u/outfishing7

People know that the pitch for ASOIAF was a trilogy covering three major arcs of story: The War of the Five Kings, Daenerys' Invasion, and the Others' Invasion. But the story ballooned and the first three books cover the War of the Five Kings.

The fourth book stalled, a time jump was axed, and eventually was split geographically and even then ADWD was gutted without an end to many of the stories. These two massive books don't cover the story GRRM planned to tell in one...And while there is a lot to love in AFFC and ADWD, I feel like a lot of it could've been released as supplementary novellas.

One thing I love in the first three books is that GRRM does not feel the need to tell us every little thing that happens directly, there is a lot to the stories but the books are lean. Robb wins battles and we learn of it from other people having the news delivered. GRRM says if there is one thing he would add to the first three books, it would have been Robb as a POV character which, while potentially interesting, would have tanked the pacing and bloated the story.

Why did he start to focus on relatively inconsequential details in Books 4 & 5? Why not gut some fluff that could be released in a collection later down the line, focus a few books on Dany's invasion, and leave a few more books for a good conclusion if there's that much story?