Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-40164173-20190718014418/@comment-35711173-20190719003439

This rewrite is better.

Jason would know the school nurse. Well, my kids all did. They knew her very well, and she did know him. Make the familiarity two way.

Point #1 - When that bat thing pops out, the party is over. Nobody is going to calmly sit and play Monopoly when they just saw something like that. You must build up tension. Something should be wrong before that, then a sign, then the bat that blows them all away.

Point #2 - Jason and three other kids went on a work detail to a house. The four of them disappeared. The school would be talking about it. Jason abandoned his car. What kind of a kid abandons his wheels? Days later, Jason appears to Nurse Doe. So, what happened? She's got to wonder at least, and probably she's going to ask.

Point #3 - the last name "Doe." A "Jane Doe" is an unidentified female corpse. A "John Doe" is an unidentified male corpse. Not the best last name. You can come up with a better one. Any ethnicity. "Buck" would do if you really want venison. "Hunter" "Jaeger" I have used everything from the names of co-workers to radio show characters.

Focus on the transition in that party scene. It has to go from slightly creepy "the kid who is coming down on drugs" to something weird but not necessarily him to outright horror.

I had an idea. What if it isn't Monopoly they are playing? What if it is a Ouji board or they are doing a seance or a religious healing or something like that? Somewhere in there, the mysterious starts happening. The Ouji board thingie starts moving by itself, nobody touching it or some such. Then things could be flying around the room. At the end of that escalation where everybody is trying to run out but the door won't open that the bat unveils.