Exile Chapter 22 rewrites

Ive finished the second draft of Exile chapter 22 and it can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

This chapter is where the conequences of Silmera's actions come back to bite the wntire village . . . literally. Mal also sees some of his mother's memories, and begins to realize how stupid he's been. The first draft of what became this chapter is about a page long, and has been greatly expanded to the point that this chapter may be split into two in hte next draft.

Something I've been asked is why is Silmera so crude and tomboyish. It seems like she's really going over the top in trying to be unladylike. Well, here's an explanation for that. She's not doing it on purpose. Silmera comes from a different time than any of the people alive today. She was born during the War of Zion a thousand years ago. Before the war there was a futuristic sort of society with flying cars, floating cities, and stuff like that. During the war mankind almost came to extinction, and most of the people that knew how to build all of this technology died. So things degraded shortly after the war to something like our modern day technology and society. Silmera grew up in a day and age much like our own, where women are generally viewed equally with men, and such notions as what is ladylike and what is not, have been rather ignored by most girls for several decades. Silmera makes crude jokes, references bodily functions, and isn't very modest at all, because she grew up in a time when no girls were. The way she acts was normal to her. As the centuries passed society and technology degraded to something like midieval times where women are no longer viewed as equals and basically expected to shut up and let the men do everything important, and they've grown rather prudish as well, so what was once an acceptable way of talking for a woman, is now considered crude, crass, and unacceptable. That someone needed to ask and I had to explain, means I haven't done a very good job of working this idea into the story. I have already put it on my list of things to take care of in draft 3.

Another thing about Silmera that i plan to change in the third draft also has to do with the fact that she is from another time and doesn't quite fit into the society of today quite so well. Usually in the later drafts of stories I change the way that each character talks to be specific to them so you can tell who is talking just by the way that they say things rather than having everything tagged with he said she said etc. If you'd like an examle of this read Beyond the Lost Horizon. Each of the four main characters has a unique way of talking. Raven talks like a hick, leaving the Gs off the end of words, saying Ain't a lot, and replacing you with ya. Kriss uses completely perfect grammar at all times, never uses contractions, and though she tries to dumb down her speach for the common people she associates with, sometimes she forgets and begins to use very large words that only someone who had a royal tutor would really know the meaning of. Temari always talks like she's speaking to a young child and trying to get a smile out of him. And Brand basically talks like I do. Silmera is from--for all purpoes--a completely different world than all other people in this story, and that will be reflected in her speach in later drafts. She will use more archaic words and patterns of speach, and slang terms that no one else understands and stuff like that.

The first draft of this story ended at 117,352 words.
The second draft is currently at 177,029.

That is just shy of a 60,000 word difference.