I want to share some of the multitude of changes taking place with the manuscript as opposed to what you already saw.  They are many; they are vast.

Descriptive language
Much of the original short story was, as a draft, written in haste.  I’ll agree it included descriptive language.  You might remember some of that centering around things like the darkness itself and how it acted in the porch scene, as well as what Margaret and Helene looked like (and, to a lesser degree, what Joe and George looked like).  Because it developed in a short time and because it was a draft, I didn’t focus much on telling you what you should be seeing and hearing, what people looked like, what Carr Beholden looked like, what kinds of trees were in the surrounding woodlands, and so on.  That is a big part of the rewrite.  Readers need to see what I see, hear what I hear, and even smell what I smell.  Nothing can be of greater importance to a writer than to transport the audience to the place imagined, and they must experience it solely through the text.  Part of that, however, is to ensure the reader is not overwhelmed with descriptive text that leaves no room for interpretation.  It should engage the imagination, not override it.

Too much ‘to be’
One common failing of most writers is overuse of ‘to be’ verbs.  For instance, when referring to what someone was doing in the past, it’s rarely appropriate to say “they were doing this thing” even when speaking in passive tense (as appropriate).  ‘To be’ is a cheap verb, a common verb, a very plebeian use of language that takes away from the story.  There’s certainly a use for it.  You can’t really say what someone was doing when you did something without it.  For instance, if I want to say someone was on location and doing something when I arrived, I can’t well say “I arrived and he tried to open the door.”  That’s a responsive use and not an ongoing use.  Did he only try to open the door because I arrived?  That’s what that sentence infers.  If he was already in the middle of the action when I arrived, then it should say “I arrived and he was trying to open the door.”  Even in that sense, it would be better to say something akin to “I arrived and found him trying to open the door,” a better phrase that drops cheap ‘to be’ usage and instead offers more robust verbs.  Instances where it’s appropriate are generally rare, yet English vernacular has made such usage common for conversational purposes.  In writing, however, it’s cheap and paltry.  Verbs should be descriptive.  Instead of saying “He was wishing he had gone home,” it should be said “He wished he had gone home.”  It carries the same connotation yet does so with more depth and clarity.  That’s assuming it’s not an ongoing action while describing another action as stated above.  Anyway, limiting use of ‘to be’ is important.

Repeats
Words or phrases are repeated often in general conversation.  That’s fine when talking (although not entirely proper or creative).  In writing, on the other hand, it’s very bad.  Whether it’s overuse of “actually” or “‘insert quote,’ he/she/they said,” phrasing and vocabulary are everything.  It’s imperative that redundancies be minimized so as not to bore or alienate readers.  Quotes should be introduced or clarified in as many descriptive ways as possible (some before, some after, some said, some replied, some responded, some offered, some clarified, and on it goes).  Common phrases, colloquialisms, and “favorite words” should be limited.  Similarly, using the same word when mentioning something throughout the manuscript will be off-putting.  An immediate representation of this from Dreamdarkers is in regards to the woodlands.  Using ‘trees’ or ‘forest’ (or both) becomes grating and tedious; instead, you’ll find ‘trees,’ ‘woodlands,’ ‘forest,’ ‘woods,’ and ‘timberland’ used interchangeably to keep it from sounding like an echo.

Meaningless use of adverbs (a.k.a. empty adverbs)
Have you ever considered the word ‘actually’?  Do you use it?  Popular linguistic mechanics has made the word a normal part of English vernacular.  “What did you do?”  “I actually went to the store.”  In that sense, ‘actually’ is empty and meaningless gibberish.  If you went to the store, that’s action enough.  ‘Actually’ is used when it qualifies something less than believable or clear.  “She looks like she’s 20 years old.”  “She’s actually thirty-six.”  In that sense, it’s proper, but in writing a book, even then it’s questionable.  The emphasis should be on the fact and not on qualifying to make it a fact (although there are times, especially in dialogue, when it’s appropriate).  Another example is “The dog immediately leaped to his feet.”  Leaping is a sudden movement.  One does not leap slowly.  One does not leap later unless one says so.  Therefore, it’s a gratuitous adverb and should be replaced with something more meaningful (like “excitedly” or “clumsily”) or dropped altogether.  I’m notorious for empty adverbs in some cases (although more for meaningful adverbs in overabundance).  Tempering their use makes them a more powerful tool, and excluding empty uses makes the narrative clearer.

Mundane lists
More than two or three items (no matter what they are) become boring.  When used, they should be ramped up with descriptive language to make the list seem less like… well… less like a list and more like an experience.  E-mails are one thing; web posts are another; a novel is in a class by itself.  I didn’t use many list-like phrases in the original, but I employed a few.  They will either be scaled back or turned into sensory encounters.

Tight dialogue
A novel is a description.  Very few can fly as dialogue-driven works.  Even fewer can rely on dialogue that translates to something better described than said (i.e., what the author should have told in the narrative versus making a character say it).  I found a few pieces in the original that didn’t flow smoothly as believable conversations, although none of it was false in the sense that it reiterated something I’d already said.  Nevertheless, a significant amount of dialogue has been added (still much less than the narration by Dave) and it’s all being tweaked to ensure it’s appropriate.  Dialogue should reveal something (e.g., a character trait that would flop if simply described, or an important fact that is more believable when coming from the original source rather than third-party translation).

Flat narrative
A novel should be robust and flow like honey from the mind’s lips.  For instance, you probably remember this from the short story: “The dogs stood at the screen door waiting for their chance to leap from the porch and dash out into the world. Dad reached them first and pushed the door open. Both dogs bolted out, made the sharp turn northward toward the lake, and ran excitedly to the pier.”  Yawn.  For a short story moving at a pace similar to Darkness Comes to Kingswell, that was fine to a degree, especially true given the text was posted as soon as it was written.  A draft is not necessarily the best place to strive for excellent literary interpretations.  That’s even more true when it’s “stream of consciousness” like that one (spilling from mind to digital paper with little direct interference).  That’s the bases for most writing, but especially for fictional writing.  Put the story on paper first, and then go back and clean it up and fill it in.  For the three sentences above, you might remember its expanded version seen here where two paragraphs filled the same period of time.  That text has since changed, but the version seen in that post is a good indicator of what it looks like now (minor changes and clarifications have been made).  I’m still on the first rewrite of the short story, so a lot more will happen once I work through the second and third rewrites.  But is it already better?  You bet!  Again, the original was a draft and written in haste (it took me about two weeks to pump out ~100 pages), but I wrote it that way to get the story out of my head.  Manipulating and massaging it could come later, just as I’m doing now, and a major part of that is to ensure it’s not a dull, humdrum narration like Ben Stein’s character in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Style
If you read the original web exercise, you might remember it was full of extremely casual language.  Much of the narrative was peppered with “I’d” and “she’ll” and “won’t” and “didn’t” and other common contractions.  All of those are now relegated to dialogue only.  The tale itself is tighter and a wee bit more formal, although the examples posted thus far (this one and this one) probably clarify the still conversational tone sans the overly informal essence that pervaded the original work.  I am striving to keep the tome from being too abstruse while equally attempting to keep it from being too pedestrian.  I hope I am striking a reasonable balance between the two.  It is a comfortable writing style for me; that makes it easy to develop.  Likewise, I can easily slip into an esoteric style that undoubtedly would be too highbrow for many (most? perhaps…).

Vocabulary
To some extent, the book will contain some of my extended vocabulary.  I am intentionally limiting that to the most appropriate places or where I am forced to delve into various ways of saying the same thing (for example, when speaking of the screened-in and front porches, I bounce between ‘portico,’ ‘veranda,’ and ‘porch’).  I also utilize less common phrases and words to enable the descriptive sense without relying on common dialect that presents a boring picture.  A certain amount of this stems from my desire to avoid repeats as I mentioned above.  Using the same word or phrase throughout the novel will generate a mundane feel.  I want to circumvent that as much as possible.  However, if forcing a particular style or limiting its depth discomfits me in any way, the story will suffer and readers will dislike the results.