We started this scary story, but we want you to finish it. Give it your best shot in two typewritten pages – we’ll send all the stories to scary-story writer L.J. Smith (right), author of the “Night World” and “The Forbidden Game” series, and she’ll pick the five scariest. Then we’ll send prizes to those creative kids! Plus, we’ll pick some honorable mentions. And we’ll print the No. 1 story. (The box at the end of the story gives contest details.) Ready? Here goes…
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Emily Edwards was the new kid in town. And it was her worst nightmare.
She and her father had moved to Castleville at the beginning of summer, and the 13-year-old was having a hard time making friends.
There was something about the neighborhood kids that gave Emily the creeps. They seemed to look not at her but through her.
Ironically, they reminded her of her father. Since the death of Emily’s mother three years earlier, he had been so caught up in his grief that he didn’t really see Emily either.
Something else was odd about the neighborhood kids. Around dusk each evening they left their houses and gathered at an abandoned farmhouse on the outskirts of town.
Emily knew where they went because she followed them. As usual, no one noticed her.
She thought that the kids probably belonged to some kind of club and held meetings or parties at the farmhouse–probably without their parents’ knowledge, because the rickety old place was dangerous.
As the summer dragged on and Emily went almost crazy from loneliness, belonging to that club began to matter desperately, almost more than life itself.
So one moonless night after everyone had filed inside, she approached the farmhouse. All of the windows were boarded up, but she was able to push aside a loose board and peek inside. What she saw changed her life forever…
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OK, readers, you take it from here!
PRIZES ARE A REAL HOWL
Mail your two typewritten pages, including your name, age, address and phone number (including area code), to KidNews Story Contest/baiduhai 5th Floor/435 N. Michigan Ave./Chicago, IL 60611. Here’s the scary part: Your entry has to be in our hands by Oct. 17. If you make the DEADline, your entry will be considered for the following prizes: Grand prize–certificate for a laser tag party; second prize (two winners)–$50 gift certificates for a video store; third place (five winners)–$10 movie gift certificates. Plus, a bunch of honorable mentions will get candy. Write on.
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NEVER FEAR–WE CAN GET YOU STARTED RIGHT
Need help getting started with your story ending? Author L.J. Smith gave up a few tips:
— Start with a character. “For me it’s usually someone who’s like me or someone I’d like to be,” Smith says. “Make sure your heroine or hero is likable so the reader cares what happens to them.”
— Brainstorm. Take a scary image from a dream or experience you’ve had. If you get stumped, think of an experience you found a “little bit weird” or a place you found a “little bit spooky,” Smith says. Then, “let your mind go free with it. Make it an `X-Files’ episode. Don’t go for the logical explanation. Say, `What if the weird thing that happened was the result of magic?’ and go from there.”
— Make it real. “You have to imagine these things actually happening to you,” Smith says. What would you do? Who would you tell? What problems might you face?
— Make the climax count. What scary thing must you confront and defeat? “In most of my stories, I have an image of the heroine standing alone at the end, small but defiant against a power that’s bigger than herself,” Smith says. Her characters “have to decide to fight on the right side of good even if they can’t win. That’s real life.”
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To hear the whole interview with L.J. Smith, go to http://chicago.digitalcity.com/go/halloween.