Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-4893169-20160413174929/@comment-4849011-20160426001143

Thanks for including the original draft! It's really cool to compare and contrast. I liked when Marlee discovered her family behind her, and the description of Ralphie peeing was funny. It would work well as the first part in a series (like you've done stories before), but since you said you were thinking of going with a more humorous ending, I can understand you changing it.

It's interesting how the new version depicts the knickknacks as a defense against vampires. Speaking of which, I've thought about something a little. I can understand Ralphie not being familiar with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I don't fully agree with Dupin's comment that he wouldn't know about Vlad the Impaler and Transylvania. That's because I was still in grade school when I read a couple books on vampires and learned about them (I don't remember what the first was called, but the other was Meet the Vampire by Georgess McHargue). These books were gory in places, but they were children's books. One was in a classroom and the other was in the children's section of the local library. I do admit, though, that I was probably ten or eleven, so it's up to you to decide if an eight-year-old knowing about such things is realistic.

I've heard that there were people who didn't know that fireflies were real until they took a trip to an area where they lived. My gosh. What, did these people think that lightning bugs were like fairies or something? Who are these people seeing fireflies and going, "They're... real..."?