Writing, as everyone should know by now, takes time, but with the Westeros spotlight placed firmly back on him, Martin took to
his personal blog to share a few congratulations and an update on his current progress. Martin explained
The Winds of Winter and
A Dream of Spring are still
works in progress, and addressed questions about how much of the book’s events would be similar to
Game of Thrones given that parts of the eighth season’s plot were inspired by ideas from Martin’s unfinished work:
“How will it all end? I hear people asking. The same ending as the show? Different?
Well… yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes.
I am working in a very different medium than David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss], never forget. They had six hours for this final season. I expect these last two books of mine will fill 3000 manuscript pages between them before I’m done… and if more pages and chapters and scenes are needed, I’ll add them. And of course the butterfly effect will be at work as well; those of you who follow this Not A Blog will know that I’ve been talking about that since season one. There are characters who never made it onto the screen at all, and others who died in the show but still live in the books… so if nothing else, the readers will learn what happened to Jeyne Poole, Lady Stoneheart, Penny and her pig, Skahaz Shavepate, Arianne Martell, Darkstar, Victarion Greyjoy, Ser Garlan the Gallant, Aegon VI, and a myriad of other characters both great and small that viewers of the show never had the chance to meet. And yes, there will be unicorns… of a sort…
Book or show, which will be the ‘real’ ending? It’s a silly question.”
During all of season eight’s
commotion, it became really, really easy to lose sight of just how far away from the source material the show had gotten because of how large and sprawling
Game of Thrones became in its own right. It seems obvious to say now, but of
course Martin’s novels are going to play out differently. They’ve
got to, because a significant amount of important characters are so enmeshed in the story that it can’t really come to a close without their involvement.