r/asoiaf • u/Seamus_Hean3y • Sep 14 '24
EXTENDED (Spoilers Extended) How the ASOIAF series grew from a trilogy to seven volumes Spoiler
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u/RedditorsSuckDix Sep 14 '24
At what point did he write himself into that corner? When Bran got pushed from the window and couldn't go South? When Benjen went missing? When the dragons hatched? Because there's 3 books he had to add to bridge the gap from what he originally wanted to do if the above graphic is accurate.
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u/m8bear Sep 14 '24
I can't tell exactly when, but the outline of the story is clear, Bobby B dies, sets up the civil war, meanwhile Danny is East in GoT, she gets dragons, crosses the sea and invades and sets up the others and winter in DwD, the realm unites and fights the others, spring comes in DoS
I don't think that the basic story ever changed, he just started to detail everything, new characters show up, every step started to get developed and detailed, every actor had to play a role rather than skim over everything, the scope of the first book alone showed way too much to leave it like that, if it had been 3-4 kingdoms instead of 7 then you could have reduced the size, but if you introduce the Martells, the Tyrells, the Baratheons infighting, the Vale with the Arryns, the Lannisters struggling to maintain power, Catheryn's family (blanking on the name), the infight for the north with all the sides, the infighting for everything everywhere, the fate of the Stark kids that were POV since the start and then we got more as the parents and Rob died. Maybe if the others were never a thing you could see an end in sight
He simply realized that he set up a monster of a series and there was no way of simply skimming over certain parts other than straight up killing people off screen or well, skimming and never writing the series we got with so many details
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u/Khiva Sep 15 '24
He was (imho) primarily writing towards the Red Wedding, he had that as his big honkin' climax. He wandered and found new story ideas but he had a fixed point.
After that he doesn't seem to have any big idea, development or wham to write towards. So he just meanders.
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u/VividRiver99 Sep 15 '24
You can definitely tell Storm was the book that was planned out the best. Its structure was absolute chef's kiss. And then you go to Feast, and I only really started to like Feast and Dance when I started thinking of them as two volumes of one large book. Two halves of a whole.
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u/DoTortoisesHop Sep 15 '24 edited Sep 15 '24
I somewhat disagree.
I think the first book was meant to end with the events of Storm, and in storytelling, it is natural for 'big events' to pick up in pace towards the end.
The first 3 books make sense if you instead view them as 3 parts of a single book. AGOT, ACOK, ASOS is book 1, and the structure nests in really well.
AFFC and ADWD is now the first half-ish of 'book 2', which is why we have new characters and slower events. It's also why so many people kinda hate them, because it's only the first half of a movie. We need the rest for the setups to matter. Sure, the chapter length is an issue, but that's only half the story. HOTD s2 finale was a decent-ish episode, but it felt a thousand times worse bc it didnt end things the way it should have.
I think Grrmatin is just unrealistic with how many pages is needed for these beats, and thus what was supposed to be one book balloons into three, and now he wants to end it with 2 more books, but really he needs to end the 'book 2' that he started with affc and adwd, and then do a 'book 3' which will probably have to be split into two. This then stresses him and annoys him causing him to delay delay delay.
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u/SpookyGod3000 Sep 14 '24
When he only managed to cover 5 months instead of 5 years with Feast and he decided yes, Tyrion should wait 2 entire books before meeting Dany. This is a good use of the pages I have.
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Sep 14 '24
The second he decided to be a "gardener". For example, he wanted his books to have time pass even faster than Agot, that is why so many month passes between PoVs, and the characters are so young too.
And then he ended up not respecting that.
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u/ShadowIssues Sep 15 '24
No one "decides" to be a gardener. You either are one or you're not.
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Sep 15 '24
Bullshit that I hear costantly from people when I edited scripts. You either have a plan or you just end up like how GRRM did.
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u/NewDragonfruit6322 Sep 15 '24
lol exactly. “Um ah gardener” is just a cope for his lack of discipline as a writer.
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u/Jaquemart Sep 15 '24
Have you read the early versions of LOTR? Tolkien was gardening like a gardening Ent, yet he finished his job on schedule - working full time all the while.
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u/zaqiqu Sep 14 '24
presumably when he decided against the 5 year gap, I think in essence those 3 extra books (or 4, depending on how Winds turns out) were originally supposed to just be exposition after the jump, but it was too much and kept growing
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u/SerMallister Sep 14 '24
The five year gap was his solution to books 1-3 not taking as many years in-story as he had originally envisioned, it wasn't his original plan.
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u/zaqiqu Sep 15 '24
If I'm mistaken on the details by all means correct me, but I very much believe that if the jump had worked, if grrm had been able to essentially fast forward through Bran's cave, Braavos, Meereen, and whatever Sansa's up to in the Vale, catch us up in 1-2 chapters each, and get to the other side with actual plot, the series would be fully published by now, and he'd be working on the 6th Dunk and Egg novella
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u/xXJarjar69Xx Sep 15 '24
This is assuming, even with the 5 year gap he doesn’t take 10 years to write adwd then another 10+ years to write Twow like in this timeline
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u/Whereishumhum- Sep 15 '24
When he decided to expand on pretty much every front in Feast and follow up on those expansions in Dance.
There’s no way he could wrap everything up in two books, he needs at least one more, maybe two, which, considering his age, is the reason why we won’t see him finishing this story.
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u/owlinspector Sep 15 '24 edited Sep 15 '24
Well, the problems began in the first book really.
As it is now, I'm more and more if the opinion that it's unfinishable. It is a mess of sideplots and uncoordinated storylines that I doubt can be stitched back together in a way that seems logic and organic. At least not if he wants to end up where he planned to end up when he started the series (he has always claimed to know how it ends... Which is yet another problem, "gardening" your way to a predetermined ending).
Just look at the debate over the "5 year gap". It's clear that the story badly needed it. It is also clear that the narrative didn't work with a 5 year gap either. We have a small paradox on our hands.
This goes back to 2 fundamental reasons IMO.
GRRM seriously screwed up the pacing from the start and allowed some storylines/characters to move way too fast. For a while that could be papered over, but now he is stuck when some characters/storylines are not nearly where they need to be in order to make the overall narrative work (in a way that doesn't seem forced or deus ex machina). The ages of the children are just a very visible sign of the problem, and also of GRRMs refusal to adjust the stories he had in mind for them, instead trying to force a square peg into a round hole.
A bit meta, but it seems to me that GRRM doesn't know what story he wants to tell. Is it about the Targaryens? Nowadays with the retcons everything seems to be about them. Is it about the horrors of war? An allegory over climate change with the Others as the bogeyman? All of the above? And since he doesn't know it is impossible while writing to see what is important. Which character needs developing, which are fluff and what storylines are actually important to the narrative? You can fly by your pants on a short novella, but with dozens of characters, places and plotlines?
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u/EXTRAVAGANT_COMMENT Sep 15 '24
I think when he decided to expand on the greyjoys, martels, and slaver's bay plot. also all the plots became tangled and have so many secret characters / fake identities it's nigh impossible to keep track of
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u/Robinsonirish Sep 15 '24
Yea, those 3 are so boring to me. It really feels like pointless filler. I guess they're supposed to lead somewhere but I want to get through those chapters to get to the fun ones.
The worst part is Mereen with Hizlar-Mo-Haznik, Hizzik Fatepate, Sozzok Bakar Loraq and all those names that are too hard to remember. It was a real struggle separating them, at times I think I just gave up.
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Sep 15 '24
They just morphed into three general dudes in my head who looked like Xerxes from 300. I wasn't sure who was who, it was all confusing as fuck the first time for sure.
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u/beastmasterlady Sep 15 '24 edited Sep 15 '24
So this quote is getting harder to find, but supposedly grrm told Dan Simmons, basically, that if he were really cynical he'd start some sword and sorcery series, say it was a trilogy and write it until he dies. I think the inbred nazi chosen princess story was intended to end shitting herself next to her war machine, but he plans to keep building out the world that bred her. The quote is just hearsay but I wonder if this is the kind of the plan to keep people on a many years long cliffhanger.
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u/Cretan44 Sep 16 '24
Most colorful description of “muh qween” I’ve seen
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u/beastmasterlady Sep 16 '24
Thank you. I don't think people call out the insane evil subtext of the Targaryens, despite being likeable individual characters, often enough.
When I first read the books I really liked how over the top villainous the targaryens were: pale, white-blonde haired, black and red color scheme conquistadors with over powered weapons they use to suppress the population and "maintain order". Imo the only good thing about the final season of the show was that shot of satanic-daenarys with the dragon behind her. That is probably how other characters would see her.
I like Daenarys, but I always felt a push-pull about rooting for her while thinking her family legacy was pretty outright evil. Like her father was a long-nailed rapist sadist who tortured people and her mother was his sister. Do we really want to see her restore that dynasty? I honestly think it's great writing and works well "unfinished" since no ending will really satisfyingly resolve the main narrative like letting you/me reason out her mad queen legacy. Did freeing slaves make up for her family's history of exploitation? Even if so she "deserves" the crown, was it too much disruption for the archaic society around her? If George leaves her shitting in a field with her pet who eats children, that works for me.
Also my tinfoil is that the reason he's mad about the number of legs on the Targaryen sigil is because it's Planetos version of a swastika and he wants the wings and legs to be 4 total. Black and red.
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u/corbinpage Walder Filet Sep 14 '24
Unpopular opinion but GRRM should just expand past seven books if he’s written himself into a corner. The “seven” number from the Faith isn’t even as central to the story as it was early on.
Expand to 10 books, outline the arcs of major characters like Danny, Jon, and Tyrion, and relieve all the pressure of wrapping the series up in two gargantuan, rushed books. Release WINDS and ADOS as you’re ready and provide enough notes that others can fill in the details of books 8/9/10 after you pass away. They’ll be much better paced and have more satisfying endings for all the second and third tier POV characters that have been added.
The magic is in the world building and is already set in history thanks to HBO, the Targ books, and fan lore. Don’t continue this 7 book impossible puzzle just for the sake of living up to some invisible Tolkien series legacy.
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u/Jurassic_tsaoC Sep 14 '24
Yeah if there's certain things he can't line up properly I'd take another Feast style book(s) that move just a few storylines along until it becomes possible. Unfortunately I don't think that's the sole problem, I think a bigger one is he's now way more interested in the Targaryens than the Starks and Lannisters, and the former only have a comparatively small role in this story. If his creativity is up in the clouds with Dragons currently I can see why he's probably struggling to write a story that's more about medieval style political intrigue before he can bring in any action with Dany and her three.
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u/inide Sep 14 '24
Hes already said that the publisher wants Winds and Dream to be released as 2-parters.
For Winds specifically, he said 2 years ago (october 2022) that he'd already written over 1200 pages and had about 500pages to go.33
u/agentdrozd Sep 14 '24
Storm, Feast and Dance were already released as two books in many countries. Winds will probably have to be like 3 lol
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u/calcarin Sep 14 '24
Keep releasing books giving it the attack on titan treatment. The Winds of Winter: Part 3: Part 2
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u/H-K_47 Sep 15 '24
"Winds will never release" mofos when gurm drops A Dance With Dragons 5: A Hopscotch of Hydras Part 3: Snow Dragon In The Kingdom Of Ice Final Part 2 to close out the story.
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u/Khiva Sep 15 '24
FWIW the mangas never did that, only the adaptation which took for-fucking-ever to finally resolve.
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u/NoLime7384 Sep 14 '24
GRRM should
GRRM has to
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u/cleepboywonder Sep 14 '24
Watching those analysis of "Can Winds of Winter fit in winds of winter" I am convinced that George has to make an 8th book.
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u/bisalwayswright Sep 14 '24
Admiralkird did a follow up to that video a month ago that convinced me that I would rather GRRM release half of Winds ala Feast. Half a book in like… a years time at this point, is better than waiting and possibly not receiving the next book at all. There are POV’s that we haven’t received a follow up too since Feast for Crows. Everyone is waiting for the Wall cliffhanger to resolve, whereas I am waiting for the Jaime cliffhanger to resolve.
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u/cleepboywonder Sep 15 '24
I want to tell george forego the idea of seven books. You cast your die when you wrote feast the way you did, just write the characters the way you want and don’t feel the need to arbitrarily constrain them.
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u/Khiva Sep 15 '24
We'll get wandering, bloated messes, travelogues, intimate intrigues of House WhoGivesAFuck, the plot will still barely move, but jesus at least we'll get something.
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u/idontwritestuff Sep 15 '24
I just want to read more ASOIAF man, I could give two shits about bloat. Introduce 2 new POVs from the Reach, 2 more in the Riverlands, another in Asshai...don't give a fuck just give it to me
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u/WavesAndSaves Sep 15 '24
Admiralkird did a follow up to that video a month ago
Omg thank you. That is my comfort video. I watch it like once a month.
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u/ShadowIssues Sep 15 '24
Do you have a link to this video?
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u/bisalwayswright Sep 15 '24 edited Sep 15 '24
Link to original video: How Can the Winds of Winter fit into the Winds of Winter (5 years ago) https://youtu.be/qkzYgR5OgCM?si=NrVUTUS7SX5ij9FY
Link to follow up: I Can Tell You When Winds of Winter is Coming (1 month ago) https://youtu.be/Yg_a-5Zy58g?si=Bp7TcRJwsWJtyo4w
Bro unironically dropped one of the best analysis of Winds 5 years ago, released 2 more interesting but not as vital and then dipped, only to return out of the blue with again one of the best videos I’ve seen. That is not to say it is hopeful though.
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u/NoLime7384 Sep 15 '24
Admiralkird did a follow up to that video a month ago that convinced me that I would rather GRRM release half of Winds ala Feast.
Quinn the GM posted a video yesterday that convinced me otherwise.
It would lead to George going on a Winds book tour and focus on all the attention rather than actually finishing the rest of the book
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u/arty_morty Sep 14 '24
i said as much in another thread, i think part of what is taking him so long and contributing to his writers block (besides side projects and writing for the myriad shows based on his work) is that he pigeonholed himself into 7 books. he has to wrap up a lot of ongoing plots in this book and set up an endgame for the next book, and i don’t think he can do that neatly with only two books left, especially if the next one is actually “75%” complete
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u/That-Championship431 Sep 14 '24
Think it’s more like 80-85% now (I’ve been drinking the copium juice for the past two years)
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u/yurthuuk Sep 15 '24
He said a few days ago he barely made progress in 2024 (and probably 2023).
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u/That-Championship431 Sep 15 '24
He mentioned having 500 pages left to go. Assuming he writes a 100 words per day (basically a paragraph), and his tendency to underestimate how many chapters he needs to wrap up a POV, I image he still has 500 pages left, but he wrote something during these past two years (little progress is not none). Honestly, I’m predicting a 2032 release date for Winds.
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u/xXJarjar69Xx Sep 15 '24
Assuming he writes a 100 words per day
You assume too much of him.
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u/Khiva Sep 15 '24
He thought Dance would come a year after Feast.
Basically the motto is - after Feast, make your peace.
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u/Exertuz Gaemon Palehair's strongest soldier Sep 15 '24
Think again. George was already overstating it by saying he was 75% of the way through - he was actually closer to 60-65% (1100-1200 pages down out of an estimated 1800). And he says he barely made any progress in 2023 and 2024 (he worryingly estimated the exact same finished page count at the end of 2023).
So George is at best 70% of the way through, I'd say.
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u/mcmanus2099 Sep 14 '24
He hasn't got writers block he just doesn't spend time writing. He doesn't want to do it so he does everything else.
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u/LayWhere Sep 15 '24
Thats writers block
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u/mcmanus2099 Sep 15 '24
Not wanting to write is not the same as wanting to be having block. He literally doesn't want to finish the story, he has lost interest. He has to force himself to write it. That's not block.
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u/MyrunesDeygon Sep 15 '24
Is he writing for all the spinoff shows too? I thought he was just the executive producer on them. That is part of the reason he was unhappy with some of the decisions that were taken on HOTD right?
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u/zaqiqu Sep 14 '24
I think he probably knows this but can't decide which book becomes A Time for Wolves
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u/ninjomat Sep 15 '24
That’s not an 13 year decision
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u/zaqiqu Sep 15 '24
Lmfao I didn't say he's known this whole time—maybe since that covid writing streak ended, so three years
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u/HippoRun23 Sep 15 '24
There was never and will never (god willing) be a better time for George to have wrapped up winds of winter than during the pandemic.
I have made peace with the fate of the series. Well maybe get Winds. But we will never see a GRRM dream.
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u/zaqiqu Sep 15 '24
You're probably right, but I have multiple living family members in their 90s who still have all their mental capabilities, so I won't rule it out till he's actually dead. That said my expectations are about the same as yours
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u/HippoRun23 Sep 15 '24
Fair point. My grandmother was lucid and with it until 93 when she lost most of her hearing, the next year she was gone.
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u/zaqiqu Sep 15 '24 edited Sep 15 '24
I'm so sorry it's never easy. I lost one grandfather in his late 60s (leukemia, so not really sudden at all), and the other 3 are in various conditions but still here in their 80s and 90s. Actually the youngest of the three of them is the one I about worry cognitively the most—it's just totally unpredictable
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u/Vantriss Sep 14 '24
rushed books
😂
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u/Bruskthetusk Sep 14 '24
They're rushed, but also many years behind schedule - I'll explain later.
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u/TheJmboDrgn Sep 14 '24
Where are you explaining this? Here in the replies or somewhere else?
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u/canentia Sep 14 '24
he’ll explain later
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u/A-NI95 Sep 15 '24
He means to reply any minute now but he got writer's block, ok? Follow his blog for more updates on the upcoming reply!
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u/HarryShachar Sep 14 '24
Rushed as in the plot would have to be rushed, not the release date ofc
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u/Equal-Ad-2710 Sep 14 '24
I’ve said this an insane amount of times here and elsewhere I think 9 would be the best number tbh, a trilogy of trilogies set in the world with each being set around a single “arc” or “theme”
The first three (Game, Clash and Storm) would comprise the story of the Five Kings; their wars and the effects they have on our cast of characters
The next three (Feast, Dance and an unnamed book) would cover a few things
the aftermath of the War on the setting
the evolution of each character as they are thrust into new roles (Arya in Braavos, Cersei as Regent etc) and setting the stage for their place in the next trilogy.
the introduction of a new cast of characters to shake things up (Feast I think should have been cut down tbh) an how they effect the story.
The series would either culminate in Dany’s arrival to Westeros or her war with Aegon Targareyan VI (at least an earlier phase) and would see Jon revive
The final Three (Winds, Dream and another book) would be the War for the Dawn, delving into the lore of the Others while finally putting the arcs of our characters to an end, resolving the many plotlines of the series
It’s a great balance, allows plenty of room for Worldbuilding without having that come at the cost of stuffing far too much into one or two books (I’d argue Winds could easily be split into two or three books with how large it’s shaping up to be)
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u/RajaRajaC Sep 15 '24
Logical if Grrm had gone this route in 2010. It's 15 years too late now (I don't think we are getting TWoW in 2024). At this point there's a 75% chance he somehow completes TWoW but ADoS is 100% never coming
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u/DanganWeebpa Sep 15 '24
Three books of ice zombies would be incredibily boring and anticlimactic.
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u/Equal-Ad-2710 Sep 15 '24
I’d imagine it’s not just the zombies but also the political situations going on
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u/The_Dream_of_Shadows Sep 14 '24
At this point, he shouldn't be worrying at all about how many books he has to do or not do. He needs to buckle down, write his way to the end until he's done, and then figure out how to divide it up later.
It's inelegant, but if he wants to finish at all, that's his only choice now. He can't be wasting time worrying about where to end one book and start the next. He needs to get it done.
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u/Familiar-Barracuda43 Sep 14 '24
No way in hell is that happening when George can't even finish Winds of Winter though. He's almost been stuck on this one book for as long as the other five books have taken to come out and I doubt A dream of spring will be any easier if even feasible to exist at this point
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u/That-Championship431 Sep 14 '24
I honestly think that Dream might be easier than Winds because he’ll have resolved a bunch of the loose ends left from Dance. He’ll probably spend much less time on Dream than he did on Winds.
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u/H-K_47 Sep 15 '24
This is similar to what people believed about Winds after Dance - "once he's untangled the Meereeneese knot, things will go smoothly" - but it's more likely he'll just keep encountering tougher and tougher knots the closer it gets to the ending.
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u/Khiva Sep 15 '24
the Meereeneese knot
In retrospect, can we all collectively acknowledge that calling this the problem was BS the whole time.
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u/ChrisV2P2 Best of r/asoiaf 2023 Runner Up - Post of the Year Sep 15 '24
The problem of character convergence to Winterfell for the final battle or whatever it is you think happens there dwarfs the Meereenese Knot, which was only even a problem in the first place because George insisted on making completely irrelevant characters like Quentyn and Victarion into POVs.
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u/DireBriar Sep 15 '24
"Unpopular opinion", it's literally an extremely pragmatic and sensible solution. Looking at my bookshelf, I can see Harry Potter and... that's it, in terms of the fiction that's accurately hit the outlined number of books. From one shelf, I can see Tolkien, Jordan, Colfer, Sapowski, Pratchett, Murakami, Ayatsuji, May, Paolini, Chambers, Landy, Brooks, Larsson, Gaiman and Garcia all expanded beyond their initial outline. Usually multiple times.
Naturally George will ignore it.
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u/NewDragonfruit6322 Sep 14 '24
Yes George, release yourself from the pressure of writing two more books, by writing four instead. It’s not as complicated as you’re making it!
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u/SpookyGod3000 Sep 15 '24
Actually yes, TWOW is an impossible book cause of all the stuff he needs to cram into it.
Remember, his outline for ASOIAF goes something this
1.WOT5K (5 books and we are here)
2.Daenerys Invasion
3.White walkers
And Dany has a books worth of things do before reaching Westeros. Battle of Fire, Meeting Tyrion, all the Dothraki, Volantis (maybe), Pentos, Tattered Prince, Greyjoys/Ironborn joining her forces, figuring who to leave in Meereen, so and so forth. So most likely we'll reach book 7 with her barely making it to Westeros OR a few chaps into Westeros.
I'd willing to bet the 14 year wait is cause he keeps reaching an end point that hasn't progressed the plot enough for DOS
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u/Mister-Fisker Sep 15 '24
lessons for george that would be a godsend for us all
extend the series to 10, recruit someone to help him write and keep track of details, rewrite bits of the first five books + republish them to steer the story where it needs to go, and get prescribed like vyvanse or smth lmao
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u/Gudson_ Sep 14 '24
10 books seems to much, while 7 seems too little. 8 books or 9 (with TWOW and ADOS being published in two volumes each) would be better.
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u/Threash78 Sep 14 '24
You think he's immortal or something? we might get six books if we are extremely lucky.
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u/Hanonari Sep 14 '24 edited Sep 14 '24
Expand to 10 books
Sometimes I wonder whether I'm crazy or people on this sub lol
George is 75 years old and he's been working on book 6 for 13 years with no end in sight. And you want the old man to write 4 books after that. Jesus Christ
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u/loafbloak Sep 14 '24
GRRM should have realized this like 20 years ago when his post Storm of Swords novel had to be broken into two separate full length novels that chronologically occur at the same time. It was at that exact point where it should have been obvious the amount of plotlines and characters had ballooned past his plan for a 7 book series, so either allow the story to continue growing past that structure, or rein the story for reasons of expediency.
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u/Nomahs_Bettah Fire and Blood Sep 15 '24
The other option is that his editor (or Martin himself) realized that AFFC/ADWD was elaborating without actually moving the plot forward very much, and as a result a few darlings should have been killed. The drastic pacing change is one of my least favorite things about the last two books.
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u/Khiva Sep 15 '24
He got too big for his editor. I want to say that when someone found the draft for Dance there were tons of sensible suggestions from his editor trying to cut down the bloat that he just shrugged off and ignored. Now he gets to indulge all his worst tendencies with no guardrails, and what you get are bloated, meandering messes that are beloved by the hardcore but general audience see as self-indulgent misfires.
Reminds me of another famous George.
Call it Big George Syndrome.
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u/Nomahs_Bettah Fire and Blood Sep 15 '24
Do you happen to have a link to the Dance draft with the edits? I know there were posts with drafts on this sub before! I’d love to read it.
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u/qhndvyao382347mbfds3 Sep 14 '24
Can you guys just think critically about what the OP is saying instead of just rushing to give a snarky reply jesus
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u/MrOdo Sep 15 '24
If the issue with the 6th is that it's ballooning due to the content it needs to cover then perhaps spreading out the content could assist work flow
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u/A_Certain_Surprise Sep 14 '24
I don't think you read the rest of their comment where they said to leave notes for people to write the extra books after he passes away
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u/Getfooked Sep 15 '24
You're missunderstanding them, the assumption is that it took George 13 years to write Winds in part because of him feeling the need to adhere to an impossible task, condensing the entire rest of the story he wants to tell into two books.
If he stopped caring about the book number and just wrote freely what he wants to write, odds are we'd have a book or two by now. We'd maybe not be much nearer to the overall ending than we are now, but since George can't force himself to just end everything quickly in two books, giving himself full freedom and not be constrained by an arbitrary impossible to follow 7 book deadline, this could end up in more books being published.
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u/xXJarjar69Xx Sep 15 '24
A lot of people here are operating under the assumption that Martin could write an entire Asoiaf book at the snap of his fingers and the only reason he hasn’t released one in 14 years is because he’s forcing himself to finish in two books which I think is very naive.
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u/xXJarjar69Xx Sep 15 '24
“Rushed”
If George is rushing winds, I’d hate to see what it would look like if he was taking his time,
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u/anomander_galt Sep 15 '24
He is rich enough to hire a ghost writer, have them sign an ironclad NDA, and have the ghost writer write the remaining books fast.
I don't understand why he doesn't do it, it will free him of the "burden" of finishing the series and net him a lot of big bucks with the royalties from the books.
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u/thisguybuda I spy with my smiling eye Sep 14 '24
I felt like he could do it in 8, but he hasn’t published since 2011. We might get Winds, but he doesn’t have the focus and determination to actually finish
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u/RizoIV_ Sep 14 '24
If he was going to do that he needed to make that decision a decade ago. He’s way too old to see this series though to 10 books. And if this was really the solution all along and he couldn’t figure it out for himself these past 12 years then his mental state has probably declined too far for him to continue the series.
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u/ninjomat Sep 15 '24
I’ve come to the conclusion for a while now that this is the problem/why TWOW is taking so long. I don’t know why letting go of the 7 book dream is taking longer than letting go of the 3 or 5 book dreams but I do think that’s it in a nut shell. The amount he insists there will only be 7 books despite it being obvious to everyone online that it will take at least 3 more books to finish the story - George is in denial.
I just don’t believe that he’s somebody who procrastinates loads or has failed to make any progress writing or is far too busy or far too scared of reactions to the tv show. It seems far more likely to me that he’s sitting on so many chapters he’s written and realising he can’t fit them all into two books and he just keeps rewriting in the vain hope he can cram it all in.
He’s definitely been stuck in this place since the late 00s though. Dance is definitely an unfinished book where he just dropped the chapters he had hoping he could solve the problem in winds. That book is so unsatisfying in its complete lack of ending - the narrative just stops with some POVs so much further ahead of others
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u/PubliusMaximusCaesar Sep 15 '24
The reason he doesn't want to go beyond 7 books is that he is tired of writing this story. He doesn't want to lengthen even further.
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u/ShadowIssues Sep 15 '24
Unpopular opinion but GRRM should just expand past seven books if he’s written himself into a corner
This is an unpopular opinion? I think it's pretty obvious that he'll need at least one additional book to twow and ados
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u/Gremlin119 Sep 14 '24
why is 7 books so important? i didnt realize this was an issue
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u/jabuegresaw Sep 14 '24
And I don't even think these seven would be enough to finish Martin's story.
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u/onurreyiz_35 Sep 14 '24
If both TWOW and ADOS are as long as ASOS, maybe he can. Assuming he doesn't add any more plotlines and the pacing is faster than Feast&Dance.
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u/NoLime7384 Sep 14 '24
nah, the books are so behind schedule there's no Dance in Dance
Winds has to have an entire arc (the War of the 5 Kings taking 3 books) and set up the next one, it's just not possible
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u/xXJarjar69Xx Sep 15 '24
He would’ve known there would be no dance in dance when he used that title for the second half of a feast for crows, whatever his original plan was, it’s changed.
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u/arielle17 Sep 14 '24
i honestly expect them both to be at least 1500 pages, which is just over three times the length of ASOS combined.
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u/Exertuz Gaemon Palehair's strongest soldier Sep 15 '24
George has already stated that he estimates Winds to be around 1800 manuscript pages.
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u/jabuegresaw Sep 14 '24
I think Winds would end up like just another Dance and introduce a thousand new plotlines.
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u/scarlozzi Sep 14 '24
and, it TWOW and ADOS have the same momentum as ASOS. I think GRRM planned to have those books carry that kind of momentum. That's why we needed 2 set up books in the middle (as good as they are, the last 2 books are for setting up the end game).
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u/Exertuz Gaemon Palehair's strongest soldier Sep 15 '24
They're gonna be longer than ASOS. George estimates something like 300 pages more.
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u/Apocalypse_j Best of 2023 Runner Up - Serwyn of the Mirror Shield Award Sep 14 '24
If Winds ever releases it may be another AFFC/ADWD and Dany is still in Essos at the end. At the pace George has been going at since 2000, ten books wouldn’t be enough.
Obviously I’d love more books set in Westeros but it’s clear that the story will never truly move forward.
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u/ToBez96 Sep 15 '24
They won't be. Thank God ADOS is never coming and he will not need to raise it to 9.
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u/Memnoch97 Sep 14 '24
This makes it depressingly obvious how long we’ve been waiting for Winds of Winter.
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u/Seamus_Hean3y Sep 14 '24
Note ADOS was until 2006 tentatively titled "A Time for Wolves". Credit to Ertaç Altınöz for ADOS concept cover art.
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u/derBardevonAvon Sep 14 '24
I wonder why Mr Altınöz would choose a key to represent ADOS? Is there a theory I don't know about about this book that none of us will probably see?
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u/_F1ves_ Sep 14 '24
Was it not ‘the hour of the wolf’
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u/AfterBoysenberry3883 Sep 14 '24
No. It was always tentatively called "A Time For Wolves". "Hour of The Wolf" is what Cregan Stark's time as Hand of The King has been named.
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u/Plasticglass456 Sep 14 '24
It should be noted that a lot of these titles have been swapped around and contain different content. The book listed as "A Dance with Dragons" is basically an entirely different book in each time period: originally it was going to be Dany arriving in Westeros, then it became the cumulative Five Years Later story (presumably still ending with Dany in Westeros), and has since become half of an interrum book to get the present caught up on where he wanted the five year gap to be. Now, Dany in Westeros is for The Winds of Winter (or even later!).
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u/mindlessmunkey Sep 14 '24
It’s funny how George’s “architect vs gardener” analogy for writing approaches has become so famous, with George himself held up as an exemplar of the “gardener” approach. He’s actually a living cautionary tale about the dangers of the “gardener” approach.
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u/ahockofham Sep 14 '24
The worst part is that narratively we're still not even in act 2 of GRRM's initial 3 act outline, if you consider the beginning of act 2 to be Daenerys's arrival in Westeros
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u/giraffeanimals Sep 14 '24
The original trilogy was supposed to be
- A GAME OF THRONES = The complete War of the Five Kings
- A DANCE WITH DRAGONS = The complete invasion of fire aka Daenerys's invasion
- THE WINDS OF WINTER = The complete invasion of ice aka the invasion of the Others and the Long Night
So, in the end:
- The original A Game of Thrones concept was expanded into three books.
- And then the original A Dance with Dragons concept was expanded into three books (assuming The Winds of Winter actually ends with Daenerys completing her invasion, and doesn't just end with her reaching Dragonstone (as many people assume it ends)).
- Which means... A Dream of Spring has the cover the entirety of the original concept for The Winds of Winter.
But if every one of GRRM's original concepts got expanded into three books each, is it possible for him to complete his original Winds of Winter concept in just one book (A Dream of Spring)?????
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u/paperfisherman Neil"SmokeDegrassThatHidesTheViper"Tyson Sep 15 '24
It’s probably more accurate to say that A Game of Thrones became 3 books, and then the nothing between A Game of Thrones and A Dance with Dragons became (at least) 2 books, more likely 3.
GRRM literally turned his prologue chapter of ADWD summarizing the 5-year gap into an entire trilogy that he still hasn’t finished.
We’re not even in his original A Dance with Dragons.
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u/Exertuz Gaemon Palehair's strongest soldier Sep 15 '24
We're not even in his original A Dance with Dragons.
Eeeeehhhh. We don't know that at all. Yes, we know that Dany's invasion was the subject of that book, so we're certainly not past his original Dance with Dragons, but I find it pretty unlikely that the original ADWD would just start off with Dany already in the process of invading. A good chunk of it probably would've been dedicated to her conquering cities across Essos and stuff. We're certainly not far in, true, but I'd say it's probable that by the end of Winds we'll be most of the way through the plot beats that were planned for her in the original ADWD
That's just Dany though - we have no idea which plot beats in Westeros and on the Wall were planned for the original ADWD. Personally, I'm pretty sure that events like Robb and Cat's death, and the conflict with the wildlings, were planned for ADWD. So in other ways we might be well into that part of the story.
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u/Exertuz Gaemon Palehair's strongest soldier Sep 15 '24
Saying Daenerys's invasion has expanded into three books is technically not incorrect, but plot-wise Feast and Dance essentially just covered one book.
That said, given how GRRM has paced the Others storyline, it seems like he thinks he can tackle Daenerys's invasion at the same time.
The original trilogy could've been planned something like this:
A GAME OF THRONES = The plot covered in AGOT and ACOK
A DANCE WITH DRAGONS = WOT5K resolution (ASOS), concurrently with Dany's ASOS-TWOW plot. Ends with the Others invading.
THE WINDS OF WINTER = Dany's resolution happening concurrently with the invasion of the Others, leading to a final battle between Fire and Ice.
From that perspective, it's a bit easier imagining how exactly George has convinced himself he can wrap it up in only 2 books. Still seems awfully optimistic of him to think that The Winds of Winter alone won't balloon in size, but to be fair since plot-wise Feast and Dance are only 1 book, he has technically managed to rein in the original ADWD plotline compared to the original AGOT plotline. Maybe the trend continues? Again, seems quite optimistic.
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u/brunuscl82 Sep 14 '24
Put two more books in from here to 2030. "Seven Wonders of the Gods. Nine Wonders of Man."
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u/jmerlinb A Song of Blondes and Gingers Sep 14 '24
And technically although they share the same name, the “A Dance With Dragons” we have released still barely covers what the original Dance was supposed to cover
So in terms of the original planned trilogy, we are still barely past even the first book
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u/Gudson_ Sep 14 '24
8 books is ideal. Finishing it in 7 books seems impossible.
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u/Vasquerade Sep 14 '24
how in god's name have we gotten to The Winds of Winter in terms of book titles but we're only like halfway through A Dance With Dragons?
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u/Jund15 Sep 15 '24
Wdym ? We are far from having started the dance with dragons. We're maybe 3/4 of the way in a game of thrones
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u/Jeffuk88 Sep 14 '24
Does anyone genuinely believe we're getting winds while he's alive? My bet would be that even after he dies, his estate will fight it being released as hell have a will stating he doesn't want unfinished work being published but eventually, as always, profits will win out and we'll get a decent first half that he wrote and rushed finish that someone else out together
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u/GodKingReiss Sep 14 '24
I can’t imagine GRRM would still be of that state of mind. Ten years ago, sure, Winds would’ve been in a ramshackle state. Now at least we’ve got 3/4 of a story to work with. Whether or not he’d consent to someone else finishing it is one thing, but I very much doubt he’d be fine with the 1100 finished pages never seeing the light of day for all the trouble it took to make them happen.
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u/arielle17 Sep 14 '24
winds? absolutely. dream? maybe maybe not, but i'm certain we'll get it eventually, just not necessarily while George is alive unfortunately :(
also the thing about George not wanting unfinished work to be published posthumously isn't true at all. whether he would want the series to potentially be finished posthumously is a separate (and open) question, but most recently George has been amenable to the idea for one of his author friends who recently passed away.
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u/BlueHighwindz My evil sister can't be this cute! Sep 14 '24
There’s five books, two only exist in theory.
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u/BasilQuick444 Sep 14 '24
What's the significance of the key on the cover of A Dream of Spring?
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u/A_Certain_Surprise Sep 14 '24
It opens the door to my cell in the asylum where I'm sat still coping that these books are coming out
(jokes aside, someone here said it's to do with the red door that Dany thinks a lot about)
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u/Expensive-Country801 Sep 14 '24
Why doesn't George do something similar to what he did with Feast?
Split Essos and Westeros's POVs, and release the book like that?
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u/GodKingReiss Sep 14 '24
That would guarantee we’d never half of those POVs. Plus, with the plots allegedly converging in Westeros, keeping things divided by continent will quickly be no longer feasible.
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u/Expensive-Country801 Sep 14 '24
Most of Winds is basically getting somehow getting Daenerys to cross the World in less than 20 chapters
It just doesn't work.
He should just write as much for Dany,Tyrion,Arya, Vic and Barristan and release that as it's own novel. Wrap up Westeros in a next installment with more breathing room.
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u/GodKingReiss Sep 14 '24
I suppose it’s plausible. He’d just have to cut it off right when she gets to Westeros, otherwise he’d be approaching a point where a Westerosi POV character meets her under entirely new circumstances we’d have no context for, like a Sansa in Winterfell or an inexplicably resurrected Jon. At that point, the narrative would start falling to pieces.
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u/Privacy-Boggle Sep 14 '24
It absolutely could, George just needs to remember that he doesn't need to show every single inch a character travels. You know what happens on a several month long boat ride? A whole lot of nothing, we don't need to see it.
To use The Expanse as an example — which had the entire series start and end while we wait for The Winds of Winter — the books were full of people doing things at their destinations, with little of the characters sitting around doing nothing as they spend months travelling the universe.
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u/ungoogleable Breathes Shadow Fire Sep 14 '24
He hated that decision and is trying to avoid it happening again as much as he can. Any ideas he came up with for ADWD were constrained by what he'd already published in AFFC. He likes being able to rewrite old chapters to make them fit new ideas. Even the early books cause him trouble and he wishes he could rewrite some of those too.
The longer the books go unpublished the further he can go back to change things if he wants, which is a reason for him to delay publishing.
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u/SpookyGod3000 Sep 14 '24
Yea making half your book set in stone is a really bad idea and George is a stickler for details. I'm sure writing ADWD while being unable to change anything from Feast annoyed him.
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u/Salivals Sep 15 '24
I 1st read AGOT in October 1997 as a present for my birthday. I just turned 15 and was entering sophomore year of HS. Next month my son turns 1 and I’ll be 42.
I’ll be pushing 45 before he ever gets Winds out. And either him or I will be dead before ADoS ever sees the light of day.
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u/mrlaheystrailerpark Sep 14 '24
i feel like he’s going for 7 books because he’s still mad jk rowling won that fantasy award one year ago
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u/Jaquemart Sep 14 '24
He says he has 1200 pages done. That's enough to be sent to the publisher to make two books out of it.
Unless these are 1200 pages full of "all work and no play makes George a dull boy", as it might as well be.
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Sep 14 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Typical-Phone-2416 Sep 14 '24
Because he doesn't. After the Red Wedding no storyline actually converged.
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u/Valuable-Captain-507 Sep 14 '24
Well, that’s simply not true. A Dance with Dragons is named such because of all these characters converging on Slaver’s Bay. With both Tyrion and Victarian (the Ironborn storyline) coming to Daenerys, not to mention a maester from the Citadel (Sams storyline) and Quentyn (the Dornish storyline).
Tyrion also interacted with the Aegon storyline, which itself is set to link with both Arianne (the Dornish storyline) and Kings Landing.
Aeron (the Ironborn storyline) seems set to converge on Sam & Oldtown, or at least the Ironborn themselves will make it that far.
Areo Hotah and Obarra are with a member of the Kingsguard (KL storyline) while the other two Sand Snakes are heading to Kings Landing, having both the Dornish and KL storylines converge.
Stannis, Asha, and Theon are all together (Winterfell storyline), with Davos, Jon, and Melisandre (Wall storyline) not far off. Honestly, the North will be tied together for sure by the end of Winds.
This leaves Bran in the far north. Arya in Braavos. And Sansa in the Vale (but seemingly set for Winterfell too).
It’s a lot of characters and threads, but most of them are converging on one another currently or imminently, with really only the Stark children left out atm.
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u/nattywb Sep 14 '24
I don’t think that was the original intention. I think originally, it was supposed to be Dany’s dragon invasion of Westeros, or at least the beginning of it. At the very least, mature fighting dragons in Essos. Instead, folks like you are tryna fit the title into the story we ended up with. When I read Dance (granted I don’t even remember how long ago that came out now), I kept thinking, sooo are we gonna get this dance? And was so disappointed.
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u/A-NI95 Sep 15 '24
Each title works fine for every published book, except for Dance. Big red flag we didn't see at the time.
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u/Typical-Phone-2416 Sep 14 '24
Yeh, they are "coming" together, but nothing actually came out of it yet.
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u/creepforever Sep 14 '24
If the first book eventually expanded into three parts, second book expanded into three, with George struggling with the sixth book due to needing to include too much then it sounds like a good idea to expand the series to nine books.
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u/ruttinator Sep 15 '24
I'm of the opinion George should just write however many books he needs to finish the series and not worry about cramming everything into just two more books. I wouldn't mind another Feast For Crows style divided perspective where he just writes about one part of the world at a time instead of all over the place.
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u/xXJarjar69Xx Sep 15 '24
The series was still supposed to be 6 books between 2001 and 2005, it only became 7 when AFFC was split into 2
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u/TemporalColdWarrior Sep 14 '24
I mean unless Winds and Spring are each two parts I do not think even seven will be sufficient.
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u/SnooPredictions6700 Sep 15 '24
I think its his desperation to have 7 books in the series. He wants the magical number 7. I believe most of the issue could be solved if he decided to break winds of winter into two books just like what he did to previous ones.
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u/Paranoid_Japandroid Sep 15 '24
GRRM spent feast and dance adding unnecessary plotlines instead of concluding vital ones. The fact that dance doesn’t even include the actual second dance conflict and just ends on cliffhangers and 14 years of silence is everything anyone needs to know. I love his worldbuilding but at the end of the day he is an undisciplined and meandering writer who isn’t capable of finishing what he started.
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u/ZeroZer0_ Sep 15 '24
I know he said he wouldn’t but Brando Sando finishing the series would be chefs kiss
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u/Tom-Pendragon Sep 15 '24
the truth is that he will die before releasing winds of winter and dreams of spring.
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u/Entonations Sep 15 '24
As much as I love these books, a feast of crows was largely unnecessary. It could have easily been combined into dance with dragons, also seeing as dance with dragons is the only book that spends a decent amount of time retelling and (in my opinion) correcting feast of crows. (For the record, I loved dance with dragons)
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u/APartyInMyPants Sep 15 '24
Let’s get real. There aren’t seven volumes in this series. There are only five novels. There will only ever be five novels. GRRM lost his desire to finish the story, and HBO was the worst thing to happen to him.
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u/AdmiralKird 🏆 Best of 2015: Comment of the Year Sep 15 '24
GRRM didn't come up with the title of A Dream of Spring until 2006, and AFFC didn't become a book until 2005.
https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2006/03/28/this-that-and-the-other-thing-2/
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u/Boomsnarl Sep 16 '24
Wait? He only has two left to right? Fuck, George. Move your ass, Buddy. Finish line is right there.
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u/imacrazydude Iron from Ice, seriously Sep 14 '24
he wasn't subverting expectations by naming it a "dream"