"Only 500 pages to go" for Winds of Winter

[butterweedstrover]

On 3/23/2023 at 4:37 PM, BlackLightning said:

All the bold is true but I was talking about the prose.

Line-by-line, sentence-by-sentence, Dance is better both than Storm and Game. The settings becomes vivid, and the characters become profound.

For example, you can't find the raw depth of Theon's POV in the early books. And the sheer scale of Planetos is on full display.

Don't believe me: ask other writers, editors and literary critics.

ADWD and AFFC had way more teenage fantasies about sexy nuns (Tyene and Septa Lemore) and mindless 'internal' drivel splayed throughout the word count. 

Prose became bloated in of itself discounting the plot elements. 

[The Bard of Banefort]

1 hour ago, butterweedstrover said:

ADWD and AFFC had way more teenage fantasies about sexy nuns (Tyene and Septa Lemore) and mindless 'internal' drivel splayed throughout the word count. 

You know, I never picked up on that haha. It’s worth remembering that George went to Catholic school.

[Mithras]

A time jump between TWoW and ADoS is a must. To do that, GRRM should end TWoW in a concluding manner, just like ASoS. To do that, GRRM should decide where the story is going. To do that, GRRM should write a hard outline and stick to it. To do that, GRRM should stop being stubborn.

Edited April 14, 2023 by Mithras

[SeanF]

7 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

You know, I never picked up on that haha. It’s worth remembering that George went to Catholic school.

A surprising number of people have sexual fantasies about nuns, believing that they smuggle men into their convents and/or enjoy wild lesbian sex with each other.

[Ran]

On 3/23/2023 at 6:20 PM, BlackLightning said:

He's become a much better writer. A Dance with Dragons is a much better novel than A Storm of Swords in terms of prose and literary skill.

I would cite A Feast for Crows as the best book to cite regarding prose and literary themes. ADwD is very good but it lacks the thematic unity that AFfC has, by which I mean basically every story in AFfC is thematically linked (Samwell's the only outlier, really). That said, "The Dragontamer" is an amazing chapter, up there with the best he's written. The atmosphere, the knowledge that this is all surely doomed, is terrific.

[SeanF]

11 minutes ago, Ran said:

I would cite A Feast for Crows as the best book to cite regarding prose and literary themes. ADwD is very good but it lacks the thematic unity that AFfC has, by which I mean basically every story in AFfC is thematically linked (Samwell's the only outlier, really). That said, "The Dragontamer" is an amazing chapter, up there with the best he's written. The atmosphere, the knowledge that this is all surely doomed, is terrific.

I did feel so sorry for Quentyn.  Quentyn was me, at the age of 18.

[sifth]

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

I did feel so sorry for Quentyn.  Quentyn was me, at the age of 18.

Unless he's still alive and has a role to play in the story in the future, I will never understand why Quentyn was a POV. He exists simply to show us the fall of Astapor and before that to tell us information that he would later go on to tell Dany in her own chapter. If this guy only exists to die, so Dorne sides with Faegon, it just serves no purpose. At the moment he's basically Aerys Oakheart 2.0..................a POV character who has no business being a POV character, because he dies shortly after becoming one.

Fire and Blood, sort of has me worried when it comes to GRRM's writing. That book had a lot of plot holes. In one place Mushroom was in two places at the same time, because GRRM forgot to go back and edit out a passage from either The World Book or the Rouge Prince.

Edited April 14, 2023 by sifth

[SeanF]

18 minutes ago, sifth said:

Unless he's still alive and has a role to play in the story in the future, I will never understand why Quentyn was a POV. He exists simply to show us the fall of Astapor and before that to tell us information that he would later go on to tell Dany in her own chapter. If this guy only exists to die, so Dorne sides with Faegon, it just serves no purpose. At the moment he's basically Aerys Oakheart 2.0..................a POV character who has no business being a POV character, because he dies shortly after becoming one.

Fire and Blood, sort of has me worried when it comes to GRRM's writing. That book had a lot of plot holes. In one place Mushroom was in two places at the same time, because GRRM forgot to go back and edit out a passage from either The World Book or the Rouge Prince.

We get the fall of Astapor from his POV, and yet, Dany has already been told how terrible things got there.  OTOH, Quentyn's story does resonate with me.  We also learn through him that the Windblown are willing to defect.

I'm not bothered about including Quentyn's POV.  I do think that both Dany's and Tyrion's chapters should have been pruned., which would have given space to round off the Meereenese storyline with the battle for the city.

[sifth]

14 minutes ago, SeanF said:

We get the fall of Astapor from his POV, and yet, Dany has already been told how terrible things got there.  OTOH, Quentyn's story does resonate with me.  We also learn through him that the Windblown are willing to defect.

I'm not bothered about including Quentyn's POV.  I do think that both Dany's and Tyrion's chapters should have been pruned., which would have given space to round off the Meereenese storyline with the battle for the city.

That's a good point, we get a detailed explanation on Astapor's fall from a Dany POV. We know the Windblown are willing to defect from his chapter, but we're also told this information from a Barristan chapter as well, from Quentyn's friends.

[Darzin]

I think the five year gap was really an issue in retrospect. George cited Cersei as one of the reasons to scrap it, but that's easy to get around just have someone like Mace take over as hand and keep the realm in stable uneasy stagnation. and have Stannis stew in the north with the wall and Moat Cailin protecting him. Doing that would save him two books and he'd have had the plots where they are now 20 years ago. 

[Cas Stark]

It's been almost 4 months, I wonder how many pages he still  has to go?  My guess is still 500. 

 

[Cas Stark]

1 hour ago, Darzin said:

I think the five year gap was really an issue in retrospect. George cited Cersei as one of the reasons to scrap it, but that's easy to get around just have someone like Mace take over as hand and keep the realm in stable uneasy stagnation. and have Stannis stew in the north with the wall and Moat Cailin protecting him. Doing that would save him two books and he'd have had the plots where they are now 20 years ago. 

Cersei seems like one of the POVs where the gap would have worked perfectly.  She would have continued bumbling around, killing people and creating havoc.  This seems like one of the easier time skips because her character doesn't need to grow up, acquire skills or knowledge; we already know she is incapable of changing or learning from her mistakes.  Five years sounds about right for how long she could retain power before things completely fell apart.

[Aejohn the Conqueroo]

19 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

It's been almost 4 months, I wonder how many pages he still  has to go?  My guess is still 500. 

 

850

[sifth]

33 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

It's been almost 4 months, I wonder how many pages he still  has to go?  My guess is still 500. 

 

4 Months? We're almost at 6 months from when he made that comment; October 25th to be exact.

[Cas Stark]

15 minutes ago, sifth said:

4 Months? We're almost at 6 months from when he made that comment; October 25th to be exact.

I thought he made them in December for some reason.  Oh well, we'll be having the same conversation this time next year, I have little doubt.  And very possibly the year after that.

[Corvinus85]

3 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

Cersei seems like one of the POVs where the gap would have worked perfectly.  She would have continued bumbling around, killing people and creating havoc.  This seems like one of the easier time skips because her character doesn't need to grow up, acquire skills or knowledge; we already know she is incapable of changing or learning from her mistakes.  Five years sounds about right for how long she could retain power before things completely fell apart.

I don't know about that. Didn't GRRM allude to this through Littlefinger? He tells Sansa that he thought he had a few years to set some long-term schemes in motion but Cersei's ever increasing blundering forced to adjust his plans.

Cersei's paranoia about Tyrion gets her to have the High Septon murdered, which leads to the Sparrows that were a natural creation of the war to install one of their own. So that couldn't have waited 5 years.

Same for Cersei's plot against Margaery. Tommen would have been more mature and maybe much closer to Marge. Not sure how that plot could have stewed for 5 years. And Cersei, like Jaime, is highly impatient.

[BlackLightning]

On 4/5/2023 at 5:22 AM, sifth said:

I really don't agree. All the Jamie/Cersei and Martell/Greyjoy stuff really tells us, are the finer details of stuff that would have been covered during the time skip and it gives us these finer details by spending a lot of time ignoring the main protagonists of the series; the Stark children, Dany and Tyrion.

Listen, I don't want to be the "no fun police", because I really like those chapters, but in the grand scheme of things, they feel less and less important each time I reread them. Like for example The Kingsmoot chapters, were insanely fun, but they seem rather unimportant because all they really tell us are the details on how Euron gained his power, when all that's really important is that Euron was in power.

So you really think that you - millions of other people - would be up for reading a book with no details beyond "So, the Faith of the Seven has militarized because of something Cersei did a couple years ago" and "Oh and Euron is now king of the Iron Islands and now he is attacking the Reach and fighting to maintain control of the North."

Or better yet, do you really think that you - and millions of other people again - would be okay with reading a book in which half of the book consists of different flashbacks....which would ask more questions than they would answer.

Even if that were to happen, we'd still be getting new POVs in the form of Victarion, Arianne and Cersei. So...I'm not seeing your point.

Audiences need and want the finer details. They - and probably yourself- would've rioted if GRRM put out a book taking place five years after A Storm of Swords with few details about what happened in between. And writing a book in which half (or a third) of it consists of people thinking or talking or dreaming about what had happened in the five years since defeats the purpose of having a time skip. Plus, big ones are hard to pull off convincingly in the middle of a story in any form of media.

People are still frothing at the mouth at the lack of details about Robert's Rebellion and the Tragedy of Summerhall.

On the note of main protagonists...well, first things first Tyrion is not a protagonist like the others are. Not saying that he is not a protagonist (everyone with a POV is a protagonist) but he is a villain protagonist. The other five - Jon, Dany, Bran, Arya and Sansa - are heroes.

Second of all, the main protagonists are not ready to take center stage of the story. The big five heroic protagonists are either bogged down in faraway places or they are completely destitute and scattered. Like there is literally nothing that the Stark kids can do at this point besides train: the people who were fighting for them (i.e. the other heroes) lost and died in the first act of the story. Jon would basically be committing suicide if he left the Wall and it was not in Dany's best interest to immediately leave for Westeros immediately after. Tyrion, again, is a different case: the villains won in the first act but Tyrion pissed off his fellow villains one too many times and got kicked out.

[BlackLightning]

On 4/5/2023 at 4:34 PM, Craving Peaches said:

I mean they could have just had an in medias res (?) with Aeron after Euron already won interspersed with brief flashbacks to the Kingsmoot and so cut a lot out. Might not have had quite the same impact but would have helped maintain the punchy pacing a bit better.

Exactly

Having characters like Jon sound off like this is a bad idea.

"So, Theon's uncle is the new king of the ironmen? Wait, what was his name again? Victarion? Hadn't he been there the entire time? Or was he the one who was exiled for killing his wife and trying to kill one of his brothers? How did he become king? Theon was always scared of him but Theon is little _____ so good riddance. I don't have time for this right now; I have to find a way to feed the Watch. The Others will be here any minute...it's been four years since we've seen or heard anything"

On 4/6/2023 at 1:06 AM, GZ Bloodraven said:

The problem is not the "importance" of plotlines, the problem is too many characters in too many locations which makes it a nightmare for a gardener to parse. 

The Cersei/Jaime A-plot B-plot is great and important, but it's two entirely new stories.

The Martell and Greyjoy stuff is great and important, but it adds another two entirely new stories, and 7 new POV characters that have to be written for. 

Stop playing...the Cersei/Jaime plot is not two entirely new stories. It's the next chapter in a story that begin in the third chapter of the very first book. You know, the chapter Catelyn tells Ned that the Lannisters are coming and Ned's response is "oh boy"

Martell and Greyjoy stuff are three new stories yes with 7 new POVs and a bunch of other secondary characters to write for. However, the Greyjoy stuff is the very thing that is pulling everyone back together.

• A captive Asha telling Stannis and every other northman that will listen that they need to watch out for Euron...only for no one to take her seriously (dramatic irony)
• Victarion is going to the other side of the world so that he can turn Dany against Euron. As it were, Tyrion, Moqorro, Barristan and soon Marwyn will be there to corroborate Victarion's story
• the power establishment in King's Landing is now forced to deal with Euron but they were completely unprepared to deal with him
• Samwell is supposed to be about Night's Watch business in Oldtown but now he has to think about the threat posed by Euron

It's clear as day that Euron is becoming a big bad of some kind.

The "what else is there to do" is get to the endgame. It is absolutely true that you can't have an untrained Arya, an untrained Bran, an untrained Jon, an untrained Sansa, and an untested Dany go endgame super quickly from Storm to Winds. But you also can't spend an entire book just training and testing them: so go deeper into the Martells, and the Greyjoys, and the Lannisters, and the Aegon stuff over the course of two books

Precisely my point.

The Lannisters have a lot of enemies. At present, their most powerful/dangerous enemies are the Dornishmen and the secret "Targaryen" prince. What happens when they band together?

Edited April 17, 2023 by BlackLightning

[Cas Stark]

The first 80 pages of GOT provide incredible amounts of information, lore and back story while still moving the narrative forward.  There is no reason why the 5 year gap could not have been handled similarly.  I most assuredly didn't need all those 'real time' chapters about the day to day meaningless details of Mereen and Tyrion's exile.  YMMV.

[BlackLightning]

On 4/5/2023 at 11:38 PM, kav2001c said:

Some of what you say is true but Sam in particular is the most boring character in the series who's only point is to go to Old Town to learn something (or meet someone impersonating someone). Really beyond that his entire plot could be reduced to 2 chapters. Conflict at the Wall. Shipped off to Old Town. Done.

Sansa also works well with a time skip (flee after Joff killed, meet Littlefinger, then ???). Way too much side politics for the Vale alot of it seems like a red herring. Since we have no idea what is true / fake / revised from show version its hard to comment on but so far she seems about as important as Rickon. At least Bran + Arya are doing something.

Not her being as important as Rickon lmfao

Sansa (and to lesser degree, Sam) can work with a time skip. The side politics in the Vale are interesting and necessary but  incidental. So I agree.

The problem isn't Sansa or Sam. It's characters like Cersei, Stannis, Jon, the Greyjoys, Dany, the Martells and other adult characters. Even Brienne would be difficult to work with a time skip.

Fun fact: Sansa was originally supposed to be a villain and marry Joffrey in GRRM's original outline. We don't know what kind of villain she was supposed to become: proto-Cersei, a gossipy but mostly harmless mean girl or a female Theon. We don't know if she gets a redemption arc. We don't know if she lives or dies. But she does disappear from the narrative when Jaime pulls off some proto-Red Wedding event to kill everyone that's still ahead of him in the line of succession and become king.

On 4/6/2023 at 1:06 AM, GZ Bloodraven said:

A 5 year jump where the characters are trained and ready to go with some clunky exposition for the past five years for the minor sideplots would have been better than getting three books over the course of 25 years and maybe not getting the last one ever. 

This is how I know you don't really understand what you're talking about. Why would an serious author be okay with clunky exposition? Why would any professional be okay with clunky anything? Why would that ever be an option?

And this is of course assuming that GRRM would never have gotten writer's block, that he never would've had a hard time piecing everything together and that everything would go exactly as planned.

The five year time skip already happened. A Feast for Crows and the first half of A Dance with Dragons served their purpose: all of the stuff that would've taken place over five years has been covered and written. However, Dance came out almost thirteen years ago.

So....what's your point? Because all the worldbuilding you say that had slowed the writing and reading process down to a standstill had already happened in Dance. And again, Dance came out twelve and a half or so years ago. So what's the hold up now? GRRM said that there are no new POVs or no new locales outside of Westeros.

So it's clear that we probably would've ran into these same issues (or a different set of issues)