Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-4893169-20160413174929/@comment-4849011-20160427002103

MrDupin wrote: @Raidra: I understand that a kid may have read fictional vampire books (even I had at the time) but Vlad the Impaler is real, and I don't think they would teach him in history class to young kids, let alone give all the grim details + his influence of vampires. These books weren't fictional vampire stories. They were non-fiction books talking about vampire lore and superstition as well as historical figures associated with vampires, and they did talk about Vlad the Impaler. In fact, that's how I learned about him. These were children's books, yet they talked about Vlad sticking his victims on posts and leaving them to die. The most famous story, recounted in both books, is about the time that Vlad held an outdoor dinner party surrounded by impaled victims (something he apparently did quite often) and a guest complained about the smell. Vlad had the guest impaled on a stake higher than the others, so he wouldn't be bothered by the smell anymore. Meet the Vampire also has a Vlad story more gruesome than that. It's been a while, but I think they also talked about that countess who reportedly bathed in people's blood. The first book talked about werewolves as well, and it (along with Meet the Werewolf by Georgess McHargue) talked about that teenager in medieval France (Jean something-or-other) who stole, killed, and ate children. We weren't taught this in class, but we had easy access to the books (since one was on the classroom shelf, where anyone could grab it for reading time, and the other was at the public library across from our elementary school, which we visited as a class every two or three weeks). Now that that's been cleared up, yeah, I can understand how the character wouldn't know about such things.

As for the train of thought, you could have the thoughts be part thoughts, part narration. For instance- Marlee’s mouth dropped open as she stared at the door in baffled confusion. ''"Did Lisa just mention the Medusa?" That was quite a coincidence; she just mentioned it shortly after Marlee saw something very Medusa-like. And since when did Lisa use really age-old expressions?''