[Traveller]

I read somewhere, possibly GM's (timewasting) blog, that he's put the Starks into so much trouble that he doesn't know how to resolve it, which was I think his original plan. He seems to have no trouble letting a story flow as he writes it; it's the clean up he has problems with. At least SE seems to have had an end in mind for some time now - hell, even jk rowling worked out everything in advance.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

If he would just come clean and say that it's taking so long because he doesn't know what to do, I'd be happier than I am now.

[Traveller]

Me too. He could just tell us if he's decided to take a two year break or something. (His publisher might have something to say about that though!)

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

It's the lying that hurts, George.

[caladanbrood]

Hahah. I imagine he did have a plan, initially. But when he worked out that he had to re-write aFfC entirely differently, it all went out the window

[Traveller]

Yeah, maybe he's got heaps of different conflicting storythreads piled up around him, and now he doesn't know what day it is. That's why he's off tripping round Spain instead of finishing it.

[Werthead]

Cocoreturns;349359 said:

but honestly though Wert, how many of the people who have read his other works were turned onto them by ASOIAF? probably a rather large chunk I would think.

Oh that is true, I was merely pointing out how his attitude is informed by his career up to the point where ASoIaF began, and that is rather different to the attitude displayed by people who only first heard of him through the fantasy series and to others still who heard of him and read his books or watched his TV episodes a long time before ASoIaF began, and in that difference is probably where a lot of the arguments and flamewars come from.

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Hmm! Yes. i'm a bit concerned about the fact that aDwD supposedly runs parallel (in timeline terms) to the previous book... does that mean none of the cliff-hangers from aFfC's will be resolved until the NEXT book?!

Nope. ADWD extends beyond the end of AFFC by several months. Several characters from AFFC (at least three POVs, possibly more) will be in ADWD as well. Some of the cliffhangers may not be resolved (I'd be surprised if Brienne's or Cersei's were, for example) but certainly those related to the three POVs who are in both books will be.

The three POVs carrying-over are:

Spoiler

Sansa, Arya and Asha. It also sounds like Marwyn and Victarion will be in ADWD, but will not be POVs.

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That is what it means. It's going to be great, but will do little to advance the plot along. Oh, people are going to howl.

I get the impression that the ADWD GRRM was planning on writing in 2005 would have fitted this description, hence the rewrite and the delays. Based on the chapters from the former that were complete and the same chapters in their current form, it looks like having greater plot advancement was GRRM's primary motive in the rewrite. And he is well aware of the problems other fantasy authors have had in bringing their long-running series to conclusions, and knows that the pace should be ramping up rather than slowing down as the end approaches.

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I read somewhere, possibly GM's (timewasting) blog, that he's put the Starks into so much trouble that he doesn't know how to resolve it, which was I think his original plan

I don't think he's ever said this. The closest was the acknowledgement that the loss of the 5-year gap means they're going to be some rewriting to accomodate them being five years younger, but apparently this really only effects Bran and Arya. We've already seen apparently how Arya handles the situation in AFFC and will see how Bran does it in ADWD. Apparently Bran's role in the series will continue to be more based around ideas, information and his growing magical abilities, none of which are as dependent on age as Arya's fighting and assassination skills are.

One of the last messages we got from GRRM and Parris in Spain was that they wanted to reiterate that the current Spanish and Portugese trip was arranged by the publishers four years ago and they committed to going to it back then, and didn't want to pull out and disappoint the fans there because GRRM has done that a lot over the past year or so with other events (the Chinese/Japanese/Korean trip he cancelled to work on ADWD, several cons that he also cancelled etc).

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Wert, your insistence on provided actual factual information is making it hard to ignorantly bitch about things! Good stuff, thanks for the info.

[Traveller]

yeah.. i was just having a good rant there! Good to here more details about aDwDs, thanks for that Wert. Glad to hear that the story advances some more, too. Bit frustrating 'bout the cliffhangers though...

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

The problem grrm faces it that as soon as this book is released, people are going to be wanting the next one, and will complain if it takes more than a week or two to come out after aSoIaF. I don't envy his position.

[paladin]

in this day and age it doesnt pay to write a serial unless you can pump it out like some of the newer authors. the internet age frowns on sloth

[Werthead]

paladin;349800 said:

in this day and age it doesnt pay to write a serial unless you can pump it out like some of the newer authors. the internet age frowns on sloth

From talks I've had with publishers and authors, according to research between 90% and 95% of the readers of any individual series never go online to check on a book's progress and will pick it up if they see if in a bookstore or see a review in a magazine, and that's it. They're expecting that to shift, possibly dramatically, over the next few years as more people start habitually using Amazon and the like (which is why they're investing in setting up relationships with blogs now). But at the moment the overwhelming majority of the audience either don't give a toss about the delays or don't go online to bitch about it

[Terez]

The rate of release only matters for a few years. The series will be around forever. I think that authors should take however long it takes to write good books.

[Slum]

Terez;349958 said:

The rate of release only matters for a few years. The series will be around forever. I think that authors should take however long it takes to write good books.

I agree with that... for authors who aren't writing series. If it takes Chuck Palahniuk or Tom Robbins 6 years to write a spectacular novel, it's no big deal. But when you end every volume of a series on a cliffhanger, well, you can expect your fans to be somewhat antsy and irritated when the next installment is repeatedly delayed.

I understand GRRM has other stuff going on, but he's started something w/ ASoIaF that has garnered way more fanfare than anything he's done previously. And when you blatantly advertise all of your other projects like they're just as important as your new hot-shit, you risk pissing off a large segment of that new fan-base.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

I think it's past the risk phase, and moved into actually pissing people off.

[Werthead]

Raymond Luxury Yacht;349151 said:

Yeah, if he wrote another fantasy series I'd read it, but scifi typically doesn't interest me.

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I'm not really a sci-fi fan, so it's nothing personal against his other work. A personal choice.

I was just pondering GRRM's theory of the 'furniture rules', that SF, Fantasy, Horror and faces of mainstream literature are all the same thing with the trappings swapped around. GRRM once said that A Song of Ice and Fire could be an SF series, easy, and he's right: it would be somewhere between Dune and The Gap series (although Dune is pretty much epic fantasy as it is). The bad guys in Bakker's Prince of Nothing series are literally aliens who fell out of the sky in a biotech starship and used to roam around blasting people with lasers and railguns before their technology degraded.

That led me to think could Malazan be SF? I mean, it has interstellar spacecraft (albeit in the form of giant moon-destroying jade statues but whatever), gravity manipulation and so forth already. Then after some more pondering I realised there are already strong parallels to be drawn between Malazan and WH40K (which I think has even been mentioned before).

So I've never quite understood why people will read one thing and not the other. To me, they're the same thing. And if it's a good story, well-written, what's the difference?

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Magic is cooler than technology. Technology actually exists, magic doesn't, so if I'm wanting a break from reality, it's a bigger break. Plus technobabble annoys me. Just my opinion, obviously scifi fans will disagree.

If someone spews the quote about how at some level magic and technology will be indistinguishable, I promise I will neg rep them, even if it's someone I like. I don't want to hear it. You have been warned.

[Christopher]

I don't know if anyone's mentioned this yet, but IMO once science reaches a sufficiently high level it become indefensible, um, undefinable...indelictab...crap forgot how the rest goes...:confused:

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Hey you! None of that!

[HoosierDaddy]

"A sufficiently advanced race's technology would seem like magic to a less sufficiently advanced race?" Or something like that.

By the way, I wholeheartedly recommend The Taking by Dean Koontz. Entertaining.