Exile Chapter 43 Rewrites

I've finished chapter 43 of the second draft of Exile and it can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

another long chapter, and like the one before it, it's split up into three different viewpoints in two different locations, to make it feel more like the story is moving faster. Though this chapter really doesn't need much of that, with the whole battle going on thing and all. I've always thought that I sucked at writing action. The chapters where there are fights and battles in my stories always take several more drafts to get right than the others. Maybe it's because there's just so much happening in them that they take a lot closer attention to detail than other chapters do. I think I did relatively well for a first draft on this battle sequence though.

Another thing you might have noticed is that this chapter and the last one both end on cliffhangers. That's another trick to make the story feel like it's moving faster and keep people wanting to read onward. I usually try not to use cliffhangers in my writing except in places where it helps the overall tempo of things, because it really, really pisses me off when you get to the end of an awesome story and BAM, one last thing happens where you scream "OMG!!! WHERE THE FRICK DID THAT COME FROM!!" And then have to wait for two whole years for the next book to come out. I can see the point of leaving the ending of a book a cliffhanger, it makes people want to go out and buy the next volume when it comes out, but it really annoys me that writers resort to it. A story should be good enough on it's own merits without resorting to gimicks to make you want to buy the next volume in my opinion, and if you have to resort to cliffhanger endings like that to keep people interested, maybe it's time to take a look back at your story and try to make it more interesting. Anyway, the use of cliffhanger chapters, in my opinion, is still ok, because you do get resolution to what's happening in this story. It helps to build the suspense, and tension, that drive the story forward.

The first draft of this story ended at 117,352 words.
The second draft is currently at 231,430 words.