Straight from the horse's mouth: GRRM says we can imprison him if he doesn't finish 'Winds of Winter' by next summer

[Praetorpwj]

Warm up a Sky Cell.

 

[Deleted member 31133]

My theory is that it's basically a combination of two things that's causing GRRM problems right now:

1) he's not working from an outline; series get way harder to write the further in you get if you don't have a solid framework to fall back on, especially when you're dealing with as many characters as he is, and
2) the TV show finishing the story and the ensuing reaction

As I understand it, the broad strokes of the later seasons of the TV show came from him, so now he's kind of in this weird situation where he knows where he's going, but people don't actually want him to go there. The problem then is that if he wants to change something, he has to take into account all the building he's done up to this point, and make all that fit. And he's under immense pressure to deliver a good book, so he can't just go with the first option that comes to mind and call it a day. That sounds like a damn nightmare to me.

The only other book series I can really compare ASOIAF to is The Dark Tower in terms of sheer page count and the way the authors work (King also doesn't work from an outline). The difference there is that TDK only really had one group of characters who were more or less always in the same place, so there was very little else to take into account. GRRM has all these various groups of people all around the world that somehow have to come together (because that's where this story is heading), and he has to do it on the fly because that's how he's worked for the last fifty years of his life. Plus, King had the benefit of TDK being in his bizarro world where absolutely anything can and does happen, so he could just pop into Maine if he felt like it. GRRM kind of has to keep things grounded in Westeros.

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I absolutely believe that the reaction the end of the TV series received has had an influence on his story.

I reread the series once a year and I'm not surprised he's struggling. There are so many characters and plot points that it must be a nightmare to keep track of. Also he split the characters up in books four and five and now has to bring everyone together for the next book. No wonder writing this book sent him spiraling into depression.

I still believe he'll finish the series strong. George knows ASOIAF is his magnum opus. Just finishing the series just for the sake of getting it finished would be unsatisfactory to himself and and readers of the series. He knows these last two books have to at least match the quality of the first three books. The pressure must be intense.

 

[digitalsea]

just let Sanderson finish the books

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I don't think that would work. If anyone else finishes the series, it should be Joe Abercrombie. His First Law books are clearly heavily inspired by ASOIAF already.

 

[CyberMonkey]

It's crazy that in the summer of 2015, George told his publishers he'd have the book competed by October that year ready to publish before April 2016.

He must have had a majority of the book completed at the time to believe he could finish it within a few months.

I think it's pretty obvious at this point that George has had to rewrite a majority of book. He probably didn't think quality was there with the original material and decided to go at it again. The pressure of writing this book and wanting to deliver something that matches the hype must be pretty intense.

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My theory is that George was still hoping/expecting that the show would end up with 10+ seasons back in 2014. This scenario would have given him a few more years to finish Winds before the show would catch up with him. I read an article once that George wanted HBO to spend 3 seasons on books 4 and 5.

However, D&D started cutting a lot of characters and content from the books and they did not want to deviate from their ~70 episode outline. So George probably felt pressured to finish the book in 2015 and he ended up with something that he was not 100% satisfied with.

I agree that he probably did a lot of rewrites after this and I think he also had a decreased sense of urgency to finish the book after season 7 of the show started production.

 

[louisacommie]

My theory is that it's basically a combination of two things that's causing GRRM problems right now:

1) he's not working from an outline; series get way harder to write the further in you get if you don't have a solid framework to fall back on, especially when you're dealing with as many characters as he is, and
2) the TV show finishing the story and the ensuing reaction

As I understand it, the broad strokes of the later seasons of the TV show came from him, so now he's kind of in this weird situation where he knows where he's going, but people don't actually want him to go there. The problem then is that if he wants to change something, he has to take into account all the building he's done up to this point, and make all that fit. And he's under immense pressure to deliver a good book, so he can't just go with the first option that comes to mind and call it a day. That sounds like a damn nightmare to me.

The only other book series I can really compare ASOIAF to is The Dark Tower in terms of sheer page count and the way the authors work (King also doesn't work from an outline). The difference there is that TDK only really had one group of characters who were more or less always in the same place, so there was very little else to take into account. GRRM has all these various groups of people all around the world that somehow have to come together (because that's where this story is heading), and he has to do it on the fly because that's how he's worked for the last fifty years of his life. Plus, King had the benefit of TDK being in his bizarro world where absolutely anything can and does happen, so he could just pop into Maine if he felt like it. GRRM kind of has to keep things grounded in Westeros.

Click to shrink...

I genuinely think ththe only 3 solid outline things he had given for the later seasons were shireen burning
hodor origin story

and king bran


everything else was made up around that by d and d based on assumptions guesses and formatting characters into other roles that cut characters had such as arianne faegon and joncon

poorly since theybarely gave bran screen time because he is boring even in the books (though I assume George will use make changes to the past time travel more then once and make it interesting hopefully)

 

[dsosarod]

I don't think that would work. If anyone else finishes the series, it should be Joe Abercrombie. His First Law books are clearly heavily inspired by ASOIAF already.

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That's a much better option and a match when it comes into style, but I doubt than even if for some strange reasons Joe is able to do it, he would want to.

 

[Jmdajr]

Yeah yeah