Basileus777 said:
Maybe. But all of this is still not something that will likely be done in a short amount of pages. And it's not like GRRM is writing a book just about Dany and the Others. There are so many POVs and plot threads to dangle, all of them taking up pages. All the POVs from both AFFC and ADWD in one book is pretty massive.
Yeah, but like I said, a lot of the POVs are now together with the other POVs, or COULD be arranged to be quite quickly. If he ever got Tyrion, Dany, Barristan & Victarion together for a longer period and even if they all continued with their own chapters, they could all still keep advancing a common storyline (returning to Westeros/defeating the Slavers) after a few chapters, instead of having mostly separate ones. Same goes for some POVs in the Westeros (North & South). Whereas previously there was three separate ones with Stannis, Asha & Theon, they could also be joined by a common cause, at least for a while.
Plus someone like Jon being out of the picture (even he still lives... or... exists, I could see him being off the spotlight for some time) will free up, like, 15 chapters for other characters.
I think it will advance faster than the past two books, but there still remains so many POVs and so much material to get through. And I think GRRM likes all that exposition and world building. I don't expect him to start cutting that out all of a sudden. And for example, there's still plenty of stuff about the Others that needs to be set-up.
I think many of the still-separate storylines might combine in surprising (and not that surprising) ways. Like what Sansa is doing could very well be tied easily into what happens in the North and thus combine it with storylines from Stannis/Theon/Asha(/Night's Watch). Arya could very well be sent to King's Landing to deal with Cersei/someone for their failure to pay their debts to the Iron Bank of Braavos. Or to deal with someone else, who knows (of course it HAS to be someone that takes her to people who affect the story).
And of course he won't stop world-building, but both A Feast For Crows and A Dance With Dragons are like first novels in a series and much more akin to A Game of Thrones. AGOT started very slowly with all of its world building, AFFC & ADWD are just on a whole different level of world building as it takes on a lot of new regions & factions from all around the world + tries to deal with the downfall of the Starks & aftermath of the war as well. There's so much new that Martin needs to set up (places, characters, motives, history) that it CAN'T advance too fast. While there will still be world-building, I feel Martin doesn't have to do nearly as much of it in the future. Just look at Jon's chapters. While there are some new characters (some wildlings, new recruits), because it is an established location, Martin doesn't spend nearly as much time describing the ancestors and relationships of different families or anything. I believe that is what can and hopefully WILL happen with the more recent POVs as well, in future books. I mean, just compare the early Iron Isles chapters from AFFC to Victarion's chapters in ADWD and after a while most of it is spent on advancing the plot instead of explaining all the traditions, mannerisms and relationships of characters.
But this isn't what GRRM has been doing for the past two books. Quentyn could have showed up as a surprise arrival, he didn't. Victarion and Tyrion didn't need all those chapters to set up their arrival. You could list a bunch of situations where GRRM could have done a minor timeskip or jumped over minor events or traveling when he chose not to. You're assuming that GRRM's writing preference is going to significantly change in the next two books, and I don't see much basis for that.
The timejumps I meant mostly for the beginnings of the book. He kinda already did it with A Dance With Dragons, with Dany, since she had already gotten somewhat accustomed to rule Meereen when it began while she had only just conquered it by the end of ASOS, instead of going all "on the first day of her rule in Meereen, Dany first took a piss..." For Winds of Winter, it could be like I said for Dany in my previous post, maybe have Aegon already be with the Dornish (or well underway to them), have Jon accustomed to whatever kind of life he may be living after the coup d'etat (and being stabbed possibly mortally at least four times), with Arya being a bit more advanced in her training and Bran being more experienced with his greenseer abilities etc.
I do think those Tyrion chapter's were (mostly) needed (it followed a path of Tyrion being completely lost and not really giving shit about anything, to him perhaps getting back some of that love for scheming he had (at least at first) at King's Landing), even if some of them could've been a bit shorter (and with less wondering about where the whores go).
And we needed to get to know Quentyn and to get a bit more insight on Dorne's plans, plus giving him POV chapters let us see a bit of the Slavers' camps and other interesting things on the way.