The Winds of Winter: The Latest Info (updated 10 July 2022)

[Dreadscythe95]

35 minutes ago, DMC said:

It won't be around 1500-1600 pages.  Martin gave the comparisons of ASOS and ADWD, which were around 1500 manuscript pages.  But my paperback copy of ASOS is 1128 pages and my ADWD hardcover is 959 - not counting appendices.

There is no way. My ADwD is around 1400 to 1500 pages with the appendixes. 

[DMC]

9 minutes ago, Dreadscythe95 said:

There is no way. My ADwD is around 1400 to 1500 pages with the appendixes. 

It is?  Damn.  Counting appendices my paperback of ASOS is 1177 pages and my hardcover of ADWD is 1016.  Anyway, the point is 1500 manuscript pages /= 1500 published pages.  And I think it's safe to assume Martin is not including the appendices in these estimates.

[Stark Revenge]

3 hours ago, Dreadscythe95 said:

This is not happening. You will get Winds in the next 2 years but Dream is at least 8 years away imo.

I don't feel that mad though. George has procrastinated a lot but if WInds is around 1500-1600 pages it will be a bit smaller than the whole Harry Poter franscise. 

That’s probably true. But even if we get Winds I really am pessimistic that we’ll ever see Dream given his age. If Winds comes out in two years, GRRM will be 76. If he takes another 13 years to write Dream, he’ll be 89 at that point. Just seems like a lot to count on. 

[mormont]

In the interests of good taste, and the fact that folks that know GRRM personally peruse the forum, let's put the actuarial tables away, please.

[Dreadscythe95]

58 minutes ago, Stark Revenge said:

That’s probably true. But even if we get Winds I really am pessimistic that we’ll ever see Dream given his age. If Winds comes out in two years, GRRM will be 76. If he takes another 13 years to write Dream, he’ll be 89 at that point. Just seems like a lot to count on. 

it does not mean that ADoS has to take that long (or that it won't). Martin only wrote Winds the past 3 years minus the early aroind 200 pages he had already written back in 2011. His productive writing of The WInds won't be more than 5 years. Also, a final book can run faster because the stories are closing and things get more in trail. When you write an essay, the last part is usually the easiest to write because your brain has made the connections and it running on it's own.

[Stark Revenge]

45 minutes ago, Dreadscythe95 said:

it does not mean that ADoS has to take that long (or that it won't). Martin only wrote Winds the past 3 years minus the early aroind 200 pages he had already written back in 2011. His productive writing of The WInds won't be more than 5 years. Also, a final book can run faster because the stories are closing and things get more in trail. When you write an essay, the last part is usually the easiest to write because your brain has made the connections and it running on its own.

Are you saying he didn’t start truly writing Winds until 2019? I haven’t heard this before, did he say that on his blog? Was he too busy with the show beforehand? 

Yeah that does make sense to me, the conclusion is the easiest part to write, so hopefully Dream does go faster, guess we’ll see. 

[Stark Revenge]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

In the interests of good taste, and the fact that folks that know GRRM personally peruse the forum, let's put the actuarial tables away, please.

Sorry no harm meant. 

[Werthead]

4 hours ago, Dreadscythe95 said:

There is no way. My ADwD is around 1400 to 1500 pages with the appendixes. 

What edition is that? No English-language edition of ADWD is 1400 pages long to my knowledge. The hardover is around 1,000 pages and the one-volume paperback is around 1200. Even the two-volume UK paperback edition only adds up to about 1200.

4 hours ago, DMC said:

It is?  Damn.  Counting appendices my paperback of ASOS is 1177 pages and my hardcover of ADWD is 1016.  Anyway, the point is 1500 manuscript pages /= 1500 published pages.  And I think it's safe to assume Martin is not including the appendices in these estimates.

No, the appendices are added after the fact, so no manuscript page count includes them.

1 hour ago, Dreadscythe95 said:

it does not mean that ADoS has to take that long (or that it won't). Martin only wrote Winds the past 3 years minus the early aroind 200 pages he had already written back in 2011. His productive writing of The WInds won't be more than 5 years. Also, a final book can run faster because the stories are closing and things get more in trail. When you write an essay, the last part is usually the easiest to write because your brain has made the connections and it running on it's own.

GRRM started writing TWoW in earnest in 2012-13. After finishing ADWD in 2011 and going on a very lengthy book tour that extended into 2012, he switched hard to working on The World of Ice and Fire (including the 250,000+ word digression that became Fire & Blood and all its sample novellas) and Lands of Ice and Fire, and finally got back into the groove on TWoW late in 2012 or early in 2013.

The idea that GRRM did no work on TWoW at all between 2011 and a couple of years ago is nonsense.

[sifth]

7 minutes ago, Werthead said:

GRRM started writing TWoW in earnest in 2012-13. After finishing ADWD in 2011 and going on a very lengthy book tour that extended into 2012, he switched hard to working on The World of Ice and Fire (including the 250,000+ word digression that became Fire & Blood and all its sample novellas) and Lands of Ice and Fire, and finally got back into the groove on TWoW late in 2012 or early in 2013.

The idea that GRRM did no work on TWoW at all between 2011 and a couple of years ago is nonsense.

Let's not ignore the fact that several hundreds of pages of WoW are left over material from ADWD. Possibly as much as 1/5th of the book. It seems rather strange that he's only 75% complete over 11 years later, given the head start he had; other than writers block.

It's not so much that he started writing WoW in 2012, but more that he started writing chapters that weren't left overs from the previous book that year.

Edited October 25, 2022 by sifth

[SpaceChampion]

I'm trying to understand the timeline...  GRRM said they knew HBO was going ahead with HOTD so Random House told him to finish F&B, he announced it was delivered in April 2018, and then it was published in November 2018.   So if he took a month to write it, let's say some time in February 2018 was the first he knew HOTD was coming, at the latest.

But HOTD didn't get the straight-to-series order announced until October 2019, the same month Bloodmoon was cancelled.    Why was he so sure it was coming 20 months earlier when another series was in production?  There were something like 5 others contenders, most of which derived from F&B too, so perhaps in the recent interview GRRM was talking more generally to Random House of the idea of a F&B based follow-up show, rather than about HOTD specifically.

 

 

Edited October 26, 2022 by SpaceChampion

[Crixus]

I would actually be more than happy to get F&B2 - loads of detail on Aegon 3 right up till Jahaerys 2 would be fantastic. Also DnE of course. 

But in any case, things seem to be looking up for WoW, which is good news. 

[Werthead]

11 hours ago, sifth said:

Let's not ignore the fact that several hundreds of pages of WoW are left over material from ADWD. Possibly as much as 1/5th of the book. It seems rather strange that he's only 75% complete over 11 years later, given the head start he had; other than writers block.

It's not so much that he started writing WoW in 2012, but more that he started writing chapters that weren't left overs from the previous book that year.

150-200 MS pages out of 1800 is 1/9 of the book at best, not anywhere near 1/5. Going by what happened with ADWD and AFFC, they'll have also been likely rewritten by now (comparing the early sample chapters to the final book version is interesting).

And yes, he started working on stuff in 2012 that he had not already completed in early 2011 for ADWD and then cut. The point is that he didn't "do nothing" on TWoW and only started writing new material for it in 2019, that's ludicrous.

10 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

I'm trying to understand the timeline...  GRRM said they knew HBO was going ahead with HOTD so Random House told him to finish F&B, he announced it was delivered in April 2018, and then it was published in November 2018.   So if he took a month to write it, let's say some time in February 2018 was the first he knew HOTD was coming, at the latest.

But HOTD didn't get the straight-to-series order announced until October 2019, the same month Bloodmoon was cancelled.    Why was he so sure it was coming 20 months earlier when another series was in production?  There were something like 5 others contenders, most of which derived from F&B too, so perhaps in the recent interview GRRM was talking more generally to Random House of the idea of a F&B based follow-up show, rather than about HOTD specifically.

GRRM wrote the bulk of F&B as part of his work on The World of Ice and Fire; the overwhelming majority of Fire & Blood, lacking mostly the Jaehaerys material and I believe some stuff on the regency of Aegon III, was completed in 2012 and certainly by 2013, when the first excerpt of that material - The Princess and the Queen - was published in Dangerous Women. George started talking about the "GRRMarillion" (Fire & Blood) around the same time.

When HBO started talking about spin-offs, GRRM drew on the "GRRMarillion" for ideas, and one of the very first ideas they talked about (possibly as early as 2015-16, maybe even earlier) was a Dance of Dragons show. That was always George's first choice for a spin-off. Some of the other ideas also came from that book or The World of Ice and Fire, like the Ten Thousand Ships, the Conquest etc. GRRM didn't like the idea of proceeding without source material (which is why he was dubious on The Longest Night and apparently shot down the pre-Doom Valyria idea, as he'd have to spend a lot of time on fresh worldbuilding, whilst with anything from World or F&B the material already existed).

So it looks like George was wedded to using the Dance as source material and when it the first iteration of House of the Dragon was in development with Bryan Cogman, he moved to finish Fire & Blood and publish it to lock in some of the details for the show to draw on. Cogman's version fell through, Longest Night went through the pilot process etc and then House of the Dragon was picked up, but publishing schedules being what they were, Fire & Blood kept ticking through the process.

[Equilibrium]

@WertheadQuestion occurred to me to ask you since you always talk about it, what does stop the publishers from making a bigger book, not more pages, just bigger height x width? 

I have some truly monstrous hardcover books Complete Shakespeare (UK made), War and Peace, Count Monte Cristo they are like twice the size of regular paperback and Shakespeare has a pretty small font as well. 

Since you mentioned it chiefly as American problem with splitting one work into two physical books, why don't they make it bigger I find it hard to believe Americans have standardized book size, even that company has just one size fits all format.

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, Equilibrium said:

@WertheadQuestion occurred to me to ask you since you always talk about it, what does stop the publishers from making a bigger book, not more pages, just bigger height x width? 

I have some truly monstrous hardcover books Complete Shakespeare (UK made), War and Peace, Count Monte Cristo they are like twice the size of regular paperback and Shakespeare has a pretty small font as well. 

Since you mentioned it chiefly as American problem with splitting one work into two physical books, why don't they make it bigger I find it hard to believe Americans have standardized book size, even that company has just one size fits all format.

Bookshops have standardised shelves. They do have special areas for larger-format books, like Dorling Kindersley books and World of Ice and Fire, but for regular fiction hardcovers and paperbacks they have set sizes which books have to fit in, at least height wise (thickness varies a lot, of course). That's not just on the fiction shelves, but also the fiction bestseller stacks that are normally at the front of stores and from where a lot of books are sold.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

On 10/25/2022 at 6:22 AM, cytherea said:

George claims he's three quarters of the way done with Winds of Winter!

I remember him saying that he was a quarter of the way done back in 2013. It has really been a slow grind. 

[Equilibrium]

39 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Bookshops have standardised shelves. They do have special areas for larger-format books, like Dorling Kindersley books and World of Ice and Fire, but for regular fiction hardcovers and paperbacks they have set sizes which books have to fit in, at least height wise (thickness varies a lot, of course). That's not just on the fiction shelves, but also the fiction bestseller stacks that are normally at the front of stores and from where a lot of books are sold.

So whether I get Grisham or GRRM or Abercrombie and no matter the publisher all the books would be the same size? I never visited US but I traveled all across Europe and in every country in bookstores there are bunch of different formats of books and they usually have some space extra above and in front, and bookstores don't have standardized shelves, some have this kind or that and they are visibly of different sizes.

One ASOIAF set for Harper Collins is 12.9 x 19.8 cm, other 11 x 18 cm and Pengiun Random House hardcover is 16.3 x 20.4 cm which is significantly larger, but still much smaller than TWOIAF 23.7 x 30.9 cm

What is the standard than and what is the upper limit those American shelves can receive? Would any bookstore realistically refuse to carry TWOW?

Edited October 26, 2022 by Equilibrium

[Kyll.Ing.]

On 10/25/2022 at 6:22 AM, cytherea said:

George claims he's three quarters of the way done with Winds of Winter!

https://thebrag.com/george-r-r-martin-confirms-hes-3-4-done-with-winds-of-winter/

This is in a way great news, but I keep returning to that time he thought he was four months away from finishing the manuscript back in 2015.

Also, "three quarters" doesn't strike me as a very uplifting estimate. Given the time the book has spent in writing, a figure like that implies that he still thinks the book will take a couple more years to get finished. And GRRM's estimates are famously, well ... you know.

Of course, this "sorry, no more than 75% complete" statement may be deliberately pessimistic for strategic reasons, trying to under-promise and over-deliver instead of the opposite. It could be that he's closer to 90%, but giving himself a wide buffer to work with. After all, they say the first 90% of the work takes 90% of the allotted time, and the remaining 10% also takes 90% of the allotted time.

[Casso, King of the Seals]

I have found that the most energy-saving approach is to just accept that the story might not be finished and then appreciate the books for what they are if they do come out. I think that some people will hype themselves up so much about Winds that once it comes out they might be disappointed about how it doesn't move at a rapid pace and will be just as novel-like as the other books (which I like). Bear in mind that each of these books covers about half a year of real time in the story-world.

Anyway, he restated the 3/4 done thing on the Stephen Colbert show and mentions that he is done with several POVs with some still to go. So if he considers to have roughly 1,300 manuscript pages done and polished, he has about 500 pages to go, considering he thinks the book will be 300 pages longer than ASOS and ADWD. Lately he seems optimistic and in the flow, even with these little trips away from home. So I would say that Winds could be published maybe 2024 if all things go well. I do think we will get that book. I personally think they will either manage to cram the whole thing into one book by making it physically taller or making the text slightly smaller. Splitting the book in two and releasing it on two different release dates could be tempting for the publishers if they seek profit, but I think at the end it will be released as one huge book or at most as two volumes sold as a package.

Whether he is gonna be able to deliver Dream is a function of how complex it will be, how much groundwork is gonna be done in Winds in terms of cutting POVs and bringing them together and wrapping up certain storylines, and also whether his writing speed remains the same.

I am cautiously optimistic about the series, he certainly seems energetic and committed to finishing it, despite it going slowly and people complaining.

Edited October 26, 2022 by Casso, King of the Seals

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

I remember him saying that he was a quarter of the way done back in 2013. It has really been a slow grind. 

He never said that. People estimated that from his reports of what chapters he'd completed and based on the original 1500 MS page estimate for how big the book would be.

1 hour ago, Equilibrium said:

So whether I get Grisham or GRRM or Abercrombie and no matter the publisher all the books would be the same size?

Within certain parameters. In the European market they have standardised sizing formats which they call A, B, C etc. There was a huge controversy about a decade ago when the entire UK industry moved almost overnight from A B to A-sized paperbacks, which were larger and took up more vertical space on the shelf and in bags.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

He never said that.

He did. 1:00 into this video.