the sense that GRRM wanted the travelogue portions kept because he wanted to try his hand at writing quest narratives like Tolkien. I find these portions slow and repetitive. It's not George's absolute best writing, so they could probably be removed without too much damage ti the larger story. Still, when George does this well, it absolutely rules. Like Jon and Jaime's quest narratives in Storm. It's with characters like Dany, Arya and Brienne that the travelogue portions really suffer.

[Kinola]

My ideas:

• I like the idea of Sansa actually marrying Joffrey then having a kid by him. It would have made her situation more desperate as she tries to be a good wife to her abusive, psycotic husband while also trying to protect his child and heir. Then when she has to run away to the Vale, she’d have to figure out what she has to do to protect her child, who would be heir to the throne under regular circumstances. The catch behind this is what would become of the child. If the Joffrey/Sansa kid is a girl, then she could be betrothed to Robert Arryn. No clue on what a boy would entail.
• The Purple Wedding involves more than one spoiled rotten king dying from poisoned wine. That would have amped up the shitstorm in King’s Landing and serve as a wonderful parallel to the Red Wedding. Plus, anyone could've drank the same wine Joffrey drank.
• Theon’s message from Robb spreads across the Iron Islands and divides them in two. Some families still hate the North and want to seek revenge, while others are tired of the Old Ways and want to improve their lives by joining up with him. 
• Someone on here mentioned that Edmure should’ve been a widower. Let’s give him a couple of children as well, and then have one reason for his reluctance to marry Roslin come from how she’ll treat them. 
• Give a little more backstory to Skagos. Like, why are they so detached from the North? Did they raid their settlements and steal women or something? Why did Osha choose this place to hide Rickon? Is she actually a Skagosi living amongst wildlings? 
• Harry the Heir should be a Gulltown Arryn instead of hailing from some random lower ranking house. Doesn’t matter if he’s Jon Arryn’s great-grandnephew or an eighth cousin twice removed, I doubt a lot of people would’ve supported his claim to the Vale if he was a Hardying. It’s the Vale of Arryn for a reason. 
• Add in more female characters (I said this before on another post). Noblewomen like Catelyn should’ve had some handmaidens with her. 
• Have Arya actually get to Riverrun and reunite with her mom and brother. But Red Wedding still happens and she has to run again. 
   

[TheLastWolf]

12 hours ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

What

Who's don vito and Sonny and which boy? 

 Are you for real?

12 hours ago, Odej said:

They are characters in The Godfather's books and movies. The boy is Sonny, who was killed in the story and his father, Vito, was devastated by his death.

Thanks mate, I feel like crying honestly. Weep my heart out.

[WhatAnArtist!]

So a lot of the ideas I've seen in this thread seem very radical and extreme and would basically completely change how the series develops, which I think is ridiculous. People should realise that just because a series doesn't unfold the way they personally want it to, doesn't mean it's bad. Most of the changes I'd make are more to do with structure and pacing, rather than specific story and character changes.

• Have Jon spend more time with the wildlings, ideally before they march on the Wall. Jon's strong sense of sympathy towards them, and the whole faux-conflict of "Oh no, maybe I really am a wildling at heart!" didn't feel particularly earned in the series as it is, since he's only with them for six chapters, half of which are about them preparing to mount an attack on the Wall. I'd even go so far as to say that he should have spent most of the book with them, to really flesh out the wildling society, their culture, and how it changes Jon's attitudes and gets him to question his role in life. Storm of Swords is a very long book, but Jon's storyline feels extremely rushed, especially on rereads. 
• Severely cut down on the amount of Arya chapters in Clash and Storm. On my recent reread of the series, her chapters were such a chore to get through, knowing that they are completely irrelevant to the larger story. People criticise Brienne's chapters in Feast for being pointless, even though there's only 8 of them, but praise Arya's when there's 23 of them? Her multi-book storyline consists almost solely of "so she wanders through the countryside, gets captured by some people, is a prisoner for a while, feels lonely and angry, then escapes, wanders around some more, sees a few burned villages, gets captured again, feels lonely and angry again, then escapes again, but guess what? She just got captured again! But it won't be for long, she'll escape again soon, of course." Just over and over and over again. Brienne's storyline covered all of the same themes that Arya's did, and better and more efficiently.
• Cut down the amount of PoVs in the Iron Islands and Dorne to only one character each, and give them a bunch more chapters. The Iron Islands can be seen from Victarian's PoV, while Dorne can be seen through Arianne's. Give them at least six chapters each, to really flesh out these peripheral regions and make them feel like more than just a distraction.
• Reduce the many filler chapters in Dance (mostly Tyrion and Dany) so as to be able to include both the Battle of Meereen and the Battle of Winterfell at the end of the book. Ending the book before either of these were resolved was the single biggest pacing mistake in the entire series, and I can't believe Martin was okay with leaving it like that. It makes the book feel insultingly anti-climactic, and it's going to make Winds feel extremely weirdly paced, if we ever get it.

[Daenerysthegreat]

2 minutes ago, WhatAnArtist! said:

So a lot of the ideas I've seen in this thread seem very radical and extreme and would basically completely change how the series develops, which I think is ridiculous.

I didn't change anything. Just switched some chapters. Replaced some with some. But the story is the same one Mr Martin wrote. I made zero changes to the plot. 

 

3 minutes ago, WhatAnArtist! said:

Reduce the many filler chapters in Dance (mostly Tyrion and Dany) so as to be able to include both the Battle of Meereen and the Battle of Winterfell at the end of the book. Ending the book before either of these were resolved was the single biggest pacing mistake in the entire series, and I can't believe Martin was okay with leaving it like that. It makes the book feel insultingly anti-climactic, and it's going to make Winds feel extremely weirdly paced, if we ever get it

I agree though I did it with jon instead of these two. The reason are his storyline not setting up any battle. Mel's importance as a character. 

I don't agree about the climax thing though. I'm on my re read. I read the sacrifice chapters and it seems like a really good ending to their arcs. Reek becomes theon and leaves his prison. Asha finds her brother. An climax doesn't necessarily require a big bad battle. 

7 minutes ago, WhatAnArtist! said:

Severely cut down on the amount of Arya chapters in Clash and Storm. On my recent reread of the series, her chapters were such a chore to get through, knowing that they are completely irrelevant to the larger story. People criticise Brienne's chapters in Feast for being pointless, even though there's only 8 of them, but praise Arya's when there's 23 of them? Her multi-book storyline consists almost solely of "so she wanders through the countryside, gets captured by some people, is a prisoner for a while, feels lonely and angry, then escapes, wanders around some more, sees a few burned villages, gets captured again, feels lonely and angry again, then escapes again, but guess what? She just got captured again! But it won't be for long, she'll escape again soon, of course." Just over and over and over again. Brienne's storyline covered all of the same themes that Arya's did, and better and more efficiently.

I agree

I removed her chapters after the red wedding.