It's October, the month of horror. Naturally, I had to do a Halloween book re-write. I couldn't quite pick which one, so we're doing a few. Not all of them, since I don't have ideas for all, or some I don't have much for, or I might save it for another time. But here are the ones I've been stewing on the most.

Headless Halloween:

I actually had a big thing planned out at first but after re-reading it, I actually wanna mostly stick with the book as it is, but just changing the climax and ending.I'd make the party scene actually scary instead of just gross though and get into the real plot a bit sooner. The plot has a bully named Brandon basically dying and being told by a ghost that if he saves three scared people, he'll be given life again. The book had it turn out to be a joke by the ghost, but Brandon doesn't care and wants to go up there and scare kids, thus learning nothing.

I like the idea of subverting the jerk redemption story, it just feels a bit lame in execution so here's an adjustment. The people he saves are people he screwed over earlier that night, by leaving them out in the cold as they later get terrorized. Side note, I like how each has a different kind of danger facing them. Cal has these angry dogs, Vinnie has an evil ghost house and Maya has these bullies that manage to even threaten Brandon. We'll keep these the same but I wanna change up some stuff.

I don't recall how old they are but I wanna make them high schoolers, and really emphasize how curler they are than him. They basically now exist to show what Brandon will become if he doesn't change his ways. Yeah, I'm drawing on A Christmas Carol a tad here, it's almost there anyway. Might wanna change Cal so he represents the past, perhaps he has to save Mr. Benson instead and have him be upset over an especially cruel prank he once played on him? Either way, it's gotta be someone he wronged in the past.

The climax will have basically him deciding not to change at the last minute and want to be a bully again after all, perhaps joining the bullies in their fun. This will drive home the point that some bad people, even when given the chance, won't change. Some people are just rotten. Not sure how the final scene will go, but something that feels impactful and subversive without being kind of insulting to the story.

That's about what I got for this one.

The Haunter

This one is fine and has an interesting idea but it is mostly just kind of bland doesn't go into it as much as it could have. This had a kid named Sammy eventually dealing with a ghost kid who forces him to do crazy things that almost get him killed These things also get him in trouble but also actually get him the approval of a girl he has a crush on. It even ends on a bad note but has him thinking "what could go wrong" as he smiles at her. There's...quite a bit we could unpack from this so here's a basic idea to improve upon this.

First, have Ben make himself known earlier so we don't wait over 100 pages to actually meet him. Have him pop up once he starts messing with Sammy. Anyway, in this version, Ben's stunts will make Sammy popular in general because they find it amusing, mostly because it involves him making a fool of himself. In the book, Summer is nice enough to him but just doesn't much attention to him. In this version, she's more dismissive of him and doesn't seem to care about him. Not sure if we'll make her a full on alpha bitch, but that might be a bit much. Basically, she and others only care about him when he is making a fool of himself. He's basically just a silly puppet to them, his popularity is not out of real appreciation for him.

He'll struggle with this as he'll want to keep doing these dangerous things but start to wonder if it's worth it. This is a tad like Are You Terrified Yet in a way, just focusing more on the supernatural and the like. The book has shades of this but hardly pushes it, so that's my suggestion. I don't really have too much else planned out aside from that. As long as he realizes that Summer doesn't actually like him for him, we can have any climax or twist you want.

Just taking a small part of the book and expanding on it, although maybe some tweaks to the first half with them in the house might be needed to make it fit with the 2nd half, or make it a normal sized book and thus perhaps start in the house, kinda like the TV episode of My Best Friend is Invisible, idk. Otherwise, that's all I got here.

Trick or Trap:

This one was tricky at first but eventually I was able to nail this one. This book has a kid finding a mask that shows him a fantasy world, and a spirit named Lillian who was trapped in the mask wants it back so she can trap the kid in the mask or something like that. This somehow took over 160 pages. I like the concept of the mask but barely anything is done with it, so let's see what we can do.

Scott's life is not so good, with the obligatory bullies and annoying younger sister, but the fantasy word bits mostly focus on it being a bit creepy and it doesn't seem too appealing even though there's plenty you can do with it. So in this version, the world is seemingly perfect, with either his problems being fixed or not being there at all. There are some slight cracks in the world at times though, like how the food tends to be weird and gross and sometimes the people appear to be monstrous before quickly turning to normal.

However, this new life is so appealing compared to his normal one that Scott keeps coming back, while meanwhile he starts to feel weaker whenever he's back in the normal world. And just like the book, a strange woman starts following him and snooping in his room. Basically, it turns out that this mysterious mask tries to keep you wearing it by showing you a nearly perfect fantasy version of your world, and the more the wear it, the more it drains your life force until you're eventually dead and your spirit is sucked into the mask. (Also, being just a magical mask, it can't replicate a person's life perfectly, so that's why it glitches and has the creepy bits I mentioned before)

Lillian was one of the spirits sucked into the mask, as she fell pray to the mask. When Scott put it on, it allowed her a brief chance to escape, This gives her a chance to ascend to the afterlife, but instead she realizes she is addicted to the mask and the world it created and tried to get it back from Scott. She was basically in a similar boat as Scott.

I don't really know how the story would climax exactly, or what the twist would be. I do know there's an obvious moral here about the dangers of escapism and how you should appreciate what you have. There's also something about addiction in there. The trick would be to make his life flawed without going too far, so that it doesn't fall into the same trap as Don't Go To Sleep where it's basically "don't have a problem with your life cuz you could be a monster or whatever". Otherwise, this is a solid outline for a story, I think.

And yeah, that's about it.

The Scream of The Haunted Mask:

I quite like this one as it is but I've got an idea to improve on and dig deeper into a theme that was only teased. The first two already had what kinks they had improved upon in the TV episodes, and the best way to improve Wanted The Haunted Mask is to just trash it and don't publish it, so that leaves this one.

In the first book, Carly Beth wanted the mask so she could be scarier and take care Chuck and Steve, and she seemed to enjoy the power it gave her, until things got bad of course. In Scream, the Mask tries to call to her a few times and Carly Beth feels somewhat of an attraction, and even ends up putting it it on to protect the kids from Laura, who we'll get back to in a second. However, the idea of her possibly still having an attraction to the mask's powers kind of ends there and perhaps could have been fleshed out more.

So my idea is simply to push that further. The Mask not only calls out to her, but it tries to remind Carly Beth of how she felt when she put on the mask, and basically tries to get her to re-lapse, and think that that is was worth it to lose her humanity to scare off some people she disliked. I'm not sure if we should have the mask truly talk, or just kind of get her into her head and make her start thinking her thoughts. She may have gotten it off but since it did get become part of her, there's still enough of a connection there.

She struggles with this, while also dealing the whole possibly haunted stable, and learning that others have suffered from the mask and they may be tied to the stable. I don't want this to be a total re-hash so I don't want Carly Beth to have a full new target for revenge or anything like that, I just want to re-kindle those feelings she had before, and make her wonder if these evil feelings are truly a part of her, and not just something the mask created.

As for Laura Henry, she is someone who had gotten the mask before and used it to spook some horses, which ended up killing her and the horses. She works fine as it is but I want ti make her be a parallel to what Carly Beth went through. Maybe she had her own Chuck and Steve she wanted revenge on, and she was trying to spook them when the horses ended up killing her. She had a bad side the mask took advantage of, but unlike Carly Beth, she let the mask fully get to her and it lead to her downfall.

Now, as a ghost, she still wants the mask due how much it to her, and she died in the mask so it still lingers a bit. She mostly lingered on the farm until Carly Beth started working there and she sense that she had touched it before, and get the job at Tumble Down farms to see if she could get close to her and find out. Yeah, this tweak isn't needed but would make her story a bit better. Anyway, this leads to a similar climax where she threatens to harm the kids unless Carly Beth gets her the mask, so she can feel its power once again.

Now we have the added element of Carly Beth facing who was a lot like her and is doing all this, just to experience the mask again. Throughout the story, the Mask has convinced Carly Beth that she's always had a dark side to her that mask simply brought out. Seeing what it had done to Laura reminds her of how scary the mask really is. While the mask be right to some extent, Carly Beth knows she isn't an evil person by any means, and simply let a bit of (frankly understandable) thirst for revenge get to her, which the mask took advantage. Laura on the other hand, let he bad side fully get to her thanks to the mask and now she's threatening children over it.

As for the ending, eh I don't know. Which what I've put down, I don't think having her put the mask on would quite work here but eh, with some tweaking you can still have it all work. As long as she stops and learns that drugs-I mean evil masks are bad, that that's all that really matters. And yes, I know I did two "protagonist almost falls pray to a mask that killed someone" re-writes in a row, I'm about as good as keeping my ideas fresh as Stine is. They are different enough to work separately, I think.

I think that about wraps it up. Some solid tweaks this time around, and you got four for the price of one. And yeah, that's what I got for this one. Happy Halloween!