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The Factual History of A Song of Ice and Fire: including complete bibliography


Werthead
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  • 3 weeks later...

I remember reading somewhere that GRRM had moved some chapters over from ADWD to TWoW, does anyone know how many pages/chapters that was, exactly?

At one point last year, GRRM said that there were 100 manuscript pages for TWOW from various chapters. But his editor recently said that they had done some trimming on ADWD to cut out ~50 manuscript pages or so, in order to bring ADWD in line with ASOS length-wise, and some of that may have ended up with TWOW as well.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Martin also found that whilst 'filling in the gap' worked well for some characters, such as Brienne, Cersei, Jaime, Sansa and Arya, it did not work out so well for others, such as Tyrion, Daenerys and Jon, who seemed to be ready to move into their next storylines (i.e. the ones planned for A Dance with Dragons) immediately.
Rather than split A Feast for Crows in two, Martin decided that the next book in the series would remain entitled A Dance with Dragons, suggesting that he hoped to combine the originally-planned events for that novel with the 'flipside' of events in A Feast for Crows.

Now this is interesting. I'd always assumed that both Feast and this upcoming book were planned solely as the "five-year-gap-filler," even if it was no longer five years. Indeed I was wondering questions like "Why is he using the title A Dance of Dragons for a book that is just the second half of A Feast for Crows and not the original Dance of Dragons? And why is he saying it will be seven books when it will clearly be eight?" This explanation now sheds some light. I was hoping GRRM wouldn't be so clueless...

Still, wasn't the original plan for A Dance of Dragons to involve Dany's invasion of Westeros and the chaos that would ensue from that? Or am I not remembering that correctly? If that is case, then he hasn't written all of what he originally planned for A Dance of Dragons. So he has...what, two and a half books left?

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Still, wasn't the original plan for A Dance of Dragons to involve Dany's invasion of Westeros and the chaos that would ensue from that? Or am I not remembering that correctly? If that is case, then he hasn't written all of what he originally planned for A Dance of Dragons. So he has...what, two and a half books left?

IIRC, Martin has said that the "Dance with Dragons" the title refers to is not necessarily Dany's invasion of Westeros.

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Hmm, I thought for sure that he said it was back in one of his earlier interviews, but it's been awhile so maybe I read it wrong or something.

I actually remember that as well, but it's possible he changed his mind after. It might have been way back before he started expanding more stuff.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Martin had planned to end the first book with an event called the 'Red Wedding' but he was barely halfway there.

This is making me structurally rethink some things and it casts a new light on some others. If you look at where this Ur-AGoT (as in Ur-Hamlet) ends, it's roughly 705 pages into ASoS. So, structurally - and of course I am reaching, projecting, and alowing all of the changes GRRM has made in the interim - the last 420 pages of ASoS would have been in an Ur-ADwD, along with AFfC and the the present incarnation of ADwD. I think if we really only did have three books, and only two of them, we would see the material in AFfC as part of proper place - not a novel, but a chunk of story (and, unfortunately, only half of that chunk). Rather, its part of a second "meta-book," which includes everything from the last 3rd or so of ASoS and all the way to the end of ADwD, with some chapters in ADwD and AfFC occurring simultaneously.

I think also what is happening here, is that we will end up with 8 books - that like A Game of Thrones, GRRM will realize that once he has finished a book's worth of material for TWoW, he will realize he's less than halfway done and have to add one more book.

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I think also what is happening here, is that we will end up with 8 books - that like A Game of Thrones, GRRM will realize that once he has finished a book's worth of material for TWoW, he will realize he's less than halfway done and have to add one more book.

I don't know about that. Presumably much of what happens in TWoW and ADoS is stuff that he's been setting up from the beginning, so he won't need to spend as many pages establishing stuff as he does in earlier books.

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Still, wasn't the original plan for A Dance of Dragons to involve Dany's invasion of Westeros and the chaos that would ensue from that? Or am I not remembering that correctly? If that is case, then he hasn't written all of what he originally planned for A Dance of Dragons. So he has...what, two and a half books left?

And:

I don't know about that. Presumably much of what happens in TWoW and ADoS is stuff that he's been setting up from the beginning, so he won't need to spend as many pages establishing stuff as he does in earlier books.

I just wonder if the announcement from Not a Blog found here, which mentioned:

"Sansa, Sam, Aeron Damphair, Arianne, and Brienne have no chapters in A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. Several of those characters had chapters written, completed, and polished that have been moved into THE WINDS OF WINTER."

might lend itself to the notion that instead of condensing two and a half books worth of material into two books, it might be something more like putting two and 2 2/3 books into three books?

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I have heard rumors, recently and from dubious sources, that because of the length of many of GRRM's manuscripts and his writing style that the series may be expanded for an eighth and maybe even ninth novel to close the series out as the story he intended to tell. Is there any truth to this?

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I have heard rumors, recently and from dubious sources, that because of the length of many of GRRM's manuscripts and his writing style that the series may be expanded for an eighth and maybe even ninth novel to close the series out as the story he intended to tell. Is there any truth to this?

It's all just speculation from the fans. We've never gotten any indication from GRRM that the series will have to be expanded further, AFAIK.

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I just wonder if the announcement from Not a Blog found here, which mentioned:

"Sansa, Sam, Aeron Damphair, Arianne, and Brienne have no chapters in A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. Several of those characters had chapters written, completed, and polished that have been moved into THE WINDS OF WINTER."

might lend itself to the notion that instead of condensing two and a half books worth of material into two books, it might be something more like putting two and 2 2/3 books into three books?

I don't think that there are necessarily two and a half books worth of material left after ADWD. Whatever sketchy plans GRRM may have had back in 1994, he's now completed five books and hasn't given any indication that the series will expand past seven. Could that change because of leftover ADWD material? I doubt it. So far, the chapters that GRRM has moved over to TWOW total ~100 manuscript pages. Add to that the two unwritten chapters that GRRM referred to a couple of years ago, and you're still talking about a small percentage of the eventual length of TWOW.

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