Not sure if the correct section, so my apologizies if not! If someone were to say, "You're exiled!" in modern day society to a criminal - what would that mean? How would you interpret it? In a Game of Thrones type world I imagine someone being thrown out into the desert with no supplies or something of that sort.
I guess it would depend on where in the real world you lived and what the circumstances were around you. For instance, there are insular communities in the U.S., like the Amish, from which one may be "shunned", which would be a modern equivalent to being exiled in that you can no longer participate in that community, but it's not like there's a barren wasteland beyond the borders of Amish land. You just have to go live "with the English", as they say.
I think on more legal or political terms it means you'd have to leave the country and not be allowed access back in. If you are a citizen of that country then you'd have to find another country willing to take you in, as many of their allies might refuse you entry depending on your circumstances.
I co-wrote a screenplay back in 1991 called, In Exile. The story was about a guy who accidentally exiled himself into the past. By the time it was released, though, it had been renamed Time Runner and there was no mention of the self-exile. Of course, it ended up being a crappy film and only one of the scenes my partner and I wrote survived all the rewrites. It was the best scene in the entire film, or so people told us at the premiere, but one scene does not a film make. What was laughable was, I knew one of the actors and he said that he and another actor were writing their lines on-set between set-ups. I think by that time, the producer and director had just given up and simply wanted these two actors to fill in enough time to hit 90 minutes. (sigh) Such is the world of the B-movie... What was the question again? Oh, yeah. Exile. I'd think he was lost in space... or had dropped through a wormhole into the past.
