0:02 hey there are spoilers in this video for
0:03 basically everything that's been
0:04 released in A Song of Ice and Fire
0:06 you've been warned
0:08 have you been waiting for the winds of
0:10 winter of course you have everyone in
0:12 their dog has been waiting for this book
0:15 people have been going insane no fandom
0:17 has lost their collective minds waiting
0:19 for a new release like this since the
0:22 Israelites waited 40 years in the desert
0:25 for the Ten Commandments Moses please
0:28 we're worshipping calves now do I have
0:30 any idea when the next book is going to
0:32 get here no I have no freaking clue but
0:34 besides that there is a post recently on
0:35 the Song of Ice and Fire subreddit by
0:38 Marcus Quintus who stated that people
0:40 who don't like dance will probably not
0:42 like wins dance of course is the fifth
0:44 book in the series Marcus goes into
0:46 detail about how the last two books are
0:48 rather expansive and there are a bunch
0:49 of side plots so if you didn't like
0:51 those then you're probably not going to
0:54 like wins and people hoping for a repeat
0:56 more of the third book are going to be
0:58 in for a bit of a disappointment but we
1:00 need to have a talk fandom because there
1:02 is a big issue at play here and it's
1:03 something that doesn't get enough air
1:06 time is probably it deserves so hold on
1:08 to your bubble wrap you special
1:09 snowflake because we're going to take a
1:12 very deep mathematical dive into a major
1:14 problem facing the winds of winter this
1:17 problem of course is the title of this
1:18 video it's how can the winds of winter
1:22 fit into the winds of winter you might
1:25 be asking why is this an issue well as
1:26 you probably know the series started out
1:28 in 96 with a game of Thrones and then
1:30 was followed up by a clash of kings and
1:32 then a storm of sores and then there was
1:34 a big wait for the fourth book in the
1:35 series called A Dance with Dragons but
1:37 this book didn't actually come out at
1:39 least not right away it was followed up
1:41 to a sequel of a storm of sorts of half
1:43 of the story called a feast for crows
1:45 which was then followed up six years
1:47 later by a Dance with Dragons which was
1:50 the sequel to the other half of a storm
1:52 of sorts so the obvious question here
1:55 now is how can you take these two books
1:57 and then condense them down into a
2:00 sequel that only spans the breadth of a
2:01 single book
2:03 well back in 2012 in an online interview
2:07 web chat a fan asked George really
2:08 looking forward to the next installment
2:11 but how are you going to finish it a
2:12 Song of Ice and Fire
2:13 in just two
2:18 books George responded to big books 1500
2:21 manuscript pages each that's 3,000 pages
2:25 I think I have a good shot so George was
2:28 targeting the winds of winter to be 1500
2:30 manuscript pages then another question
2:32 came up on George's not a blog that just
2:34 in this April by some Yahoo named Jeff
2:37 who asks this question might be painful
2:40 but I'll ask it anyways has there been
2:42 any thought of publishing wins in
2:46 similar fashion as fire and blood in two
2:49 volumes George responded some of my
2:51 publishers have suggested breaking up
2:54 winds as we did with feast and dance
2:58 I am resisting that notion so George
2:59 here didn't give any indication that
3:02 he's looking to break the winds of
3:04 winter out beyond just a single book so
3:06 it seems like the 1500 manuscript page
3:09 limit is still on this is because 1500
3:11 manuscript pages are the maximum
3:13 publishable amount once you go beyond
3:15 that then random houses Gutenberg
3:16 printing presses they just kind of like
3:19 Punk they just like died and like the
3:21 glue mr. son stick and the pages start
3:23 falling out and you just get everywhere
3:25 however for our purposes manuscript
3:27 pages are rather difficult to analyze
3:28 because the books are no longer in
3:30 manuscript page form once they get
3:32 published between the US hardback in the
3:34 US paper back in the UK hardback the UK
3:36 paperback some of them earn multiple
3:38 volumes the point is that the manuscript
3:40 pages once we get them change and it's
3:41 really hard to look at them we don't
3:44 have exact counts so for our purposes on
3:46 trying to gauge how long the winds of
3:48 winter is going to be it's easier if we
3:50 focus on word count because a it's a
3:52 more precise figure and B we also have
3:55 the precise counts for every single book
3:58 some website that I googled says that
4:00 one manuscript page equals between 250
4:02 to 300 words and this appears to be
4:04 accurate atom warhead on his blog has a
4:06 page count for a storm the swords of
4:08 fifteen hundred and thirty manuscript
4:10 pages and it danced with dragons at
4:13 about 1500 and these roughly come out to
4:15 about two hundred and eighty words per
4:17 page so if we look at an upper limit for
4:20 the winds of winter it stretched to 285
4:22 words per page to compensate for the
4:23 maps at the beginning and the appendix
4:25 at the end that would mean it would be
4:27 roughly equal to about four
4:30 one hundred and thirty thousand words so
4:32 I went online to look for one of those
4:34 great resources that an intrepid fan had
4:36 done that counted every single word in
4:38 every chapter it turns out there wasn't
4:41 one so I had to do it all myself for
4:42 disclosures sake no I didn't sit there
4:44 and count every single word in the
4:47 series but what I did do is I loaded up
4:49 all the ebooks in a program called
4:51 calibre and then I split them apart into
4:53 different word Docs containing just the
4:55 chapter titles and also the main body
4:58 text so no pages no superfluous stuff
5:00 that would throw it off and then I used
5:02 a program called fine count for every
5:03 single chapter including the sample
5:06 chapters to get the exact word counts
5:07 for an apples-to-apples comparison
5:09 between all the books what does this
5:12 mean it means I'm a huge nerd but also
5:15 we have really great data looking at the
5:16 word count of the first five books we
5:18 have a game of Thrones at about two
5:20 hundred ninety-eight thousand words
5:22 followed up by a Clash of Kings at
5:23 roughly three hundred and twenty five
5:26 thousand words then there was a big jump
5:28 by about a hundred thousand up to four
5:29 hundred and twenty four thousand words
5:32 for a storm of sorts and then the big
5:34 weight started to kick in where a feast
5:36 for crows came out that was about three
5:38 hundred thousand words which was very
5:39 similar to the first book in the series
5:41 which was followed up by Dance with
5:44 Dragons which was very close and counted
5:46 twenty two thousand two a Storm of
5:48 Swords at it's four hundred and twenty
5:51 four thousand however a verse we've
5:53 already discussed these two books while
5:54 they are separate and they have their
5:57 own thematic stories really they're both
5:59 the sequel to a storm swords and there
6:02 are also like several different combined
6:03 reading orders that you can get out in
6:05 the fandom like the boiled leather order
6:09 or the feast with dragons order so we're
6:10 going to do is we're going to look
6:13 actually at the count of these two books
6:16 as a single book as it was originally
6:18 intended if George could have bound it
6:20 all into a single volume and now of
6:22 course we have a book that is seven
6:24 hundred and twenty three thousand words
6:27 well over any other book in the series
6:30 so let's look at this as a projection of
6:33 what it would take to follow up that
6:36 book with its own sequel the first up
6:37 that we're going to look at is going to
6:39 be the high band count the high
6:41 projection taking the max
6:43 number of chapters that a character had
6:46 in any book and then projecting it that
6:48 that will be the number of chapters that
6:49 they will eventually have in the winds
6:51 of winter obviously we're also gonna
6:52 have to take out the dead characters
6:54 because they won't be having chapters
6:56 anymore so when we look at the high
7:00 projection we get a hundred and thirty
7:03 six chapters which is well over the
7:04 length of a Storm of Swords
7:06 and while one hundred and thirty six
7:08 might appear to be somehow manageable
7:10 you also have to pay attention to the
7:12 bottom row on this chart which lists the
7:14 average boards per chapter as you can
7:16 see George has been steadily increasing
7:20 the word count for each book so if we
7:22 project that forward for the winds of
7:25 winter that original 4000 average words
7:27 per chapter would have grown to about
7:30 six thousand six hundred words which
7:32 when we multiply that six thousand six
7:35 hundred words by 136 for the projected
7:37 chapter count that comes out to about
7:39 nine hundred thousand words over double
7:41 the length of the Storm of Swords or
7:43 dance with dragons now before you get
7:45 too scared remember this is the high
7:47 projection this is the largest that we
7:49 could imagine the sequel could be so
7:51 let's look at the low projection taking
7:53 the lowest number of chapters that a
7:54 character has had since they've been
7:56 introduced bear in mind we do have to
7:58 include a chapter there for Theon
8:00 because we know he has already a chapter
8:03 in the winds of winter so let's look at
8:05 it even looking at the lobe and we get
8:07 ninety two chapters which comes out to
8:09 about six hundred and nine thousand
8:11 words which given George's current word
8:14 count per chapter projection would be
8:16 still about forty four percent too big
8:19 for the book if we really want to see
8:20 what the winds of winter would look like
8:22 fit fit into a single book we're going
8:25 to have to do a manual projection of it
8:27 trying to guess the number of chapters
8:29 that a character would have to have
8:32 while doing a very conservative look at
8:34 it to try and get that chapter count
8:36 down now this is gonna be very
8:38 subjective and you're going to disagree
8:40 with some of these but put that aside
8:42 for the moment while we go ahead and we
8:44 dive down into what it would take to fit
8:46 it into four hundred and thirty thousand
8:49 words to get it to fit the length of a
8:51 Storm of Swords let's go at it one at a
8:54 time so for Danny I'm not sure you can
8:55 go all the way down to
8:57 five chapters because she is a lot of
8:59 room to cover at least geographically
9:01 she's right now up in the Dothraki sea
9:03 so you presume she's gonna need probably
9:05 at least two chapters there then at
9:07 least one in marine maybe one in
9:10 volantis maybe one in Pentos maybe one
9:12 in Qarth before getting back all the way
9:15 to Dragonstone so six chapters would
9:17 probably be enough to do that but there
9:19 isn't much more that you can do with her
9:21 to get that chapter count down
9:23 Tyrion if you don't know is George's
9:25 favorite character he writes a lot for
9:26 Tyrion the lowest amount that he's ever
9:28 had in a book was nine chapters I think
9:30 he have to try and get that down to
9:32 about eight he had to go below that
9:34 amount and you know there are some ways
9:36 that this works out because you can have
9:39 multiple POVs in Mereen for a while and
9:41 also with Dany eventually meeting him up
9:44 later in the book you probably don't
9:47 need to have as many tiering chapters so
9:49 eight seems like a logical projection
9:51 that George might write that is also
9:53 fairly conservative at least as far as
9:56 George has done so far now we get to
9:58 John I don't know if you know this but
10:01 John is still gonna be alive and so how
10:02 is he going to do this well he's not
10:04 gonna have any chapters to start the
10:06 book but I still think in order to tell
10:08 the story that he wants for John you're
10:10 gonna have to give him at least probably
10:13 five chapters also if he is the Song of
10:15 Ice and Fire you would imagine that he
10:18 gets at least a decent chunk of the wins
10:20 winner at least enough to fulfill his
10:22 character bran I think he could stick to
10:24 about three chapters with bran
10:26 Sansa I think you're going to have to go
10:29 up to four chapters with her at least
10:30 because she's in a politically isolated
10:32 area in the Vale we know she's probably
10:34 gonna have at least two chapters in that
10:36 area maybe get back to Winterfell by the
10:38 end of the book also might have other
10:40 character moments with various
10:42 characters throughout the story for I
10:44 think is about as conservative as you
10:47 can be for Sansa but also you might
10:49 think that's too low I would kind of
10:51 agree but at the same time that would
10:53 put her right up there with Dany and
10:55 John almost in chapter count and she's
10:57 still like not a central central
11:00 character so I mean I would take as many
11:01 Sansa chapters as yours wants to write
11:03 but again we're trying to be
11:05 conservative here Arya George has
11:06 already stated that he has written
11:09 enough chapters for her to fill
11:11 Bellus so I think she's probably gonna
11:12 get at least five chapters in the book
11:15 if he already has at least maybe three
11:18 in Bravos maybe two in Westeros I think
11:20 that's about as low as you can cut it
11:22 prologue there's going to be one
11:24 epilogues I've seen debates on this
11:25 going back and forth saying the
11:28 epilogues are generally for the closing
11:30 of an act however I still think you can
11:31 have one in the winds of winter and it
11:33 would not be too obtuse obviously it
11:35 should be patch faced if they do one but
11:37 that's just a personal opinion you can
11:41 hate it if you want Theon three chapters
11:43 I don't know if you can go beyond that
11:45 I love Theon's chapters and dance with
11:47 dragons but again he's not a central
11:48 character and we have to start cutting
11:52 people down Davos gets another three
11:55 jamie is a bit of an enigma I will get
11:57 back to Jamie when I get to Brienne but
11:58 I think you got to make cuts here and
12:00 you got to take him from eight chapters
12:02 down to four Sam
12:04 four chapters I don't think you can do
12:07 five again Cersei I don't think anyone
12:09 thinks that she's going to get 12
12:11 chapters again and I think you're gonna
12:13 have to be fairly aggressive with her I
12:14 think you're gonna have to get her down
12:17 to about six chapters Brienne you can
12:18 probably drop her down again to four
12:21 because with Jamie provided both of them
12:23 are going to live beyond what they have
12:24 currently going on at the start of the
12:26 winds of winter you could combine them
12:28 for a little bit and you wouldn't lose
12:31 too much length there by doing fewer
12:32 chapters so it kind of works out a
12:34 little bit but again you can't really
12:37 tell the same type of Brienne Jamie's
12:39 story that was in a feast for crows now
12:41 you might be sitting there thinking like
12:43 this has been really aggressive a lot of
12:45 my characters are being cut down or you
12:47 might be sitting there thinking to bad
12:49 like it can be okay we'll get ready cuz
12:51 that bubble-wrap I told you to hang on
12:54 to it's about to go pop we all love
12:56 these characters but we gotta fit it
12:59 down and I don't know if you can do more
13:01 than two chapters for Aaron we know he
13:04 already has one but you kind of have to
13:06 assume that he would die in the second
13:08 one in order to fulfill the length
13:11 requirements Victarion as much as I
13:14 enjoy reading his chapters don't know if
13:16 you can do more than two chapters with
13:17 Victoria and maybe at the end of the
13:19 second we already know he has to in the
13:21 winds of winter he finally sees the
13:22 glory that awaits him
13:25 off-page in like a third chapter from
13:27 another POV area Aden
13:29 we already know that she has one back at
13:31 Sunspear and then one traveling through
13:34 the Stormlands so I'm not sure you can
13:36 expand her story more than two
13:38 additional chapters beyond that she is
13:39 going to encounter Aegon and jon
13:41 connington so maybe there's a little bit
13:43 of an overlap there but I don't think
13:45 you can grow her much more than four
13:48 OSHA I mean she might have more than
13:50 three chapters she might not I don't
13:52 know but I'm gonna just plug her in for
13:55 three for her story up at Winterfell
13:57 because again you got to be aggressive
14:00 with this arrow Jota he goes off he
14:02 fights darkstar and he dies I don't
14:04 think you can do much more with arrow
14:05 Jota I mean you could theoretically
14:08 write a whole book where he travels with
14:11 darkstar as his captive one of them
14:12 being captured by the other and they go
14:15 an old Riverlands journey I don't know
14:17 but he's not your strongest character
14:19 and again got to be aggressive now we
14:23 get to Barristan who we know already has
14:25 to battle chapters so I'm just gonna
14:27 have to plug him in here for having one
14:29 additional chapter where he dies I don't
14:31 know how much more you can do you could
14:35 give him more chapters from Tyrion and
14:37 you could have him go over and join
14:39 Aegon and maybe give him another chapter
14:41 there but then you're gonna have to
14:43 start pulling more these chapters away
14:44 from other characters that we've already
14:47 made aggressive cuts to Jon connington
14:50 gonna give him three chapters we have to
14:52 add some meat he might become a king's
14:54 landing point of view later on also
14:55 Georgia said that he wants to show us
14:58 the Battle of storms end so we're gonna
15:00 get probably one chapter there and then
15:03 a couple more later on I guess I don't
15:06 know Melisandre is probably going to
15:07 pick up the story at the wall to start
15:09 off with and she's gonna receive
15:11 probably the bulk of the beginning of
15:14 Jon's storyline now it might be four it
15:17 might be less than that but I don't know
15:18 how much Melisandre you can cut out of
15:21 there if we don't have John as a POV to
15:23 start for the book for any number of
15:26 pages so now here we are we are down to
15:29 the final page count of the manual
15:32 version which gives us 79 chapters which
15:35 if we multiply it by the 6600 workout
15:36 that george's project
15:38 for the winds of winter we get five
15:40 hundred and twenty-three thousand words
15:43 still which gives it about twenty three
15:45 percent over a Storm of Swords which is
15:48 too large again even if we remove the
15:50 increased projection for George's
15:52 average chapter word count and go back
15:53 to the feast for crows A Dance with
15:55 Dragons level of six thousand seventy
15:59 three average words per chapter we still
16:00 end up with a book that is thirteen
16:05 percent too large to fit however if we
16:07 look at the average word count of the
16:09 sample chapters for the winds of winter
16:11 that have already been released we get a
16:14 total amount of five thousand four
16:16 hundred and fifteen words which is much
16:19 closer to the average chapter word count
16:21 of a storm of swords which when we plug
16:23 that back in gives us a total word count
16:26 of this projected version of the winds
16:29 of winter to be about four hundred and
16:31 twenty seven thousand words enough to
16:33 fit into a single fifteen hundred
16:35 manuscript page book so it's possible
16:38 you can yes in fact fit the winds of
16:41 winter into the winds of winter but it
16:43 has to be fairly aggressive into how
16:45 utilitarian it is with telling
16:48 everybody's story so to go back to what
16:50 Marcus Haddon is post at the beginning
16:51 of this which I still thought was really
16:53 good if George is trying to make this
16:55 all fit into fifteen hundred manuscript
16:58 pages it actually kind of has to more
17:00 resemble a Storm of Swords than it does
17:04 the last two books you can have it be
17:05 expansive like a feast for crows and a
17:08 dance with dragons or you can have it be
17:10 very utilitarian and how concise it
17:12 tells its story now you probably
17:14 disagree with some of these or maybe
17:16 many of them but remember if you try and
17:18 expand one of these characters here or
17:20 there then you have to take away
17:21 chapters from somewhere else not
17:24 everything can be expansive when you're
17:26 trying to fit it into a 1500 manuscript
17:28 pages and yeah I can totally understand
17:29 if you're looking at this going like
17:31 this is terrible like this is not how
17:34 you write a book like CeCe's not to the
17:36 poke that I vaunted I mean yeah you
17:38 can't write a book in a spreadsheet I
17:42 think like yes technically you can type
17:45 a book into a spreadsheet but the why
17:48 would you do that that's dumb and yet
17:50 chapter count and word count and all this
17:50 this
17:53 stuff not how you write a book but again
17:55 it's the ingredients that ultimately
17:57 come out of it and somehow you have to
18:00 get whatever George is writing for the
18:02 winds winner down into this kind of
18:03 format otherwise you can't make the book
18:07 at least not in 1500 manuscript pages no
18:08 yeah there are advantages here like
18:10 characters overlapping and multiple
18:12 storylines and everybody coming together
18:16 a bit more that helps a lot and that
18:17 could be one of the reasons why George
18:20 has delayed the book quite a bit as it
18:22 keeps getting pushed back you know it's
18:25 it's hard to really condense it down if
18:27 that is what he is trying to do
18:29 especially when you consider that he has
18:32 20 point of views in this book versus
18:34 the ten that were in a Storm of Swords
18:37 and if you want a bunch of asterisk to
18:38 why George might not be able to manage
18:41 it down to only 1500 manuscript pages
18:43 well you got it your three main
18:45 characters are cut down to basically
18:46 half of what they were in the last book
18:49 to you can go through this entire list
18:52 and find a whole bunch of points for why
18:53 George might want to stretch that out
18:56 especially considering things like cut
18:58 characters from the show where the show
18:59 didn't even feel like they were worth
19:02 including I got to imagine that George
19:04 is gonna try and give that more gravitas
19:06 to give these characters more of a story
19:07 and more of an importance to the plot
19:10 and do what he wants to do within his
19:12 own book you've also got chapters that
19:14 are left over that we're supposed to be
19:16 in a dance with dragons where you have
19:17 the battles at the beginning that were
19:19 originally not winds of winter stuff
19:22 coupled with that the timelines some
19:24 chapters that come at the end of a dance
19:27 with dragons take place probably days
19:29 weeks months farther into the future
19:31 than the beginnings of the winds of winter
19:31 winter
19:34 Kevin's epilogue signals the arrival of
19:37 winter however if we look at Sansa's
19:39 chapters in the Vale it doesn't appear
19:41 that winter has really arrived yet so
19:43 how long is it going to be before we get
19:45 to that point before her story actually
19:47 tells the story of the timeline for the
19:49 rest of the winds of winter this manual
19:51 version that I did I also cut out a
19:53 whole lot of King's Landing chapters in
19:54 every single book King's Landing has
19:57 accounted for ten plus chapters some
20:00 even way more can George really go down
20:02 to just six or seven if another
20:03 character moves in there
20:05 cetera and he look at the stuff here
20:07 that I did with his manual projection I
20:09 killed off a whole bunch of characters
20:11 towards the end that personally if I
20:12 were writing it I'm not an author but I
20:15 would not kill them off especially to
20:17 fit within the confines of a single book
20:19 for that being the sole reason that's
20:22 bad so I don't even know with this
20:23 manual projection if George would even
20:26 do that I doubt he would and I don't
20:27 know if you've realized this but this
20:30 idea that George like just kills off
20:32 characters a lot that's more of an HBO
20:35 show invention to like market the series
20:36 for Game of Thrones and it is actually
20:38 what George does you look at the first
20:41 three books and who did he kill off for
20:43 point of views he killed off the parents
20:45 which is basically any Disney story ever
20:47 he just did it within the confines of
20:49 the book and one of them comes back as
20:52 an undead and then in the last two books
20:54 he killed off one character who had one
20:55 chapter and another character whose
20:57 whole catharsis in the series was that
21:00 he was going to die so George is not
21:04 really a kill off my own characters kind
21:06 of guy like I don't think Aaron's gonna
21:07 get just two chapters and you he'll
21:10 probably get three or four are you could
21:12 get seven Sansa could get seven
21:15 Victarion could get four like he the
21:18 list Ariane could get six eight it did
21:20 the list goes on so can George get it
21:24 down hmm I don't know it seems like a
21:27 tough nut to crack if he can could
21:28 George release the winds of winter in
21:31 two volumes at the same time purely for
21:34 binding purposes could do but at the
21:36 same time doesn't look like that is on
21:38 the horizon in any kind of case at all
21:40 at least George hasn't indicated that
21:43 he's looking to do that so far so so on
21:45 the one hand II have a book that needs
21:47 to be condensed down and on the other
21:50 hand you have a story that expands in
21:52 the telling it's the human book in
21:57 conflict with itself or something well
21:59 anyways thank you for watching and
22:01 listening to my long rambling stupidity
22:05 I hope you enjoyed it maybe if you did
22:06 you can like this video you can
22:08 subscribe to it I might make more I
22:11 haven't done one at least not for myself
22:14 you can you can comment on it tell me
22:15 what version that you
22:17 what but how would you have what what
22:19 chapters would you use for your your
22:21 book your version of the winds of winter
22:24 1500 you'd make your own version you can
22:26 share this video with your friends if
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22:31 you can do whatever it's your life make
22:32 the most of it
22:34 my name's Ben Admiral Kurd you can
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22:40 can join my cult Twitter is a cult
22:41 because you have followers at least
22:43 that's how I look at it I don't have a
22:46 big cult but you can join it anyway
