Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25170312-20140822035320/@comment-25156307-20140822181156

I like the revisions you made. Expanding it definitely worked; I'm more invested in the characters and in what's happening to them.

I agree that something about the opening feels slightly off. I think it might be the last sentence of the first paragraph, where you simply say "unusual location" when you should be a little more specific about what kind of unusual. (e.g., "If it wasn't the woods, it was decaying old houses, damp and echoey culverts, or best of all, the Montauk Project.") It would flow better.

Also, just a thought - I think it might be scarier if they noticed that Melanie was missing while they were still in the house, instead of after they started walking home. Because they're able to walk so far away, it makes it seem like they can escape (and thus, are not in danger). If they notice her missing while in the house, though, it makes it seem as if they were obliviously in danger the whole time. It also ties the entity (whatever it was that took Melanie) exclusively to the house, which I think makes it more unsettling. I'm not entirely sure how to articulate it, but it seems that ghosts (or monsters, etc.) that haunt a particular place are scarier than ones who haunt everywhere. It's better to keep the weirdness restricted to one small, creepy corner of the world (which could be an actual place or just a kind of setting that recurs.) I don't think this is a hard-and-fast rule, but the only stories I can think of where the evil is in all settings and it works really well are the ones where the character is losing their mind.

Lastly, I think peace is the wrong feeling for the narrator to be feeling at the end. In this kind of story, I don't want the characters to be at peace at any point.

Hope this helps.

(Shined/shone are both correct uses, though "shined" implies a little more agency ("I shined the light down the hall") where as shone tends to be used for the object doing the shining ("The moon shone brightly.") )