George R.R. Martin drops minor details about The Winds of Winter

Yesterday, George R.R. Martin posted a heretofore unpublished chapter from The Winds of Winter on his website. The chapter is written from the viewpoint of Arianne Martell, the daughter of Doran Martell. On the show, Doran is dead and Arianne doesn’t exist, but they’re both trucking along on the page.

Martin made the announcement on his Not a Blog. Afterwards, he engaged with fans in the comments, as he tends to do. Nothing he said is particularly earth-shattering, but there were a few stray nuggets of information in there. Let’s look at them.

First, commenter BryndenBFish asked a question about the number of Dornish points of view in The Winds of Winter. “Will Areo Hotah return as a POV character and do you plan to add one or more Dornish POV characters besides Arianne and Areo?” Martin’s response: “I have no plans to add additional Dornish POV. Yes, Areo Hotah will continue as a POV.”

Areo Hotah is yet another character who’s dead on the show but alive and well on the page. With Arianne marching off to meet the young Aegon Targaryen, who’s been cut from the show completely, Hotah will probably stick around Dorne and update us as to what Doran is doing.

Next, Martin responded to drogonbeatsmaug, who apparently engages in debates with a friend about Arianne Martell’s weight. That seems a little odd, but we write about all kinds of ephemera here, so who am I to judge? Anyway, Martin set the record straight about Arianne’s appearance.

"Arianne definitely has curves. She is not a half-starved anorexic like so many of today’s ‘supermodels.’ But that does not mean that she is ‘heavyset,’ to use your word… and certainly not a ‘whale.’"

So that’s settled.

Martin also provided some general insight into his writing process. Here’s what he said after sourbillytipton asked if he ever writes scenes from the viewpoints of multiple characters, so as to get an idea of which will be the most effective:

"Not usually. I did some of that in DANCE when I was struggling with the Meereenese knot, and also in FEAST with those kingsmoot chapters… but elsewise, nah, usually know which POV will work best before I begin."

The Meereenese knot, for those who might not know, refers to a series of plot problems Martin encountered when writing A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons—it may have contributed to why Martin took so much longer to write those novels than the first three. With characters starting to come together, the plot may get less convoluted, and we may get fewer characters weighing in with their points of view, since there will be multiple POV characters in the same place and it won’t be necessary to describe the scene from more than one perspective.

Finally, Martin crushed the dreams of everyone hoping that we would get a chapter told from the point of view of Strong Belwas, a burly ex-slave pledged to Daenerys in the books (the character was cut from the show).

"C’mon, man. Get real."

I mean, there must have been a few people out there hoping for that. Probably for the best, though. I imagine a Strong Belwas chapter would be in all caps, and that could get tiresome.