Here's one I have been stewing on for a little while. This book is on the divisive side and it is sadly one I don't care. I like the "world-building" with the shock street monsters and the concept of these fans having to face the monsters for real. But it just ended up being kind of sloppy with a twist that's well foreshadowed but still not totally sensical and just exists as an easy way to handwave everything going. So yeah, I'm here to propose how to clean this up. I've even found a way to use the twist. Aside from doing what the TV episode did, although that was amazing. My fixes are quite simple in the long run, and still allow for a lot of antics.
First off, the opening scene with them seeing a screening of Shock Street 5 has them alone, and Mr. Wright tells them they were chosen to see it alone due to them being supposedly the biggest fans in the world. I like the opening in the book as it is, but having them be basically in public is weird after the twist so there's my tweak, it fits better with the reveal. Things go on as normal from there, Erin and Marty are picked to test the ride and things get weird. But here's the big tweak: These are all indeed machines, but they have AI which is malfunctioning, making them act like exactly like they do in the movies. Thus, an easy way to create real tension and explain what is going on without needing to jump through hoops. They first think the monsters are real, but they are just really dangerous robots.
Yes, I've basically pitched West World for kids. That is the easiest way to fix the story and most could still play out as usual, but I've got more to go over. I want them to use their knowledge of the movies to defeat the monsters and make it through the obstacles. It takes more advantage of the movie concept and allows for further "world-building" so to speak. Eventually, Mr. Wright shows up to explain that these are the animatronics used for the movies and when they chose to use them for the ride, they put AI in them so they can move on their own and were designed to act like in the movies but not actually hurt one and of course that went south as the malfunctions happened. Another thing you can do have them get so smart that they want to rebel against their creators, to add to the "hubris of man" theme I've got going on here.
At this point they are almost at the building where the control panel is, but some monsters are in their way and they are working their way in. They are shut off buttons for each robot, but monsters are in the way of those, meaning their best option is the big shut off switch. Mr. Wright says he didn't want to use as shutting off so many at once could cause a power surge and other such excuses. Erin sense this is a bit lie and thinks the real reason is that he's weirdly proud of his creations, and wants to do further work on them or whatever. She calls him out for allowing this to as for as it did, as robots shouldn't be this smart and if are, they should have more free will and yada yada.
Mr. Wright needs to stop this and shut off all of his precious robots, she tells him. Eventually he begrudgingly agrees. All of his creations must be shut down. He pulls the big switch and they all go down...including Erin and Marty. A bunch of workers come in through this convo so we find out that Erin and Marty were created so that they could test the ride and see if super fans would like it without worrying about harming them. Wright was only supposed to have them be smart enough to know everything about the movies, but the more he worked on them, the more he started to get attacheed to like they were his kids, since he has none for real.
He got so attached to them like they were real and even though he was forced to shut off, he wants to turn them back on and fix them up a bit. But his bosses forbid him, thinking that this all went too far. Not sure what the ending should be exactly, I just know it should end with him having to take down his robot kids for good. A bit of a downer but ah well, making him the robot kids turn on to get revenge on the others, kind of like the episode.
Writing this made me realize a better medium between these versions: Keep the robots not really being bad and just being robots made to look scary, with that just being a result of their malfunction but keep the aspect where Wright just made them as tools but grew attached to them as real kids and the malfunction made him realize that robots sadly can't be a good replacement for a human soul, adding to our theme further. Then again, having them prove to be human-ish and question exactly how human a robot can be is also interesting and deep stuff.
Either one works. This got more detailed than I expected but I just wanted to show off how impactful the reveal could be. These are fairly simple fixes that could go a long way in making the story more fleshed while still being fun for the bulk of it. We don't need to go super deep into the AI conversation, of course, just a small hint of it would be interesting, even if Stine would save that for "It's Alive! It's Alive!".
So yeah, that's what I got for this one, see ya.