Why George R. R. Martin Inspired Me to Finish the God Damn Series

Or How an unfinished empire made me take endings seriously.

Apr 27, 2026

Nothing made me more determined to finish my own series than realizing how much unfinished stories haunt the people who love them.

Let’s face it, there are many noble reasons to finish a book series. Artistic integrity. Respect for the reader. The deep human need to finish what you started instead of turning a fantasy empire into the longest-running excuse in modern publishing. At a certain point, “master worldbuilder” just becomes a flattering way to say asshole with no intention of landing the plane. And if you happen to be a old white male in his late seventies early eighties, you had plenty of time to refuel for gas, do an emergency landing or admit that you need help finishing something you started over thirty years ago.

I would love to say it was one of those reasons. Legally I cannot. But if you know me, George R.R. Martin is dead to me. Not the physical overwhelming emotional appropriate death but, a “I am over it” kind of retirement.

Good for him though, on Elden Ring. Truly. But at a certain point, “I helped build another fantasy world” is not the same thing as finishing the one your readers have been waiting on for decades.

That’s the kind of spite that fueled me. Not elegant spite, not literary spite, just the ordinary, Craftsperson realization that if readers are kind enough to follow my universe across multiple books, timelines, spin offs, I do not get to wander off into the fog flinging three side projects at them and call that an ending.

Which brings us to the main point: Readers are not just buying books. They are entering into a contract. Not a legal one. A Narrative one. They are agreeing to care—to give you years of attention, emotional energy, memory, loyalty, arguments, fandom, erotic fan fiction, erotic character art (which I hope someone one day does of my characters), and the deeply embarrassing sincerity of hoping you know where all this is going.

They are letting your characters move into their heads and rearrange the furniture. That is not a small feat. nor is it passive or free.

The problem is that Asshats like GRRM and unfinished epics have consequences beyond their own fandoms. They train readers to be wary of longer series. They train publishers to lean toward standalones with “series potential” instead of stories allowed to grow honestly in public. They make everybody more cautious, more suspicious, and less willing to commit. Reader trust is not infinite. It is earned. It is maintained. And endings are part of the maintenance.

This is where I get mean, because I think the culture around unfinished epics has gotten too polite. We talk about them as if they are sacred objects. We discuss process. Pressure. Creative difficulty. The burden of expectation. We say art takes time, which is true. We say genius cannot be rushed, which is sometimes true. We say large stories get tangled, which is definitely true.

But eventually there has to be a point where all that elevated language stops functioning as empathy and starts functioning as cover.

Because sometimes the problem is not that the story got too big.

Sometimes the problem is that the writer got too comfortable being praised for having one.

That is the nightmare.

Not failure. Not difficulty. Not even delay.

Complacency.

The moment a writer starts mistaking endless expansion for progress, or lore for movement, or public fascination for proof that they never actually have to finish the thing, the series stops being a story and starts becoming a museum to the author’s reluctance.

I do not want that for myself.

I do not want to become the kind of writer people have to love defensively.

I do not want readers explaining on my behalf that the ending will come someday while I disappear into adjacent projects and cultivated mystique.

I do not want to be so enchanted by my own universe that I forget the entire point of making one is to carry people through it and bring them somewhere meaningful.

That is what Martin clarified for me, whether he meant to or not.

He made me realize that finishing is not a boring administrative task you do after the fun part. Finishing is part of the art. Finishing is where you prove the thing was more than atmosphere. It is where you show that all the grief, prophecy, politics, romance, betrayal, weird little symbols, and beautifully doomed side characters were actually moving toward something instead of just orbiting your talent forever.

Anybody can start a world.

A lot fewer people can end one.

And endings matter because they are where consequence cashes out.

They are where a writer reveals what they actually believed this whole time. About power. About love. About loss. About whether sacrifice means anything. About whether all this pain changed the people who lived through it. About whether the story was honest.

That is why I finish.

Not because I am morally superior. Not because I am immune to distraction. Not because I do not understand how hard a sprawling series can become once it starts breeding subplots in the walls.

I finish because I know what it feels like to love something unfinished.

I know what it feels like to wait so long that the waiting itself becomes part of the relationship.

I know what it feels like when admiration curdles into exhaustion.

And I never want my readers to feel that way because of me.

So yes, part of my motivation is petty.

Part of it is absolutely fueled by looking at one of the biggest fantasy series in modern history and thinking, I refuse to become that cautionary tale.

But underneath the pettiness is something more useful: a rule.

If people trust me enough to follow my work across a series, I owe them more than vibes, potential, and another beautifully described problem. I owe them movement. I owe them consequence. I owe them the dignity of an ending.

That does not mean every question gets answered. It does not mean every character gets saved. It does not mean the ending will make everyone happy.

It means I land the plane.

Because at a certain point, that is the difference between worldbuilding and keeping a promise.

And I would rather be the writer who keeps the promise.

That is the real lesson unfinished series taught me: the ending is not a bonus feature. It is part of the contract.

So now I am curious: what unfinished series broke your heart, and did it change how you think about writing, reading, or trusting a story to come back for you?

Xiào kǒu cháng kāi, and as always—until next time. 🧋✦

Alex