The Winds of Winter Update: George R.R. Martin Confesses 'Juggling' Plots Could Break TWOW

For well over a decade, fans of George R. R. Martin's epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, have been waiting for the next instalment.

The gap between the latest book, 2011's A Dance with Dragons, and the much-anticipated The Winds of Winter, has become legendary, spurring countless jokes, theories, and, inevitably, a wave of frustrated speculation.

The series' phenomenal complexity—which made it so compelling in the first place—now seems to be the very thing holding it captive. What is the grand architect of Westeros grappling with as he tries to finish his masterwork? It turns out, his biggest struggle is the sheer scale of the world he created.

The challenge of managing a sprawling narrative packed with interwoven plotlines has long been a source of frustration for Martin.

In an April 2013 interview with Joanna Buffum for New Jersey Monthly Magazine, the author laid bare his dilemma: 'A constant challenge is how do you keep all these plots straight? I feel like I'm juggling a bunch of balls, and sometimes it's hard to keep all the balls separate from each other. The sheer size of the series is daunting'.

This candid quote, shared via Sea of Shelves, perfectly encapsulates the writing problem that continues to plague the process and offers a concrete reason for the lengthy delay of The Winds of Winter.

With over a decade passed since the last book, the feeling of being overwhelmed by the massive world is certainly understandable.

This narrative density stems partly from an abandoned early plan: Martin originally intended to incorporate a five-year time-skip between the third book, A Storm of Swords, and the fourth.

The aim was to allow younger characters, like Arya and Bran, to mature into their roles off-page.

However, he realised he couldn't skip over too much vital story and character development, leading him to scrap the jump and write A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons to fill the gap.

This decision effectively doubled the number of plot threads that needed to be resolved, contributing directly to the logistical nightmare of the next book.

Character Chaos: George R. R. Martin's Regret and The Winds of Winter Update

Martin deliberately structured A Song of Ice and Fire to be told through the eyes of numerous Point-of-View (POV) characters. This narrative choice has been hailed as an effective way to convey the vast story of Westeros and to provide compelling insight into the main characters' thought processes.

However, this same technique is a major contributor to the current 'juggling' problem, a struggle even Martin has acknowledged.

The author admitted to one surprising regret regarding a viewpoint character: Ser Arys Oakheart.

While Martin initially thought it was a great idea to allow readers into his mind for a single chapter in A Feast for Crows, he later realised he could have streamlined his work by simply including Arys' arc within Arianne Martell's POV chapters.

This retrospective insight highlights the structural difficulty Martin faces when every character decision adds to the book's immense complexity.

The promise for the next volume, thankfully, is a reduced character list. Martin has assured fans that he will not introduce any new viewpoint characters in The Winds of Winter.

Nonetheless, in an appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival, he revealed that 'a lot of characters who have sort of popped up and budded their way into the story' had complicated the narrative further.

For a writer who confesses to a love of introducing new names, finding a way to 'keep all the balls separate' when they keep multiplying remains a significant, self-imposed problem.

Streamlining the Path to The Winds of Winter Update

The solution for expediting the novel's progress may lie in a strategic overhaul of the narrative: streamlining the story by dedicating more focus to the main journeys of the central characters. Martin, now 77, has openly admitted to the immense challenge of weaving all these arcs together in such an intricate fashion.

The core of his struggle with The Winds of Winter is that the book has grown to feel less like one novel and more like 'a dozen different novels'—a direct result of his ambitious structural decisions over the years.

This explains why a story, if it had been straightforward, would have been completed long ago, despite his busy schedule. Proof of this can be found in the relative ease with which he was able to draft Fire & Blood, which he claimed was a much simpler task due to its linear, chronological format.

To immediately address some of the massive cliffhangers from the previous book, Martin has stated that he intends to open The Winds of Winter with two major, long-anticipated battle sequences: the battle in the ice, which will resolve the conflict near Winterfell, and the battle at Meereen (the battle of Slaver's Bay).

Resolving these complex, multi-POV military conflicts early on is critical, but requires meticulously weaving together dozens of established threads.

Giving an idea of the book's sheer scale, Martin has often mentioned his current progress on the manuscript. As of late 2023, he indicated he had 'like 1,100, 1,200 pages' written, while still having 'hundreds more pages to go' to reach his desired finished length, suggesting The Winds of Winter will be one of the longest books in the series.

The immense timeline of the series itself speaks to the long-term dedication and, at times, difficult pace of the creative process:

The journey towards The Winds of Winter has become a testament to the colossal complexity of George R. R. Martin's vision—a vision so vast it threatens to outgrow its own binder.

While we wait for the maestro to resolve the battles in the ice and at Meereen, this update underscores that the book's final length and resolution depend on his ability to conquer the sheer scale of his creation.