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[Captiosus]

I remember reading A Dance with Dragons when it first came out and thinking, "For fuck's sake, where is GRRM's editor telling him that he needs to get to the fucking point?"

In both A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, Martin becomes sidetracked with not only too many characters but too much minutiae. I've read plenty of books by long winded authors but Martin's constant insistence on spending multiple pages in detail about feasts and other things that could have been streamlined down to one or two paragraphs at most is why he's taking so damn long to get anything done -- and I just don't see how he's going to keep these plot threads coherent in any sense. There's just too many of them.

Dude really needs a no nonsense editor who isn't enamored by Martin's "fame" with the ASOIAF series and tell him to trim the shit down.

 

[Nobody_Important]

I remember reading A Dance with Dragons when it first came out and thinking, "For fuck's sake, where is GRRM's editor telling him that he needs to get to the fucking point?"

In both A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, Martin becomes sidetracked with not only too many characters but too much minutiae. I've read plenty of books by long winded authors but Martin's constant insistence on spending multiple pages in detail about feasts and other things that could have been streamlined down to one or two paragraphs at most is why he's taking so damn long to get anything done -- and I just don't see how he's going to keep these plot threads coherent in any sense. There's just too many of them.

Dude really needs a no nonsense editor who isn't enamored by Martin's "fame" with the ASOIAF series and tell him to trim the shit down.

Nah. This idea that every story and every piece of media needs to fit inside of a set scale is bullshit. Some writers have huge books. Some don't. Some directors have long movies. Some don't. Some bands have long albums. Some don't. GRRM is under no obligation compromise his creative process in order to appease the impatient masses and the financial entities that benefit from his works just to get a check and make people happy. He has spent decades of his life writing this series and he deserves to end it on his own terms in a way that he sees fit. Not to make a deadline or make nerds on the internet happy.



Don't like the length or the style? Don't read it then. But that does not make it bad or not worth reading. Not everything needs to fit into a certain period of time or be easily digestible. Not everything needs to be easy to follow or be able to keep up with on the fly.



It's his life's work and it will be the IP that people remember him for long after he is gone. He can take his time to get it right and end it the way he wants. He has damn well earned that.

 

[Bragr]

Let's be clear, the last book was not that great, and he knows it, he's struggling to make it good. I think Winds of Winter is gonna be the worst book yet.

Dany across the sea sucks, and it's half the story after book 3.

 

[Captiosus]

Nah. This idea that every story and every piece of media needs to fit inside of a set scale is bullshit. Some writers have huge books. Some don't. Some directors have long movies. Some don't. Some bands have long albums. Some don't. GRRM is under no obligation compromise his creative process in order to appease the impatient masses and the financial entities that benefit from his works just to get a check and make people happy. He has spent decades of his life writing this series and he deserves to end it on his own terms in a way that he sees fit. Not to make a deadline or make nerds on the internet happy.



Don't like the length or the style? Don't read it then. But that does not make it bad or not worth reading. Not everything needs to fit into a certain period of time or be easily digestible. Not everything needs to be easy to follow or be able to keep up with on the fly.



It's his life's work and it will be the IP that people remember him for long after he is gone. He can take his time to get it right and end it the way he wants. He has damn well earned that.

What a load of horseshit.
This is precisely why editors exist.

Tell me with a straight face that ADoD didn't have too many pages dedicated to telling us every single little detail of every table in every feast scene. This isn't an issue of hurrying him along for financial reasons, it's an issue of telling him that he's spending too much time on too much irrelevant shit. If you tally up how much time is spent on repeating minutiae within the last two books, they could have been cut by two thirds, maybe half. Readers don't need to be continually told the tiny details of every bit of food on a fucking table, especially when it's the third or fourth time you've done as much.

Again, precisely why editors exist.
To remind writers that brevity matters.

 

[Nobody_Important]

Let's be clear, the last book was not that great, and he knows it, he's struggling to make it good. I think Winds of Winter is gonna be the worst book yet.

Dany across the sea sucks, and it's half the story after book 3.

I wouldn't disagree but only to a point. Its the weakest of the books, but I lend that more to the stories involved more than the writing itself. He had to cover what happened with the various parties involved or else there would be a gaping hole in the progress, but the stories just kinda sucked due to the direction and the setting. I think he felt that and he also saw the absolute shitstorm the show caused with its shit ending and has gone back to work around all of that whole mess out and end on a note that does not even come close. I genuinely believe that he is doing his best to end this on the highest note he can that makes the largest amount of fans happy because he knows that he isn't going to be around long enough to appease them if they don't like.


What is happening to him is basically the equivalent of Tolkien being at the end of his life and the first two Lord of the Rings books only JUST NOW exploded in popularity and The Hobbit was never written. He still has to finish Return of the King. Not only that, but he is also trying to nail down the Silmarillion and The Hobbit in order to set the lore in place. That way he has a before and after. He is trying to juggle so much, but he only has 2 hands and he is admittedly not exactly at a stage where he can easily pull all-nighters to get shit done. I think he wants to try and nail the entire fantasy down lore-wise while also trying to finish the main narrative. So he is dividing himself about a dozen different ways to do it. Which makes sense. This was a world all its own that always had the potential for every bit the depth that Middle Earth had, but it just didn't catch on until it was almost too late for him.


I feel bad for him. I honestly sympathize. If he was a younger author who hit it this big then all of this would be an afterthought. He would have years or even decades to set things right and get the whole setting in order. Sadly Game of Thrones hit it big towards the end of his life and suddenly he has the whole world waiting on his work at a time where he may have been expecting to relax in his old age and retire.


So if I were in his place I don't blame GRRM one bit for spreading the net wide and trying to get as much done as I can. Especially with the alternative being the media world deciding what the lore would be in my absence once I'm gone.

 

[Ionian]

They are all great. The show took liberties from the books, but the product from all sides is better for Fire and Blood existing. It did so much to grow the setting to Harry Potter levels and damn near Tolkien.


I say that as a lifelong fan of the series.

Didn't know there was more than one, I'm curious now!

 

[Bragr]

I wouldn't disagree but only to a point. Its the weakest of the books, but I lend that more to the stories involved more than the writing itself. He had to cover what happened with the various parties involved or else there would be a gaping hole in the progress, but the stories just kinda sucked due to the direction and the setting. I think he felt that and he also saw the absolute shitstorm the show caused with its shit ending and has gone back to work around all of that whole mess out and end on a note that does not even come close. I genuinely believe that he is doing his best to end this on the highest note he can that makes the largest amount of fans happy because he knows that he isn't going to be around long enough to appease them if they don't like.


What is happening to him is basically the equivalent of Tolkien being at the end of his life and the first two Lord of the Rings books only JUST NOW exploded in popularity and The Hobbit was never written. He still has to finish Return of the King. Not only that, but he is also trying to nail down the Silmarillion and The Hobbit in order to set the lore in place. That way he has a before and after. He is trying to juggle so much, but he only has 2 hands and he is admittedly not exactly at a stage where he can easily pull all-nighters to get shit done. I think he wants to try and nail the entire fantasy down lore-wise while also trying to finish the main narrative. So he is dividing himself about a dozen different ways to do it. Which makes sense. This was a world all its own that always had the potential for every bit the depth that Middle Earth had, but it just didn't catch on until it was almost too late for him.


I feel bad for him. I honestly sympathize. If he was a younger author who hit it this big then all of this would be an afterthought. He would have years or even decades to set things right and get the whole setting in order. Sadly Game of Thrones hit it big towards the end of his life and suddenly he has the whole world waiting on his work at a time where he may have been expecting to relax in his old age and retire.


So if I were in his place I don't blame GRRM one bit for spreading the net wide and trying to get as much done as I can. Especially with the alternative being the media world deciding what the lore would be in my absence once I'm gone.

But he didn't have to have the storyline of Dany in Meereen, which is one of the dominating stories. Mereen is too big, he skips and hops from character to character, all of them shallow and uninteresting, the shavepate and the harpies and the husk of Selmy, it's all too thin. A Song of Ice and Fire is about Westeros, and no other place works as well as Westeros, where all the stories we have been reading take place.

It would be like if Tolkien spent half of Two Towers in some faraway land.

He wanted to flesh out "the world" in one book, and all the characters we loved, the Stark family, are decimated or dead. He was so fascinated with shocking viewers that he wrecked the best story he had going.

I blame book 4, he wanted too much and include too many, making the story too big.

 

[Nobody_Important]

Didn't know there was more than one, I'm curious now!

I will literally kiss your face if you correct me in public one more time.


I am not kidding. Tread at your own risk.

 

[BadBurger]

Let's assume Fire & Blood was largely ghost written. We know GRRM is a notoriously slow editor. So it still would have absorbed a year or longer of his time right? I mean it takes him like nine months to edit those dumb Wildcard collections of short stories.

 

[Lunarorbit]

You definitely are and you definitely do.

Chill the fuck out man, it’s just a book.

Nah.

 

[IDKFA]

Fire and Blood isn't part of the main Song of Ice and Fire series. It's a fake history book telling (half) the history of House Targaryen. The amount of characters in Fire and Blood won't impact the main series at all.

A Song of Ice and Fire will be finished, but unlikely by George Martin.

 

[Brian Fellows]

I gave up hope a long time ago.

 

[FunkMiller]

Nah. This idea that every story and every piece of media needs to fit inside of a set scale is bullshit. Some writers have huge books. Some don't. Some directors have long movies. Some don't. Some bands have long albums. Some don't. GRRM is under no obligation compromise his creative process in order to appease the impatient masses and the financial entities that benefit from his works just to get a check and make people happy. He has spent decades of his life writing this series and he deserves to end it on his own terms in a way that he sees fit. Not to make a deadline or make nerds on the internet happy.

Er... he needs to end it on the terms he's negotiated with his publishers, via his agent. And the dopey twat has blown through multiple deadlines that he repeatedly promised he'd hit. He shouldn't be dictated to by nerds on the internet, but he should honour the publishing contract he signed in good faith. Now, he's obviously powerful enough for everyone to just put up with his nonsense, but it's nonsense nonetheless. And deeply unprofessional. A novel is still a team effort, when you get right down to it, and he's taking the other members of that team for fools.

 

[Nobody_Important]

Er... he needs to end it on the terms he's negotiated with his publishers, via his agent. And the dopey twat has blown through multiple deadlines that he repeatedly promised he'd hit. He shouldn't be dictated to by nerds on the internet, but he should honour the publishing contract he signed in good faith. Now, he's obviously powerful enough for everyone to just put up with his nonsense, but it's nonsense nonetheless. And deeply unprofessional. A novel is still a team effort, when you get right down to it, and he's taking the other members of that team for fools.

Nah. I don't care what he signed. Its his IP and he can easily afford the fines and penalties even if they are dumb enough to try and apply them. A creator of his stature at this point is only really beholden to themselves in the end. Everything else is secondary and of relatively no concern.


It will be done when its done and until then the impatient masses can kick rocks and bitch at the top of their little lungs until they turn blue in the face. I doubt it will even register to him lol

 

[Nico_D]

The best recorded case of Writer's Block. Martin should just come out and admit it, his deflects and defenses are sad by now. If I were to guess, he lost his interest after the show starting. Watching it end the story - one way or the other - before he had the time to do it probably ended it in his head too. It's a done story, really had to go back to that.

Or maybe he will push out the last books in the next two years. Who knows.

 

[RJMacready73]

I'd love to read these books and was at one point about to hop into them through my love of the show but seeing as that went a bit shite and there's no end in sight for the books I've decided to hold off, but would I be right in saying there's 2 books left?? So if he's been over promising the penultimate book for the last 10yrs how in the holy fuck does anyone expect him to write the last one before he does cause that dude ain't got long in him

 

[TuxedoSammy]

lol I think that's fairly obvious, I agree. He should pick a GoT-autist from one of his fan letters and delegate them to take his mishmash of ideas and write something compelling for him. Maybe that's in his will: conduct a contest testing writing ability and GoT knowledge, and the winner gets to inherit his incohesive-scribbles-yet-to-be to finish the series. A Willy Wonka: Late GRRM Edition, if you will.

 

[Madflavor]

I made peace awhile ago that ASOIAF is never being finished, and I'm pretty sure most fans are too.