What has been the Meereenese’s knot in The Winds of Winter for the book taking so long?

[BlackLightning]

13 hours ago, Aldarion said:

Also, descriptions of food.

Would axing the copious descriptions of food and drink at the feasts really do anything for the length of the books?

I don't think so.

On 12/6/2021 at 3:09 PM, Shagwell the mad jester said:

The plot lines in Essos become more and more complicated and at the end of ADWD new storylines are being created instead of old ones being solved. The Tattered Prince, whose price for helping Barristan Selmy is Pentos. Dany with just one dragon in the Dothraki sea meeting Khal Jhaqo.  The political situation in Slavers' Bay, especially Mereen. The "Mereneese knot", how I understand it, is indeed a difficult thing - how can Dany get out of there and to Westeros without rendering the whole storyline useless?

I actually like the increasingly complexity of the plotlines in Essos.

I just think that he started too late. If he had made it so that say the Tattered Prince subplot happened in A Storm of Swords things would be different.

 

[The Bard of Banefort]

4 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

Would axing the copious descriptions of food and drink at the feasts really do anything for the length of the books?

I don't think so.

I actually like the increasingly complexity of the plotlines in Essos.

I just think that he started too late. If he had made it so that say the Tattered Prince subplot happened in A Storm of Swords things would be different.

 

Maybe it's just me, but I honest to God took no notice of the food descriptions when I read the books. I just glanced over them and kept reading.

 

22 hours ago, Mithras said:

It's been over a decade. Every sign is bad.

#12YearsInAzkaban

[Apoplexy]

11 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Maybe it's just me, but I honest to God took no notice of the food descriptions when I read the books. I just glanced over them and kept reading.

I actually appreciate the vivid food descriptions and the massive world building. Having said that, I don't need to know every detail about every food eaten by every character on every continent every single time they eat. Some of it is definitely GRRM being unable to edit.

[Trigger Warning]

Ultimately I feel like if he really wanted to finish Winds he'd have done it by now, I don't believe that he has a tangible thing standing in the way of that. I'm not saying that he doesn't want to finish but not at the expense of doing other things and just committing to getting it done. A Game of Thrones was published over 2 decades ago, it's possible he just doesn't have as much passion for the flagship story as he used to. 

[Only 89 selfies today]

19 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

I actually like the increasingly complexity of the plotlines in Essos.

I just think that he started too late. If he had made it so that say the Tattered Prince subplot happened in A Storm of Swords things would be different.

 

The story has slowly been shifting to Essos as I believe it is where the survivors of the apocalypse in Westeros will go to escape the harsh and deadly winter.  I love having Dany and Barristan on the center stage. 

[Apoplexy]

1 hour ago, Trigger Warning said:

Ultimately I feel like if he really wanted to finish Winds he'd have done it by now, I don't believe that he has a tangible thing standing in the way of that. I'm not saying that he doesn't want to finish but not at the expense of doing other things and just committing to getting it done. A Game of Thrones was published over 2 decades ago, it's possible he just doesn't have as much passion for the flagship story as he used to. 

Wanting to do something is not the same as having the inclination to do it. I've heard a lot of people say its his prerogative and he doesn't owe anyone anything. While its definitely his prerogative, to say he doesn't owe readers ANYTHING is unfair. That is not to say its ok for readers to insist he do nothing else in his life except write Winds and finish the books. But I think its perfectly acceptable for readers to feel let down.

[The Bard of Banefort]

He just shared another blog post with a positive emoji. I want to believe this means the end is finally near and we’ll be reading TWOW soon, but we’ve already been burned so many times now. . . 
 

Granted, it would be hilarious if that one person’s complicated mathematical equation on Reddit that calculated TWOW’s release date as April 2022 turned out to be true. Talk about the power of math.

[Jaenara Belarys]

1 minute ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

He just shared another blog post with a positive emoji. I want to believe this means the end is finally near and we’ll be reading TWOW soon, but we’ve already been burned so many times now. . . 

Probably working on some TV thing. 

1 minute ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Granted, it would be hilarious if that one person’s complicated mathematical equation on Reddit that calculated TWOW’s release date as April 2022 turned out to be true. Talk about the power of math.

How in seven hells did someone predict that with math? Granted, math is very useful and does a lot but I don't know how you predict it that specific. 

[Odej]

1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

He just shared another blog post with a positive emoji. I want to believe this means the end is finally near and we’ll be reading TWOW soon, but we’ve already been burned so many times now. . . 
 

Yeah, I think it gets even more frustrating when he sort of gives out possible dates. This creates expectations and when what was expected doesn't happens it makes it worse. In 2016 he said that he believed he would finish the book that year and we waited, the year passed and the book did not come out. In 2020 he said something similarly, the year passed and nothing. I really wish he doesn't said anything about the book progress until he finally finish it.

[Shagwell the mad jester]

On 12/18/2021 at 1:14 AM, BlackLightning said:

actually like the increasingly complexity of the plotlines in Essos.

So do I, that's not my point. I am just afraid, that GRRM had too many ideas at this point and he doesn't know how to put them into a story of (supposedly) just two volumes.

Another example is the false Dimitry story with Young Griff, which was introduced only in ADWD - this is also something he could have came up with much earlier (we wouldn't have got a Tyrion POV in Essos though).

Like it was put by someone else in this thread: he seems to have lost control over the story. Too may ideas that affect the whole plot line, which isn't that easy to adjust after all. I don't think he's lost interest (supposedly he has already written so many manuscript pages, that there could be three versions of TWOW already). I think it's rather the opposite: not getting the story together any more due to an abundance of ideas. So it's in fact propably better to write shorter stories instead. But i am also afraid this will kill ASOIAF. We might still get TWOW, but A dream of spring? - well. We'll see.

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight9]

The fate and reunion of the Stark children, Jon's changes in personality after his ressurection,the situation at KL, how to properly write the Others and their invasion are certainly some of the most difficult aspects of the book to write.

[Apoplexy]

4 hours ago, Shagwell the mad jester said:

I am just afraid, that GRRM had too many ideas at this point and he doesn't know how to put them into a story of (supposedly) just two volumes.

And of course GRRM wouldnt want this story to be anything less than perfect in his view. He may just have bitten off more than he could chew.

Essos and grejoy storylines would need more than two volumes to resolve. And then there's the question of the threat beyond the wall. Trying to squeeze all that in two volumes seems like a challenge. Lets say Winds comes out, writing Dream would probably be a bigger challenge than winds.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

On 12/18/2021 at 11:36 AM, Apoplexy said:

I actually appreciate the vivid food descriptions and the massive world building. Having said that, I don't need to know every detail about every food eaten by every character on every continent every single time they eat. Some of it is definitely GRRM being unable to edit.

I agree. In most cases I love his food and heraldry writing, but they can certainly feel like spiels, almost like Tom Waits riffing from the top of his head. The flow and the play of words can be impressive, but it's still a rant.

[Aebram]

What do we know about George's writing style? Some authors plan out their storylines well in advance. Others work by intuition: they write the beginning, and then "the characters take on a life of their own," and the author just sort of waits to see what they will do.

I think George is the first type. I think that he has a resolution in mind for any new subplot that he introduces. So the problems are not technical; they are emotional. For whatever reason, he's just finding that working on other projects is more appealing lately.

Maybe I'm projecting; I don't write fiction (much), but I write software for a living, and it's a similar process. I always have several active projects on my desk. Sometimes I prefer to work on a small project, where I can make a lot of progress in a few hours, rather than resume work on a big project, for which I may not even get to a good stopping place by the end of the day.

[Apoplexy]

6 hours ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I agree. In most cases I love his food and heraldry writing, but they can certainly feel like spiels, almost like Tom Waits riffing from the top of his head. The flow and the play of words can be impressive, but it's still a rant.

I feel the same way about the world building. The descriptions of all the places the characters are spread across are pretty fascinating. But after a point, I feel like he should just let it go. It feels like badgering- in case you forgot, this is Yunkai, not to be confused with Meereen. Readers who care will not need to be told, readers who don't will just rush through it.

[EggBlue]

1 hour ago, Apoplexy said:

I feel the same way about the world building. The descriptions of all the places the characters are spread across are pretty fascinating. But after a point, I feel like he should just let it go. It feels like badgering- in case you forgot, this is Yunkai, not to be confused with Meereen. Readers who care will not need to be told, readers who don't will just rush through it.

at this point, I don't think he can let it go. it would've been a different matter if he had started cutting off his little worldbuilding materials here and there .. but now, if he does , the quality and style of his books simply won't match and the series as a whole won't be the best version of itself.

I think he does work on this project and he does want to finish it. I believe he sees this series as his legacy. he's had good books before , he's won awards for them but he must know this one could make him immortal in the world of fantasy literature. yet, if it stays unfinished, how longer would we be here talking about it? ... I think he is investing on Asoiaf long term.. he probably doesn't see himself in a rush as long as he finishes it before.. um.. he dies.. so , he works on it little by little the way he wants with his own perfectionism [disorder:)].. and he could linger it for almost two more decades ( let's say he'll be healthy enough to write till he's 93:)) and still don't mind.

On 12/19/2021 at 8:40 PM, Apoplexy said:

writing Dream would probably be a bigger challenge than winds.

...don't know... feels like Winds and (Feast+Dance) should be harder to write than Dream...

[BlackLightning]

12 hours ago, EggBlue said:

...don't know... feels like Winds and (Feast+Dance) should be harder to write than Dream...

Nah.

A Dream of Spring is definitely going to be the most challenging book for him to write. And it's also going to be the biggest.

You know how much stuff needs to be resolved or addressed in A Dream of Spring? All of the magic and associated magical mysteries and prophecies needs to be made plain or definitively implied.

All of them. You can't have a fantasy series incorporating the use of magic without you fully explaining how that magic system of the series works. And to be honest, there are at least four different magic systems in A Song of Ice and Fire. 

JK Rowling had a much, much simpler magic system and even she found Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows difficult to write. And Deathly Hallows wasn't even all that good.

And then there are all of the character arcs. I don't see barely any POVs dying in Winds (maybe only Aeron, Barristan and/or Theon if that) but Dream is going to make the Red Wedding look like a classy tea party. We'll probably only end the novel with only Sansa, Arya and Bran as POVs.

Going from ~17 to 3 in a span of a book? It's going to be a bloodbath. They are all POVs for a reason so they have their own story arcs in addition to the actual plot that they are telling. All that needs to be resolved either when they die or shortly thereafter...in someone else's chapter. And we're not even talking about all of the other non-POV characters.

Then there are all of these lingering mysteries that we have been grappling with. Ignore the mysteries that we got in Feast and Dance. Let's talk about the ones we have had since A Game of Thrones? Namely....

• What happened at the Tower of Joy?
• What happened at Starfall?
• What really happened in Sunspear when Jon Arryn visited and how did that affect what would happen in Braavos?
• Remember the stag that killed the mother direwolf? What killed the stag?
• What did Bran see in the Heart of Winter?
• Why was Bran chosen?
• Why was Dany able to bring back dragons and no one else? And why was she able to do it on accident with no training?!
• Why did Drogo want Dany so much?
• What is Varys up to? Where the hell did Varys come from?
• How did wights end up at the Wall and why?
• Why was there a Faceless Man in the Black Cells? How they hell did he/she get caught?

And Dream is probably going to be more of a horror story. Which means he's going to have to nail the tone in every single chapter from cover to cover.

On 12/19/2021 at 11:10 AM, Apoplexy said:

Lets say Winds comes out, writing Dream would probably be a bigger challenge than winds.

Agreed.

I think writing the last quarter of Dream will be easy. But the first three quarters? Forget it.

[Lord Lannister]

On 12/18/2021 at 2:02 PM, Apoplexy said:

Wanting to do something is not the same as having the inclination to do it. I've heard a lot of people say its his prerogative and he doesn't owe anyone anything. While its definitely his prerogative, to say he doesn't owe readers ANYTHING is unfair. That is not to say its ok for readers to insist he do nothing else in his life except write Winds and finish the books. But I think its perfectly acceptable for readers to feel let down.

I agree with this. Attempts to attack the people who express frustration with saying he doesn't owe anyone anything are disingenuous and just an attempt at guilting people from ignoring the issue.

I first read the novels 8 years ago. I binged all five in the space of a month that's how much I was into them. I found this community not long later, I was that eager to join it and be a part of it. 

So when people say Martin doesn't "owe" us anything, I mean.. thanks for saying the obvious. That's not what is frustrating fans. What's frustrating is we've been strung along by his statements of making great progress, getting a lot of work done, lock me in my cabin if I'm not done by when, and so on and so on. If he just said, hey I'm focusing on other things, won't be working on Winds, I'd be disappointed, but I'd get it and move on. Routinely getting hopes up, stringing fans along, then letting them down again and again is what is frustrating people. 

[LynnS]

A dark mood is taking over.  I feel like something kristmas-y...

 

The Streams of Winter, v.25 - Tyrion Lannister - YouTube

 

[The Bard of Banefort]

It’s crazy to think just how much faster characters used to move in the books. Tyrion in AGOT started in Winterfell, went north to the Wall, came all the way down to the Trident, was abducted and dragged to the Eyrie, stood trial, encountered the clans in the Vale, went back to the Riverlands, fought in a battle, and then was named acting Hand. 

Arya spent AFFC and ADWD mopping floors.