How to avoid spoilers? "We'll Cheat"

[Quentyn the Blazed]

From the comment section on the "Monkeys on my back" post on GRRM's "Not a Blog":

sniffnoy wrote

Jun. 25th, 2012 10:11 pm (UTC)

I must admit I'm a bit confused about The World of Ice and Fire. In the actual books there are various aspects of the backstory which have been mentioned but never been clarified, and I assume you have some reason for that. How is The World of Ice and Fire going to manage to avoid both spoilers for the coming books and glaring omissions?

grrm wrote:

Jun. 26th, 2012 01:14 am (UTC)

We'll cheat.

Sniffnoy wrote:

Jun. 26th, 2012 04:43 am (UTC)

Heh, I suppose so. I don't suppose I might ask how you got roped into doing this before the final two books in the first place?

grrm

wrote:

Jun. 26th, 2012 05:11 am (UTC)

I have a hard time saying no.

And I tend to be excessively optimistic. I never think any of these things are going to take as long as they do.

werthead

wrote:

Jun. 27th, 2012 12:35 am (UTC)

There was a similar (in concept) book for THE WHEEL OF TIME novels by Robert Jordan, which came out roughly halfway through that series. To avoid the same spoiler problem, they clarified and expanded on a lot of interesting-but-ultimately-irrelevant-to-the-plot background points but left the big mystery backstory parts alone. They also used the conceit that the history section was written by an in-universe historian who got some things wrong due to bias and POV issues.

My understanding is that the ASoIaF world book will use some of the same techniques. A lot of the emphasis seems to be on stuff the maesters of Westeros would know but simply hasn't come up (how did the Targaryens conquer the Vale?) as opposed to spoiler material (what are the precise origins, motivations and capabilities of the Others?) which likely won't be even touched on :-)

An Interesting insight to the book, do you think by cheating he means what werthead said? It would be pretty cool to have a history book written by a maester with inaccurate information

[Werthead]

I know that at one point Ran said they were considering having the history section being written by a maester of the Citadel from an in-universe POV. I can't remember if that plan was actually executed in the text, however.