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

[The Bard of Banefort]

54 minutes ago, Ran said:

Not really. Outside of brief pieces for Aerys II and I think Aegon IV, nothing was written for the post-regency era. 

Also Daeron I and Baelor. And GRRM mentioned last year that he has already written a couple hundred pages of FB2.

[Ran]

5 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Also Daeron I and Baelor. And GRRM mentioned last year that he has already written a couple hundred pages of FB2.

George didn't write the Daeron I and Baelor sections for TWoIaF. He had some fairly detailed notes for that period, though.

[$erPounce]

I don't think it will take much time for George to write Fire & Blood Volume 2. Didn't Elio say that writing the Jaehaerys chapters in Volume 1 took only a month and a half? Those chapters are about 1/3 of that book.

Also, I don't think George needed that much time for the past Dunk & Egg books.

Honestly, I believe George mostly struggles with the ASOIAF mainline books. My impression is that he never had much trouble writing Dunk & Egg, Fire & Blood and (some parts of) World of Ice and Fire. After all, those books are on a smaller scale and more straightforward than ASOIAF and do not have many storylines intersecting with each other.
 

[Gilbert Green]

On 7/30/2023 at 1:48 PM, $erPounce said:

I don't think it will take much time for George to write Fire & Blood Volume 2.

Don't listen to them GRRM.  Don't listen.  Finish WINDS.  Then worry about F&B2. 

On 7/30/2023 at 1:48 PM, $erPounce said:

Didn't Elio say that writing the Jaehaerys chapters in Volume 1 took only a month and a half? Those chapters are about 1/3 of that book.

Who knows?  But the book overall developed between 2006, when the "World Book" project was first planned, and Nov, 2018, when F&B1 was finally released.   That's a long time overall, regardless of whether certain chapters were easy to write

On 7/30/2023 at 1:48 PM, $erPounce said:

Also, I don't think George needed that much time for the past Dunk & Egg books.

.Who knows.  IIRC he was supposed to submit a Dunk & Egg story to DANGEROUS WOMEN, and an unconnected short story to a Jack Vance tribute anthology.  But we cannot say he "struggled" with these tasks.  He may have never started them because he was too busy struggling with the World Book project.

On 7/30/2023 at 1:48 PM, $erPounce said:

My impression is that he never had much trouble writing Dunk & Egg, Fire & Blood and (some parts of) World of Ice and Fire. After all, those books are on a smaller scale and more straightforward than ASOIAF and do not have many storylines intersecting with each other.

But ... maybe they do intersect.

[SeanBeanedMeUp]

I hope GRRM just ditches HBO permanently, because HBO has been nagging him on all sorts of ASOIAF-related projects. Like ffs just let the man finish his work!

[sifth]

6 hours ago, SeanBeanedMeUp said:

I hope GRRM just ditches HBO permanently, because HBO has been nagging him on all sorts of ASOIAF-related projects. Like ffs just let the man finish his work!

As much as I love the early seasons of the show and House of the Dragon, I often wonder if the HBO deal is the worst thing to happen to this series. It both distracted GRRM from completing the books and made a rather small series, that not a whole lot of people heard about into a series that rivals Harry Potter in terms of popularity.

[Dragon in the North]

4 hours ago, sifth said:

As much as I love the early seasons of the show and House of the Dragon, I often wonder if the HBO deal is the worst thing to happen to this series. It both distracted GRRM from completing the books and made a rather small series, that not a whole lot of people heard about into a series that rivals Harry Potter in terms of popularity.

Even without the HBO deal, Martin would have found some other way to distract himself.

[Castellan]

On 12/24/2022 at 9:50 PM, MissM said:

GRRM has diverged from that position. In repeated statements he has grown to emphasize the differences. He described his book ending as an alternate universe to what we saw on screen. D&D did not accurately adapt GRRM's story according to people GRRM has spoken to that know about his ending. Hibberd said he interviewed GRRM privately over the course of 10 years while working with Entertainment Weekly for the GOT exclusive cover issues. In 2019, he confirmed the main 6 have very different book endings to what we saw on screen. 

GRRM has stated many times that his ending differs to the show. His close friends publicly showed sympathy to how poorly his ending was adapted.

Diana Gabaldson interviewed in the Guardian after Season 8:

"Poor George, I feel very sorry for him," she says. "What happened is that his show caught up with him and he  met with showrunners and he told them what he was planning to do in that book so that they could then write accordingly. Only they didn't write accordingly. They took his stuff and distorted it and wrote their own ending, which wasn't at all what he had in mind but used all the elements he told them."

D&D have a proven track record of altering character arcs to meet whatever end goal they have in mind.

 

the last season especially the last episodes were so bad that many viewers found them laughable. At least the ones I know said so, and that the show was being mocked online. I actually stopped watching after a few seasons and didn't go back to it. (I realise that sounds pretty odd for someone on this forum.) So I think when Diana Gabaldson is interviewed and says 'poor George' I assume she is sympathising with him for the travesty of the last season in terms of quality. There would be a way for characters to get to certain point that would make it seem plausible and moving and consistent but if you took that ending and worked towards it in an absolutely crass way and had time limits as to how you can get all the final points in it becomes ridiculous. I had the impression they just thought they'd cashed in enough and people would be glued to their TVs no matter what but perhaps I do them a disservice. I can see it would be extremely hard to do at all. Probably George's verbal summary would in fact have taken a few more series to work towards!

[SeanBeanedMeUp]

6 hours ago, sifth said:

As much as I love the early seasons of the show and House of the Dragon, I often wonder if the HBO deal is the worst thing to happen to this series. It both distracted GRRM from completing the books and made a rather small series, that not a whole lot of people heard about into a series that rivals Harry Potter in terms of popularity.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if the OG show got started as soon as Winds was released. GRRM and HBO's biggest mistake (after trusting D&D) is making the show way too damn early.

2 hours ago, Dragon in the North said:

Even without the HBO deal, Martin would have found some other way to distract himself.

Nah, HBO was what truly sucked the life force out of GRRM for so long and only recently is he trying to get it back.

[Dragon in the North]

56 minutes ago, SeanBeanedMeUp said:

Nah, HBO was what truly sucked the life force out of GRRM for so long and only recently is he trying to get it back.

I disagree. Martin’s writing pace was slowing down long before the show. Feast took 5 years, Dance took 6. It’s my belief that Winds is taking longer than Feast and Dance combined is because he really messed up his story with those two books. His story has grown out of control.

[SeanBeanedMeUp]

27 minutes ago, Dragon in the North said:

I disagree. Martin’s writing pace was slowing down long before the show. Feast took 5 years, Dance took 6. It’s my belief that Winds is taking longer than Feast and Dance combined is because he really messed up his story with those two books. His story has grown out of control.

Based on what you said, Winds should've ideally taken 7 years if it weren't for the show. And we would've gotten it by now. Guy was busy trying to help get the original show off the ground that he had to put off Winds for a while.

[Dragon in the North]

3 minutes ago, SeanBeanedMeUp said:

Based on what you said, Winds should've ideally taken 7 years if it weren't for the show. And we would've gotten it by now. Guy was busy trying to help get the original show off the ground that he had to put off Winds for a while.

“It’s my belief that Winds is taking longer than Feast and Dance combined because he really messed up his story with those two books. His story has grown out of control.”

Already explained it. 

[sifth]

4 minutes ago, Dragon in the North said:

“It’s my belief that Winds is taking longer than Feast and Dance combined because he really messed up his story with those two books. His story has grown out of control.”

Already explained it. 

What exactly do you think he messed up? Not ending Dance with the battles? Killing off Kevan?

[Dragon in the North]

19 minutes ago, sifth said:

What exactly do you think he messed up? Not ending Dance with the battles? Killing off Kevan?

Making the story too big to manage. 

[SeanBeanedMeUp]

2 hours ago, Dragon in the North said:

“It’s my belief that Winds is taking longer than Feast and Dance combined because he really messed up his story with those two books. His story has grown out of control.”

Already explained it. 

There's that, but having to help D&D make the show hasn't helped either. If it weren't for the show at least GRRM could've made a lot more progress.

And in defense of the story growing this large, GRRM is taking into account the butterfly effect for so many things that have happened. If the story was more limited in the scope I highly doubt it'd be as good now. Granted, I will say that GRRM does need to watch the scope of the story because it can't go on forever and there does need to be an endpoint especially when the you-know-whos coming over from the Wall.

[Dragon in the North]

23 minutes ago, SeanBeanedMeUp said:

There's that, but having to help D&D make the show hasn't helped either. If it weren't for the show at least GRRM could've made a lot more progress.

And in defense of the story growing this large, GRRM is taking into account the butterfly effect for so many things that have happened. If the story was more limited in the scope I highly doubt it'd be as good now. Granted, I will say that GRRM does need to watch the scope of the story because it can't go on forever and there does need to be an endpoint especially when the you-know-whos coming over from the Wall.

Maybe you know something I don’t, but the only help I’m aware he gave D&D was writing one episode for the first four seasons and that meeting D&D had with him when the show was about to overtake the books. That doesn’t account for the twelve years it’s taken for him to write Winds.

 

Personally, I found the first three books to be astronomically better than the last two, and they were more limited in scope. 

[SeanBeanedMeUp]

3 hours ago, Dragon in the North said:

Maybe you know something I don’t, but the only help I’m aware he gave D&D was writing one episode for the first four seasons and that meeting D&D had with him when the show was about to overtake the books. That doesn’t account for the twelve years it’s taken for him to write Winds.

 

Personally, I found the first three books to be astronomically better than the last two, and they were more limited in scope. 

He was more of an advisor to D&D if I recall correctly.

I liked the other two because it showed how the events of the WotFK and Dany's consequences were impacting the world and how the anti-Lannister crowd is fairing.

[Dragon in the North]

8 hours ago, SeanBeanedMeUp said:

He was more of an advisor to D&D if I recall correctly.

I liked the other two because it showed how the events of the WotFK and Dany's consequences were impacting the world and how the anti-Lannister crowd is fairing.

I’m sure he gave his advice from time to time, but I don’t think he was a full time consultant. It’s not like he was on set every day.

I disagree about Feast and Dance. I found them to be very bad books.

[Back in Black-Snow]

4 hours ago, Dragon in the North said:

I disagree about Feast and Dance. I found them to be very bad books.

I understand what you mean. Although I really enjoyed reading both books, I was really disappointed with the geographical spilt and the chronological problems it made.

[SeanBeanedMeUp]

6 hours ago, Dragon in the North said:

I’m sure he gave his advice from time to time, but I don’t think he was a full time consultant. It’s not like he was on set every day.

I disagree about Feast and Dance. I found them to be very bad books.

The only bad thing about Feast and Dance was that they were separate books instead of one. Other than that, I did enjoy reading about the repercussions of the events of the first three books and the set ups for the next round of chaos.

1 hour ago, Back in Black-Snow said:

I understand what you mean. Although I really enjoyed reading both books, I was really disappointed with the geographical spilt and the chronological problems it made.

I've argued many times how the two books could've been one because of what you said. That too was something I struggled with because it was disorienting as hell.