"Only 500 pages to go" for Winds of Winter

[sifth]

1 hour ago, divica said:

faegon takes cersei role in the show. So he decides to let the north fight the ww alone. Bran decides to skinchange into faegon so that he can give the right orders and ends up deciding to live as faegon instead of as bran stark.

 

Why would Faegon not fight The Others? He seems like a decent enough person and not a nut job like Cersei.

[divica]

12 minutes ago, sifth said:

Why would Faegon not fight The Others? He seems like a decent enough person and not a nut job like Cersei.

they want independence so he refuses to send troops to die fighting for rebels?

feels threatned by jon claiming to also be rhaegar's son so doesn't want to help him?

the southern lords don't believe in the others and therefore convince him to not send troops?

there are ways to make it work.

[butterweedstrover]

The characters that suffered the worst due to dropping the time skip were the POVs best positioned to gain from it. 
 

Sansa, Arya, and Bran were all set to be trained by their respective masters. 

Jon and Dany were set for a period of bureaucratic leadership. 
 

These five suffered the most because now the training/governing sequence had to be filled with mind-numbing detail. On the training side it felt like a bunch of side quests disguised as an overarching narrative. 
 

For Dany and Jon it felt like a bunch of pseudo-philosophical musings about proper leadership and compromise. 
 

None of which was interesting to read. I know he’d never do it, but I’d much prefer for the POV count to shrink between ASOS and AFFC/ADWD. 
 

Whittle down the list to just the Starks and Targaryens. The rest had their time in the sun and now can return to a shroud of mystery. 
 

Tyrion’s dark side would be more effective if we lost track of his thoughts making his turn feel more distant and unrelatable. Jaime’s turn to the light side could also benefit from the same technique. 
 

Drop them, do the time skip, and focus on these five. Give Bran some more chapters and avoid long meanderings about policy and training.

[csuszka1948]

On 4/18/2023 at 11:16 PM, sifth said:

Out of all of the many, MANY, new POV's GRRM introduced in AFFC/ADWD, Asha and Cersie seem like the two most important. I love the other characters, like Victarion and Arianne, but feel that GRRM falling in love with them and feeling that he needed to tell their story, has caused him to lose track of the entire series. The end result is, we're likely never going to get an ending to this series and if we are fortunate to get one, it likely wont be from George. Had he instead choose to focus on his main characters and not include his ten new POV's we would of had a much more structured story. I'm not saying all of his new POV's were not needed, just that most of them weren't. One Iron Island POV and one Dorne POV would have been enough.

 

 

 

Asha doesn't even claim her own name in her POV chapters. I don't know why you think she is one of the most important characters.

Besides Cersei and Brienne, the new POV characters have 9 chapters in Feast and 17 in Dance out of 116 chapters, and only 19 of those are Dornish or Ironborn. They comprise only 16% of the total POV chapters. 

Edited April 23, 2023 by csuszka1948

[csuszka1948]

On 4/19/2023 at 5:22 PM, sifth said:

Truth be told I think the Dorne plot could be dropped entirely. As of now nothing has happened there that has had any major effect on the world of the main characters. Ideally if Dorne needed a POV, then GRRM should have had Tryion go there with Obyrn. That being said if the Dorne story needs to be told, with only a character who lives in that region, Arianne is the best choice, IMO

 

This assumes that the Queenmaker plot and the fact that one of Arianne's friends was a traitor is irrelevant to the story and won't affect any other character later. 

[csuszka1948]

On 4/21/2023 at 8:15 PM, divica said:

they want independence so he refuses to send troops to die fighting for rebels?

feels threatned by jon claiming to also be rhaegar's son so doesn't want to help him?

the southern lords don't believe in the others and therefore convince him to not send troops?

there are ways to make it work.

 

The problem is that this assumes that the Others will only show up in the North and lead a huge army like in the show.

In the books, they are hunters and seem to be able to show up anywhere where it is cold and dark, raise the dead and make ambushes.

At the end of ADWD, it was snowing in King's Landing, so I think once the Wall breaks, the Others will be able to show up south to the Neck in the Riverlands and even in the Crownlands.  

[sifth]

19 minutes ago, csuszka1948 said:

This assumes that the Queenmaker plot and the fact that one of Arianne's friends was a traitor is irrelevant to the story and won't affect any other character later. 

As of now it is. Can that change in the future, absolutely. Also the sample chapters certainly haven't helped, my theory about them being pointless though.

[sifth]

29 minutes ago, csuszka1948 said:

Asha doesn't even claim her own name in her POV chapters. I don't know why you think she is one of the most important characters.

Besides Cersei and Brienne, the new POV characters have 9 chapters in Feast and 17 in Dance out of 116 chapters, and only 19 of those are Dornish or Ironborn. They comprise only 16% of the total POV chapters. 

Because we need a POV in Stannis camp, after he leaves the Wall, that's why.

[BlackLightning]

You guys make it seem like 500 pages is a lot and that GRRM would be so much further ahead if he stayed with the time skip. I think the page length and the time is taking is making you all believe that things would be better if the time jump stayed. I personally believe the fandom would be even more frustrated and that we would have probably had to have waited just as long to get Winds material

On the note of 500 pages...

It seems like it is a lot but it's not. If every chapter is about 15-20 pages (the avg from Dance), that's only about like 25 chapters.

And in a book that is slated to be noticeably bigger and longer than Storm (which had 82 chapters, a prologue, an epilogue and a large appendix for a total of 85), I think it's safe to say that we're looking at anywhere between 90-100 chapters in the final book. If you split the chapter up evenly among the different POVs, you are looking at a book where the average POV will have 5 (at most 6) chapters to its name.

In other words, most of the book has already been finished. 25 chapters left to go mean that (approximately) 5 POVs need to be started and/or finished. For 12 out of the 17 POVs to be mostly or completely finished means that over 70% of the novel is complete. Confirmed by his "I'm 75% done" statements.

Given GRRM's history, it could very well be that 15 of those hypothetical unwritten 25 chapters could be for a singular POV. This would leave the remaining 10 chapters to be chapters that either wrap up loose ends for other POVs or chapters that he simply can't or doesn't want to write yet for whatever reason. Hence the Casterly Rock question he was asking himself...

Unless something absolutely unforeseeably insane happens, there is no way that anyone will get to Casterly Rock before the final chapters of both that POV and the end of the book.

In the case that 10-15 chapters of 500 pages of material is for one POV, GRRM would be even closer to finishing than we think.

 

I don't know what his pace is right now (it's so inconsistent) but if he is writing the book like he has always written after making a huge breakthrough, we could get this book by Christmastime.

[Craving Peaches]

7 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

Confirmed by his "I'm 75% done" statements.

If 75% done over ~12 years, then we still have at least 3 more years to wait, assuming consistent writing speed. It is true there could be a huge breakthrough so book out sooner but also could be huge writer's block again and then no book in sight for who knows how long?

[butterweedstrover]

7 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

 

 

I don't know what his pace is right now (it's so inconsistent) but if he is writing the book like he has always written after making a huge breakthrough, we could get this book by Christmastime.

Dude, are you serious? 

The reason we're not getting the book is because Martin has no clear direction for his story that is satisfying or original. 

You're right the problem wasn't the five year skip, the problem started long before then. ASOS was a fun book to read but it derailed the story by making the narrative spread out from the confines of the war for the throne. 

It wasn't about a battle for succession anymore, it was about random characters and their livelihoods touching on historical, religious, and magical origins. In structure it became more akin to War & Peace but unlike War & Peace it didn't have a clear idea of what it wanted to say. 

Where do you go after ASOS? There is nowhere to go, Arya becoming an assassin, Bran a magician, Sansa a politican, Jon a leader, etc. aren't plot devices meant to execute a specific narrative purpose, but meanderings about a lifestyle and moral beliefs. 

 

If people here keep thinking that Martin is 500 pages away from concluding a book that is structurally sound and well composed then you have to ignore the fact that for 23 years he has been unable to formulate a way forward beyond ASOS. If he were wise he'd have made ASOS the ultimate ending, not another beginning. There is no where to go from here. There is no book. 

[The Bard of Banefort]

Remember when GRRM said he was almost finished with Tyrion’s chapters? What happened to that?

[sifth]

12 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Remember when GRRM said he was almost finished with Tyrion’s chapters? What happened to that?

So that's one down and only 20 something to go.

[The Bard of Banefort]

41 minutes ago, sifth said:

So that's one down and only 20 something to go.

The thing is, he never said he actually was finished with Tyrion. . . which means he probably isn’t.

[Werthead]

On 4/24/2023 at 4:17 AM, BlackLightning said:

I don't know what his pace is right now (it's so inconsistent) but if he is writing the book like he has always written after making a huge breakthrough, we could get this book by Christmastime.

The grounds for optimism are reasonable - if certainly not conclusive - but this is over-optimism. From turn-in to publication may be now down to 3 months, so he'd have to finish by August, or four months from now. Not impossible but it would require him to be steam-rolling his way through finalising chapter after chapter. In the past when he gets into such a home straight on the novels he's not been able to stop himself gleefully expressing that in updates (his Not a Blog for the last year or so of ADWD's writing is interesting for that), and I suspect the same would be true again, and at the moment it is not. He's been more optimistic than he has been before over this book, but we're not seeing the same kind of updates we've seen in the past.

I'd say there is a small chance he finishes this year for publication next year, a moderate chance he finishes next year for publication next year but a rather more likely chance we will see publication in 2025. And of course he might run into a massive roadblock/landmine tomorrow which dramatically extends that. And maybe a smaller chance his publishers tell him they can't afford to publish a 1,500-page novel and he needs to take a chainsaw and go with what he has done now (if possible, based on his nonlinear writing process which means chapters early in the book might still be incomplete, or not even started).

Edited April 25, 2023 by Werthead

[The Bard of Banefort]

When was the last time George said something optimistic about Winds (genuine question)?

[Werthead]

9 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

When was the last time George said something optimistic about Winds (genuine question)?

October, when he said the book was over three-quarters done. Relatively recently, considering he's gone years at a time before without a substantive update on TWoW at all.

[Equilibrium]

On 4/24/2023 at 1:26 PM, butterweedstrover said:

You're right the problem wasn't the five year skip, the problem started long before then. ASOS was a fun book to read but it derailed the story by making the narrative spread out from the confines of the war for the throne. 

It wasn't about a battle for succession anymore, it was about random characters and their livelihoods touching on historical, religious, and magical origins. In structure it became more akin to War & Peace but unlike War & Peace it didn't have a clear idea of what it wanted to say. 

Where do you go after ASOS? There is nowhere to go, Arya becoming an assassin, Bran a magician, Sansa a politican, Jon a leader, etc. aren't plot devices meant to execute a specific narrative purpose, but meanderings about a lifestyle and moral beliefs. 

If people here keep thinking that Martin is 500 pages away from concluding a book that is structurally sound and well composed then you have to ignore the fact that for 23 years he has been unable to formulate a way forward beyond ASOS. If he were wise he'd have made ASOS the ultimate ending, not another beginning. There is no where to go from here. There is no book. 

It never was about succession it was clearly stated in many places in the books. And Martin has a clear idea what he wants to say in ASOIAF, now I won't compare it with War and Peace or argue it's particularly innovative or smart idea, but it's clearly there, books have distinct themes and several layers of symbolism, again not arguing about the quality of execution just pointing out indisputable fact they exist.

Characters gaining skills in different domains according to their history and inclinations has specific narrative purpose and is clearly meant to come into play later as those characters use their newfound skills to save the North they all know and love, which is clearly sentiment readers are meant to share.

Martin obviously, again but I am not facetious majority of the people here take the points I make for granted, gave up on concluding a book that is structurally sound and well composed after ASOS, those books are meant to be seen as part of the greater narrative and their own structure is sacrificed as to facilitate branching of the narrative Martin clearly thinks will pay off in the end. But even considering that TFFC and ADWD combined make a book of pretty good structure, not ASOS let alone War and Peace, but pretty good and it would be even better if the huge pay off battles managed to make the cut and even better still if some of the choices mostly made to serve the split were done differently.

[BlackLightning]

On 4/24/2023 at 6:26 AM, butterweedstrover said:

You're right the problem wasn't the five year skip, the problem started long before then. ASOS was a fun book to read but it derailed the story by making the narrative spread out from the confines of the war for the throne. 

 

I don't believe the story was ever about the war for the  Iron Throne.

And I disagree strongly with your post. I'll leave it at that.

[butterweedstrover]

11 hours ago, Equilibrium said:

Characters gaining skills in different domains according to their history and inclinations has specific narrative purpose

You know, I have to say I disagree with this.