Exile Chaper 17 rewrites

I've finished the second draft of Exile chapter 17 and it can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

There are perhaps two paragraphs that survived between the first draft and the second draft of this chapter. It has been completely and utterly overhauled with almost 6000 words added to it. This is the chapter where Aaron, the Wizard reveals to Mal that he is the Exile. In the first draft this was a very short conversation, and Mal, lacking anything resembling personality, just sort of accepted everything that Aaron said to him. This is not very realistic or true to his character. Now you have him hurting over Silmera's lies and manipulations of him, Aaron giving him a much better explanation, a lot more emotion and reaction to everything from Mal, as well as Silmera's plan for the Exile Bloodline worked in. This is a MUCH better chapter than the original draft, and really gets everything that needs to be expressed, expressed much more clearly and with greater emotional impact on the characters.

The changes made to this chapter were very much needed in order to make Mal a more believable character, as well as to flesh out the story so you actually give a crap about what's happening, rather than getting bored and skip ahead. What I'm trying to do in this story, which I've never done before in a story, is to make it more about the characters than the events in the world around them. The reason for this is to kind of test myself as a writer and see if I can pull it off.

The first draft of this story ended at 117,352 words.
The second draft of this story is currently at 156,333 words, which is just under a 39,000 wor difference. 40k words is the size of the average novella. Halfway through the story I've already added an entire novella worth of additional content to the story. Looking ahead, I think that the second draft is probably going to break 200k words.