George RR Martin says he is three quarters of the way through The Winds of Winter
George RR Martin is asymptotically approaching the completion of the next book in the series, while simultaneously aging in linear time, which presents fairly obvious problems.
Looking forward to the announcement that he’s 3/4 done with the final 1/4. 😉 Then we just need the announcement that he’s 3/4 done with the final 1/16th…
Imo, He was overly hyped and he knows it. The second he releases the ending (which at this point, I believe originally didn’t differ much from what we saw in the show), he will be done.
I can’t judge him, I would be also spacing the fuck out of the last book.
He should finish up what he’s already got by writing “Actually I just don’t care anymore. The End” and leave the last quarter of the book blank pages. Probably better than anything else he’s going to come up with at this point, and as a bonus it will fit perfectly with the ending of the show.
I was wondering why he just doesn’t cut the manuscript in 1/2, publish the first as “Part 1” and re-set his publication clock.
Apparently he has somewhere between 1,100 and 1,200 pages completed.
But as he explained elsewhere, he doesn’t write linearlly. He focuses on one point of view “chapter” and then that informs other point of view chapters, so there’s a lot of back and forth.
So 1,100 to 1,200 finished pages doesn’t mean a cohesive narrative.
So here’s my story… Not a fan. I found the first book to be a slog with nothing happening for the first 400 pages. Lots of people sitting around in rooms talking.
I also didn’t care much for any of the characters and from that point on chose only to read the Jon and Arya chapters.
So when I hit Arya discovering the aftermath of the Red Wedding I was like “Well, clearly I missed something…” Backtracked and read that chapter and went “Well… glad I wasn’t invested in THAT character!”
From a non-linear creative process, imagine if he wrote the Arya chapter first. I don’t know that that’s how he specifically did it, but he’s describing a similar process on the new book.
Now he has to go back and write that whole thing that he described the aftermath of.
All too often, the budding author finds that his tale has run its course and yet he sees no way to satisfactorily end it, or, in literary parlance, “wrap it up.” Observe how easily I resolve this problem:
Suddenly, everyone was run over by a truck.
-the end-
If the story happens to be set in England, use the same ending, slightly modified:
Suddenly, everyone was run over by a lorry.
-the end-
If set in France:
Soudainement, tout le monde etait écrasé par un camion.
-finis-
You’ll be surprised at how many different settings and situations this ending applies to. For instance, if you were writing a story about ants, it would end “Suddenly, everyone was run over by a centipede.” In fact, this is the only ending you ever need use.¹
¹ Warning - if you are writing a story about trucks, do not have the trucks run over by a truck. Have the trucks run over by a mammoth truck.
Sorry if I spoiled the ending of a 70+ year old book series. 😉
The worst are the books that just don’t have an ending. I had that with Stephen King’s “Cell”. Fantastic premise, an alien information virus hijacks cell phone signals to turn people into mindless zombies building something.
What are they building? 🤷♂️
Were the heroes successful in stopping it? 🤷♂️
What the hell happened? 🤷♂️
It’s like King went “Oh, shit, the deadline is today? Fine, pack it up and ship it.”
For the film version they had to invent a new ending because the book just doesn’t have one, it stops, but no ending.
Tangentially:
George RR Martin is asymptotically approaching the completion of the next book in the series, while simultaneously aging in linear time, which presents fairly obvious problems.
Looking forward to the announcement that he’s 3/4 done with the final 1/4. 😉 Then we just need the announcement that he’s 3/4 done with the final 1/16th…
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/#Dich
“I’d love to turn it over to the publisher, but I’m having trouble deciding on the final punctuation mark.”
Imo, He was overly hyped and he knows it. The second he releases the ending (which at this point, I believe originally didn’t differ much from what we saw in the show), he will be done.
I can’t judge him, I would be also spacing the fuck out of the last book.
He should finish up what he’s already got by writing “Actually I just don’t care anymore. The End” and leave the last quarter of the book blank pages. Probably better than anything else he’s going to come up with at this point, and as a bonus it will fit perfectly with the ending of the show.
He could make any character just say “you know what? Fuck it, finish it yourself” and then blank pages…
I was wondering why he just doesn’t cut the manuscript in 1/2, publish the first as “Part 1” and re-set his publication clock.
Apparently he has somewhere between 1,100 and 1,200 pages completed.
But as he explained elsewhere, he doesn’t write linearlly. He focuses on one point of view “chapter” and then that informs other point of view chapters, so there’s a lot of back and forth.
So 1,100 to 1,200 finished pages doesn’t mean a cohesive narrative.
So here’s my story… Not a fan. I found the first book to be a slog with nothing happening for the first 400 pages. Lots of people sitting around in rooms talking.
I also didn’t care much for any of the characters and from that point on chose only to read the Jon and Arya chapters.
So when I hit Arya discovering the aftermath of the Red Wedding I was like “Well, clearly I missed something…” Backtracked and read that chapter and went “Well… glad I wasn’t invested in THAT character!”
From a non-linear creative process, imagine if he wrote the Arya chapter first. I don’t know that that’s how he specifically did it, but he’s describing a similar process on the new book.
Now he has to go back and write that whole thing that he described the aftermath of.
It wouldn’t be publishable without it.
https://www.workableweb.com/_pages/tips_how_to_write_good.htm
That’s how the Narnia books end funnily enough.
“And everyone died in a train crash, the end!”
Sorry if I spoiled the ending of a 70+ year old book series. 😉
The worst are the books that just don’t have an ending. I had that with Stephen King’s “Cell”. Fantastic premise, an alien information virus hijacks cell phone signals to turn people into mindless zombies building something.
What are they building? 🤷♂️
Were the heroes successful in stopping it? 🤷♂️
What the hell happened? 🤷♂️
It’s like King went “Oh, shit, the deadline is today? Fine, pack it up and ship it.”
For the film version they had to invent a new ending because the book just doesn’t have one, it stops, but no ending.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(novel)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(film)
In Japan, being run over by a truck is merely the start of the story.
Yu Yu Hakusho
Is getting hit by a truck really the end? Or just the beginning?
Isekai genre: Allow me to introduce myself.
It would definitely subvert my expectations