As writers, what's your view of the whole George R. R. Martin writers block brouhaha.

[TheRedChamber]

If you pay, you are owed the thing you paid for. If you pay for a book, you're owed that book.

I'm not obliged to buy Book 2 of a series just because I bought and liked Book 1, not even if I shook the author's hand and told them "I can't wait until Book 2 is out." By the same token, the author's not obliged to write Book 2 for me, even if they shook my hand and said "I can't wait to write it!"

This seems to be the sticking point, or the area of controversy. Tolkien published all three volumes of Lord of the Rings within the space of about two years having spent seventeen years writing it. Wagner, if I recall correctly, staged all four operas of the Ring Cycle across one week after having spent three decades writing it. Both were in a position to be luckily enough to be able to do so.

The fallout from the GRRM thing is that a lot of readers are saying they don't want to start fantasy series now until they are complete to the detriment of authors who have every intention of finishing them. I remember hearing recently that, in fact, publishers are starting to ask for specifically stand-alone works from first time authors now because of it. For all Martin has done for the fantasy genre, he might have ended up hurting it as well.

 

[djrip]

This seems to be the sticking point, or the area of controversy. Tolkien published all three volumes of Lord of the Rings within the space of about two years having spent seventeen years writing it. Wagner, if I recall correctly, staged all four operas of the Ring Cycle across one week after having spent three decades writing it. Both were in a position to be luckily enough to be able to do so.

The fallout from the GRRM thing is that a lot of readers are saying they don't want to start fantasy series now until they are complete to the detriment of authors who have every intention of finishing them. I remember hearing recently that, in fact, publishers are starting to ask for specifically stand-alone works from first time authors now because of it. For all Martin has done for the fantasy genre, he might have ended up hurting it as well.

I don't really get how hung up so many people seem to be on endings. I mean if course it's better if it gets to the end. Or *an* end. But refusing to read until the thing is finished? On lit I check out first chapters. If I like them I hope for more chapters. If they come, cool. It it peters out at some point, oh well, i enjoyed what was there. I mean star wars "ended," and then more came out. Then that "ended," and then more came out again. So how finished was it ever? I read Wheel of Time books as they came out, with 2 and 3 year gaps between, for two decades. And there was a good amount of time no one thought they would be finished. If they hadn't been? I would have enjoyed the ones that did come out. Now I really should crack open the Game of Thrones that's been waiting on my shelf for me to get to.

 

[CyranoJ]

Clearly, it would really blow some people's minds to learn how many famous authors through history have died with unfinished novels or series.

Like, The Aeneid is literally an unfinished text that was published posthumously against Virgil's last wishes. The list of writers who died with novels or series unfinished includes Mervyn Peake, Alexandre Dumas, Thomas Mann, Douglas Adams, Octavia Butler, John Steinbeck, Frank Herbert, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Jane Austen, David Foster Wallace... one could go on.

I look at people who try to talk as if Martin is some sort of thief who has stolen their "ending" from them and just have to shake my head.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

If you pay, you are owed the thing you paid for. If you pay for a book, you're owed that book.

Indeed. Did anyone pre-order the next GoT book? They'd have a justifiable beef, but I don't think it was ever promised by any booksellers, was it?

Unlike, say, the fourth Morrigan Crow book which I pre-ordered when it was supposed to come out in Oct 2021. That was postponed to Oct 22, then 23, and now the publishers say that it really does exist, but the author was slowed down by long Covid, so really will appear in October 2024, honest...

There were supposed to be 9 books in total, once the first one did so well. The author is under 40 so you never know, she might finish the series? The film rights were sold after the second book, so who knows what might happen - people are hoping for a series to rival Harry Potter in popularity only with better characters, less derivative plots, and more complex politics.

I suppose I could cancel my pre-order if I actually needed the money.

 

[Stimtheone]

I can attest that writer's block is indeed real as I am in the midst of one such moment. (Just give it time and the ideas will form)

But I think George is overrated and running out of both ideas and ROOM. His world has grown beyond the bounds of what he can keep track of and might find that crippling. Also I wonder why it's taking him that damn long. I wrote a book in a MONTH. Okay, granted, I was practically seeping with inspiration, but a year is a generous amount of time for it. It's been more than ten years. The man clearly has no idea what to do next, either how to keep it going or end it. I'm pretty sure WoW will never be released.

 

[mirafrida]

Never watched GOT show, but probably would have bought/read the books when it became a cultural phenomenon - IF it hadn't been pretty clear by that point that it would never be finished...

 

[TheRedChamber]

I don't really get how hung up so many people seem to be on endings. I mean if course it's better if it gets to the end. Or *an* end. But refusing to read until the thing is finished? On lit I check out first chapters. If I like them I hope for more chapters. If they come, cool. It it peters out at some point, oh well, i enjoyed what was there. I mean star wars "ended," and then more came out. Then that "ended," and then more came out again. So how finished was it ever? I read Wheel of Time books as they came out, with 2 and 3 year gaps between, for two decades. And there was a good amount of time no one thought they would be finished. If they hadn't been? I would have enjoyed the ones that did come out. Now I really should crack open the Game of Thrones that's been waiting on my shelf for me to get to.

First of all, do read them because even unfinished, they're great (although given that the series is indeed unfinished, you could stop reading after the end of book three and save yourself a lot of extraneous set-up that's never going to be paid off)

But surely you're aware of the difference between a complete story and something that just stops. The original Star Wars trilogy was a complete story. Just New Hope and Empire Strikes Back on their own aren't.

Clearly, it would really blow some people's minds to learn how many famous authors through history have died with unfinished novels or series.

Like, The Aeneid is literally an unfinished text that was published posthumously against Virgil's last wishes. The list of writers who died with novels or series unfinished includes Mervyn Peake, Alexandre Dumas, Thomas Mann, Douglas Adams, Octavia Butler, John Steinbeck, Frank Herbert, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Jane Austen, David Foster Wallace... one could go on.

I look at people who try to talk as if Martin is some sort of thief who has stolen their "ending" from them and just have to shake my head.

Firstly, obviously, death is a pretty good excuse. People are a lot more reasonable then. You can't really go on demanding and ending much when the author is gone.

But there's a clear difference between an unfinished novel - which has never been published and the public is largely unaware of - and an unfinished series, where the audience is keen to know what happens next. It's not like Jane Austen snuffed it with only two out of the five Bennett sisters married off.

Selling an unfinished novel from one of the greats is a bit of a different proposition because they often loved so much people are curious to see what their last work would have been even without the ending. Mostly though, getting a story which has no satisfying ending sucks.

 

[CyranoJ]

But there's a clear difference between an unfinished novel - which has never been published and the public is largely unaware of - and an unfinished series, where the audience is keen to know what happens next.

More than a few of the writers I listed were actually in the latter position and had long spans of time elapse between their last book and their failure to finish the successor. People at the time were really pressed about Truman Capote's Answered Prayers, for instance (the literary world was on tenterhooks to learn what would come after In Cold Blood, in part because of a later controversy perhaps related to the novel and perhaps not). None of them had HBO series or fully-developed and enshitified social media platforms on which they could be harangued -- no parallel is exact -- but it's really not a new development at all.

I guess I just keep hoping that people might learn from history, for once. Or at least trouble to learn something about it before proclaiming GRRM as some kind of unique villain for having writer's block.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I guess I just keep hoping that people might learn from history, for once. Or at least trouble to learn something about it before proclaiming GRRM as some kind of unique villain for having writer's block.

I'm not suggesting he's a villain, but I'd argue that GRRM is at least somewhat unique - how many authors in history have had a completed adaptation of an uncompleted work? While he has published other books, his success pretty much rests on one half of a story.

 

[CyranoJ]

I'm not suggesting he's a villain, but I'd argue that GRRM is at least somewhat unique - how many authors in history have had a completed adaptation of an uncompleted work?

None. GRRM is not an exception. Game of Thrones is not at all a "completed" adaptation of the uncompleted literary work, b/c that is not possible. The TV series was "completed," but "completing" something from notes is nothing at all like completing the actual literary work.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I guess I just keep hoping that people might learn from history, for once. Or at least trouble to learn something about it before proclaiming GRRM as some kind of unique villain for having writer's block.

I don't think he is necessarily a villain, or that even many of those who are upset the story isn't finished see it that way.
The bigger issue/criticism is if the issue is really writer's block, or, as many have suggested he doesn't care, want to, or a host of other reasons.

Maybe it's a bit unfair, but most readers are invested in the characters in a story, and we'd like to believe the author is as invested as we are. So when there is a perception, right or wrong, that an author doesn't care, is too busy cashing royalty checks and living the good life, or whatever reason you want to give, to give us closure, to finish the journey of those characters we are invested in... people respond emotionally because the whole thing is emotional.

 

[TheRedChamber]

None. GRRM is not an exception. Game of Thrones is not at all a "completed" adaptation of the uncompleted literary work, b/c that is not possible. The TV series was "completed," but "completing" something from notes is nothing at all like completing the actual literary work.

Yes it is.

(I'm not in the mood to play language games.)

 

[CyranoJ]

Yes it is.

(I'm not in the mood to play language games.)

I take exception to "language games." I'm talking about actual process, here. If someone else had to produce a work from your notes for your current story, right now, what are the chances of its being anywhere close to what you would have produced if you, personally, had finished it? Be honest. Are the notes some absolute blueprint, or just an adjustable guideline for you as the author?

I don't think there are that many authors who would give the former answer, although I grant you there might be a few. I, personally, tend to have an outline when I start a story. That doesn't mean I know where the story will actually go. It's more like what you'd call a guideline than actual rules.

So, if I don't definitively know, how could anyone else? The map is not the territory, and sometimes it isn't even the map. I might decide midstream to adjust the endpoint, or retcon large details of the story, or go off in a completely different direction inspired by a person I met in real life by complete chance.

"Notes" are a very limited guide. They're not generally (in most writers' praxis) an ironclad blueprint for how I "would have written" the story. It's no different for Tolkien, or Herbert, or GRRM, or any other writer. I have no belief at all that the "notes" from which the final season of GOT were completed have any direct relationship to the final product GRRM had in mind for the novels. There's zero reason to believe it. It is simply not how "notes" work, in any way.

 

[Bramblethorn]

This seems to be the sticking point, or the area of controversy. Tolkien published all three volumes of Lord of the Rings within the space of about two years having spent seventeen years writing it. Wagner, if I recall correctly, staged all four operas of the Ring Cycle across one week after having spent three decades writing it. Both were in a position to be luckily enough to be able to do so.

Mind you, both of them went on to die with a ton of uncompleted work...

The fallout from the GRRM thing is that a lot of readers are saying they don't want to start fantasy series now until they are complete to the detriment of authors who have every intention of finishing them. I remember hearing recently that, in fact, publishers are starting to ask for specifically stand-alone works from first time authors now because of it.

It wouldn't surprise me if publishers were doing that, but I have my doubts about whether that's the only reason. (And it wouldn't have helped them here, because GRRM was nowhere near a first-time author when he sold the first ASoIaF book.)

There's a thing authors talk about, called the "series death spiral". Usually each volume of a series sells less well than the previous volume; part of that is due to the same sort of reasons that view numbers decline chapter by chapter on Lit, but part of it is because of a kind of downwards ratchet effect in dead-tree printing: distributors only order as many books as they believe they can sell, and they can't sell more than they ordered. So if a book underperforms, that lowers the orders for the rest of the series, but there's no way for it to overperform. Eventually the sales get low enough that either the publisher or the author decides it's not economical for them to keep going.

An old favourite of mine is Barry Hughart's "Bridge of Birds", which was originally intended to be the first in a seven-part series but only made it to book 3. Via Wiki:

In an interview in 2000 Hughart blamed the end of the Master Li and Number Ten Ox series on unsympathetic and incompetent publishers. The style of his books made them difficult to classify and he felt his market was restricted by the decision to sell only to SF/fantasy outlets. As an example of publisher incompetence, Hughart notes that his publishers did not notify him of the awards given Bridge of Birds. He also points out that The Story of the Stone was published three months ahead of schedule, so that no purchasable copies were available by the time the scheduled reviews finally appeared; finally, the paperback edition of Eight Skilled Gentlemen was published simultaneously with the hardback edition resulting in few sales of the latter. When his publishers then refused to publish hardback editions of any future books, Hughart stated that he found it impossible to afford to continue writing novels, which brought the series to an end.

More recently, I've seen Seanan McGuire talking about how much she hates having to pull the plug on a series she loves writing because she can't afford to keep writing it.

Starting out with one-shots gives publishers a way to avoid the risks of that death spiral. If an author can build a following with one-shots, maybe then the publisher will have a bit more confidence that they can get through a series, or at least enough of it to be worth the bother.

PSA: if there's a not-yet-finished series you love and really want to be continued, your best option is to pre-order the next book in hardback as soon as you can.

 

[SimonDoom]

The fallout from the GRRM thing is that a lot of readers are saying they don't want to start fantasy series now until they are complete to the detriment of authors who have every intention of finishing them.

I have to say, this smacks of a strain of entitled snowflake-ism to me. Woe is me, the reader who has to deal with an unfinished story. I don't have much sympathy for that. Many, many series do not wait until completion of the last volume until publication of the first. It's part of the landscape that any experienced reader has to deal with.

 

[alohadave]

I remember hearing recently that, in fact, publishers are starting to ask for specifically stand-alone works from first time authors now because of it.

That's what authors in groups I'm in, who have trad published, are saying. The key phrase is: Standalone with series potential.

Publishers aren't going to give an unpublished writer a contract for a series because there is no sales record to justify the risk. If they sign someone and the first book does well, then they'll look at continuing with a series.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm not suggesting he's a villain, but I'd argue that GRRM is at least somewhat unique - how many authors in history have had a completed adaptation of an uncompleted work?

Dickens' "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" has at least twelve: four film adaptations, three TV versions, four radio versions, and a musical. (And several novelisation-continuations, but I'm not counting those as "adaptation".)

Pretty sure some of the current LotR TV show is based on material that Tolkien left incomplete?

Jane Austen's "Sanditon" got a TV series.

While he has published other books, his success pretty much rests on one half of a story.

It's certainly the one that made him mainstream famous, but he had a pretty solid career (by authorial standards) before that, including three Hugo Awards and a Nebula, and a fair bit of TV and editing work. I was aware of him via the Wild Cards stuff well before "A Game of Thrones" came out.

 

[CyranoJ]

It's certainly the one that made him mainstream famous, but he had a pretty solid career (by authorial standards) before that, including three Hugo Awards and a Nebula, and a fair bit of TV and editing work. I was aware of him via the Wild Cards stuff well before "A Game of Thrones" came out.

Yeah. People who try to claim GRRM was some kind of nobody before ASOIAF don't really know anything about his prior career. He was a major author when I was in short pants. He was living from his writing long before either ASOIAF or Game of Thrones were a thing.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I have to say, this smacks of a strain of entitled snowflake-ism to me. Woe is me, the reader who has to deal with an unfinished story. I don't have much sympathy for that. Many, many series do not wait until completion of the last volume until publication of the first. It's part of the landscape that any experienced reader has to deal with.

I'm struggling to think of any major series post-Tolkien where the writing was complete before book 1 was published.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I take exception to "language games." I'm talking about actual process, here. If someone else had to produce a work from your notes for your current story, right now, what are the chances of its being anywhere close to what you would have produced if you, personally, had finished it? Be honest. Are the notes some absolute blueprint, or just an adjustable guideline for you as the author?

I feel like the two of you are talking at cross purposes here - I don't think TRC was making any kind of assertion about how close the TV version got to how GRRM might have written Books 6 and 7, more just talking about how unusual it was to get a TV adaptation given that those books weren't written.

(As per my reply, I don't entirely agree with that assertion - at least, I wouldn't go as far as to use the word "unique" - but I think that's the point TRC wanted to make there.)

 

[CyranoJ]

I don't think TRC was making any kind of assertion about how close the TV version got to how GRRM might have written Books 6 and 7, more just talking about how unusual it was to get a TV adaptation given that those books weren't written.

AFAICS that's the crux of the issue: do the television adaptations count as "completing" the work? TRC thinks yes. I think no: completing something from "notes" is not remotely the same as actually completing the vision. It qualifies as completing the show, not the literary narrative, and there's a very, very long distance between the two is what I'm getting at.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm struggling to think of any major series post-Tolkien where the writing was complete before book 1 was published.

Ha. Bramblethorn, if you're struggling, I'm not even going to try!

 

[TheRedChamber]

AFAICS that's the crux of the issue: do the television adaptations count as "completing" the work? TRC thinks yes. I think no: completing something from "notes" is not remotely the same as actually completing the vision. It qualifies as completing the show, not the literary narrative, and there's a very, very long distance between the two is what I'm getting at.

I guess for clarity what is unusual is...

Author releases half a story as book.
Television company adapts half that story and then goes on to make 'a' completion of the story.
Author has to make another completion of the story.

It's fundamentally different from

Popular author writes half a story, snuffs it, someone has a crack at finishing the story for them (either in the same or different medium and with or without the original authors notes)

 

[TheRedChamber]

I have to say, this smacks of a strain of entitled snowflake-ism to me. Woe is me, the reader who has to deal with an unfinished story. I don't have much sympathy for that. Many, many series do not wait until completion of the last volume until publication of the first. It's part of the landscape that any experienced reader has to deal with.

I mean, there are worse problems in the world at large for sure. And I suppose in, say, television, it's much more common for series to be cancelled before they reach the natural end that the series runners might have planned for them (and equally to run on after a natural ending point)

But there's a catch-22 about it. If you care about reading a completed story, then only start reading series that have already been completed. But if you don't buy book one of a series, then it's far more likely for the author never to be able to write book two due to lack of success.

In a way I think there's a lesson in it for fantasy (and other 'epic') authors - don't build towers to the moon, and if you do at least have an 'off-ramp' - an alternative ending that mean you can finish a series relatively quickly if it all gets a bit much. Some fantasy authors (e.g. Robin Hobb) seems to go with a series of trilogies strategy - three books is enough to get an large, epic story told, which then reaches a natural ending point - with the option to write a second (third, fourth) trilogy with the same world or characters later - and crucially, if you want.

 

[CyranoJ]

I guess for clarity what is unusual is...

Author releases half a story as book.
Television company adapts half that story and then goes on to make 'a' completion of the story.
Author has to make another completion of the story.

It's fundamentally different from

Popular author writes half a story, snuffs it, someone has a crack at finishing the story for them (either in the same or different medium and with or without the original authors notes)

I dunno, how different are those scenarios, really? What actual validity does the TV studio version in scenario one have as "completion," working from "notes"? AFAICS the answer is really "none," outside of the TV series itself, which had long since departed from the books anyway. It only seems different in detail, it doesn't seem "fundamentally" different.