Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25597074-20151021034437/@comment-25597074-20151021160736

Thanks for responding I will try to work on something like maybe Billlys father warns him jokingly to beware of the monster or whatever into it.

Heres some background on the story I live on a hill in the woods and I get creeped out whenever I have to take up the garbage cans at night because I feel like I am being watched, and Although I know monsters and ghost and the like are not real I will admit that I quicken my pace when Im coming back up the hill at night as I imagine shadows and glowing eyes in the woods. I know it is not real but what if one day the creature I imagine  lurking in the treeline turns out to be real? And right behind me?

I dont think I did a good job making what I had in my head on paper. The story is supposed to become more suspenseful as Billy grows more and more scared i did not want to name a specific monster becasue I ws trying to convey that Billy is afraid of not something specific but the darkness and what he imagines the darkness is hiding.

Billy is supposed to be around 6-8 years old. The first pair of glowing eyes were real from some kind of animal. the shadows and the glowing eyes that surrounded him were just his imagination. He kept saying Im not afraid of the dark and at the end yelling im not afraid of the dark is supposed to show that he was gradually beginning to lose his courage as his imagination and the darkness  made him imagine things. the only reason Billy does not ditch the cans is because he looks up to his father and does not want to disspoint him and he knows the shadows and eyes are not real but he is still scared. At the very end the reader is suposed to feel that Billy will make it and that he will triumph over his fear of the darkness when boom a real monter not just something from his imagination appears. Any adice on how to succesfully convey this?.

Alt story Billy is at first scared of the dark but as he goes down the drive way he gets less and less afraid and he is triumphantly marching up the hill not scared of the dark when the creature says his line. Which way would be better the original or the one above?