Originally Posted by ThaVirus:
Hah, my goodness. It’s been so long I forget how far behind GRRM is..
He’s basically got to iron out two wars in the beginning of Winds with Stannis at Winterfell and Daenerys vs Victarion in Meereen or wherever.
Jon Snow just got stabbed to death, Bran is still in the cave with Bloodraven, and Brienne & Jaime are probably going to be brought to zombie Catelyn.
Pretty much where it left off. I don't think Victarian is even to mireen yet. Daenerys is out on the Dothraki sea with her dragon after the disaster in the fighting pits. The imp and Jorah arent back to her, they just signed on as sell swords with the second sons. Ramsey wrote John to tell him that he has Stanos and his sword then John gets betrayed. There is a fuck ton left to wrap up. Assuming HBO was pretty close to Martins notes a lot of it could be easily tied up. But the very end is the part that needs serious attention. [Reply]
As sprawling as the HBO series ended up around season 6, it was nothing compared to the books. I mean there are entire POV characters that got deleted from the series that are still bouncing around the book universe.
I mentioned this years ago but GRRM is someone who 'loses control of his instrument' so to speak. He can't help but get bogged down in details and he often struggles badly to keep his story coherent. And his answer to a loose thread somewhere is to try to use that thread to knit another sweater.
He's seemingly disinterest or perhaps incapable of simply cutting off the thread.
He just reminds me so much of Stephen King in that regard. The expanded version of The Stand is what happens when everything goes right in that regard. Sometimes you manage to take the plane through all that turbulence, do a couple barrel rolls and put it on the tarmac. Then you have The Gunslinger series when he just kept doing loops until he put the damn thing into a mountain.
3 books in, he could've still brought this sucker home in a satisfying fashion. But instead he just kept getting broader and broader. When he tried to write book 4 and it was too long and unwieldy to put in one book, that should've been a sign to him that he was on the wrong track.
And instead of taking that overly long and convoluted story and editing the shit out of it, he just decided to make it two books.
Nothing he's said since then has been more demonstrative of his mindset than how he had to handle Feast and Dance. Hey George, when you can't decided on pizza or fried chicken, the answer shouldn't be full sized portions of each. This applies in both your writing and your life.
Martin is a classic example of a “pantser” writer - someone who writes by the seat of his pants and sees where the story he takes him.
Usually this type of writer will have, at most, a very high-level outline of where they’re planning to go with things.
The flip side is a “plotter” - someone who outlines a lot of detail and then writes to fit it in.
Pantsers tend to write the most beautiful stuff (Patrick Rothfuss is another example of this) with the best dialogue and the most rich storytelling and world-building.
Plotters tend to get done faster and actually get done, but can be more formulaic (Kevin J Anderson, Sanderson). Their characters are more likely to do something that seems out of line with their established operating styles.
Very few can meld the pros of both styles. Steven Eriksen is one of them. His writing/world partner Cam Esslemont cannot (he’s a plotter) [Reply]
Originally Posted by Dunerdr:
Pretty much where it left off. I don't think Victarian is even to mireen yet. Daenerys is out on the Dothraki sea with her dragon after the disaster in the fighting pits. The imp and Jorah arent back to her, they just signed on as sell swords with the second sons. Ramsey wrote John to tell him that he has Stanos and his sword then John gets betrayed. There is a fuck ton left to wrap up. Assuming HBO was pretty close to Martins notes a lot of it could be easily tied up. But the very end is the part that needs serious attention.
I think he will need to focus more on The Long Night.
In the show they brought down the Wall and then had the Battle for the Dawn within what felt like two or three episodes. The series heavily leans on the Game of Thrones moniker but the very first scene of the series showed the Others.
I’m thinking GRRM’s outline probably has the Others making it a bit further South than Winterfell, like the Isle of Faces, Trident or even King’s Landing. [Reply]
Originally Posted by ThaVirus:
I think he will need to focus more on The Long Night.
In the show they brought down the Wall and then had the Battle for the Dawn within what felt like two or three episodes. The series heavily leans on the Game of Thrones moniker but the very first scene of the series showed the Others.
I’m thinking GRRM’s outline probably has the Others making it a bit further South than Winterfell, like the Isle of Faces, Trident or even King’s Landing.
D&D creating the Night King allowed them way too easy of an avenue to end that storyline. And to my mind, that IS what the story is ultimately about. [Reply]
Started a knight of the 7 kingdoms today. Already hooked it seems a lot more relevant to the GOT stuff. It’s set 90ish years ahead I’d guess. Aeg has already mentioned that his brother aemon went to the wall. There’s several names that you’ve heard about in the original books. Can’t wait to see this on tv. [Reply]
Originally Posted by ThaVirus:
I grow tired of watching this incompetent hack Daemon bumble around this castle.
This dude is worthless without a sword in his hand.
Weird decision to keep one of your most popular and a badass inside a dream state and talking about nothing at a table when there is a war going on. Still got some season left. [Reply]
It will be interesting to see what the end game is for Daemon's story this season. This Harrenhal story has been spinning it's wheels for a while with not much movement character wise.
Rhaenyra seemingly heading head first into the same mistake that Aegon just made with his restlessness is troubling as well. [Reply]
I'm just miffed by the Scorpion Ballistas, or lack thereof.
1. In the original GOT series, they introduced the Scorpion as some sort of new technology designed to fight off a dragon. Ok, great. Maybe it was poor writing, innaccurate, or im just mis-remembering, but i swear they made it seem like it was new tech.
2. So then we go back in time to HoD and they're discussing using Scorpions. Whoa....ok, so they WEREN'T new technology, they had them hundreds of years prior to GOT? Sure, i mean that makes MORE sense really since there woulda been more dragons around and thus a bigger need. But of course that's a major contradiction.
3. So....if we know Dragons are the biggest threat to pretty much every kingdom in the world....how is every castle NOT guarded by a slew of Scorpion ballistas?
In a series so well written....the fact that Scorpions are nowhere to be found is some serious unspoken plot armor. [Reply]
Originally Posted by ToxSocks:
I'm just miffed by the Scorpion Ballistas, or lack thereof.
1. In the original GOT series, they introduced the Scorpion as some sort of new technology designed to fight off a dragon. Ok, great. Maybe it was poor writing, innaccurate, or im just mis-remembering, but i swear they made it seem like it was new tech.
2. So then we go back in time to HoD and they're discussing using Scorpions. Whoa....ok, so they WEREN'T new technology, they had them hundreds of years prior to GOT? Sure, i mean that makes MORE sense really since there woulda been more dragons around and thus a bigger need. But of course that's a major contradiction.
3. So....if we know Dragons are the biggest threat to pretty much every kingdom in the world....how is every castle NOT guarded by a slew of Scorpion ballistas?
In a series so well written....the fact that Scorpions are nowhere to be found is some serious unspoken plot armor.
There were no Dragons to defend from for a few hundred years. I thought Kaiben (sp?) or whatever said he found old designs and upgraded them for Cersei. [Reply]
Originally Posted by ToxSocks:
I'm just miffed by the Scorpion Ballistas, or lack thereof.
1. In the original GOT series, they introduced the Scorpion as some sort of new technology designed to fight off a dragon. Ok, great. Maybe it was poor writing, innaccurate, or im just mis-remembering, but i swear they made it seem like it was new tech.
2. So then we go back in time to HoD and they're discussing using Scorpions. Whoa....ok, so they WEREN'T new technology, they had them hundreds of years prior to GOT? Sure, i mean that makes MORE sense really since there woulda been more dragons around and thus a bigger need. But of course that's a major contradiction.
3. So....if we know Dragons are the biggest threat to pretty much every kingdom in the world....how is every castle NOT guarded by a slew of Scorpion ballistas?
In a series so well written....the fact that Scorpions are nowhere to be found is some serious unspoken plot armor.
I really thought Qyburn invented them.
Now I guess the counter would be that he didn't invent/build it, but rather he 'rediscovered' something that had largely vanished from the landscape as Dragons had seemingly gone extinct and those Scorpions wouldn't seem to be terribly useful for anything else (though it would seem as a defense against naval forces, they'd be pretty spectacular).
But yeah, I do seem to recall Qyburn 'revealing' one to Cersei in GOT. Good catch.
EDIT: Reddit says that the Dornish created the Scorpion used in it battles prior to the events of House of the Dragon. [Reply]
