This is a short story I wrote a while back that I've redone and revised a few times. I've also submitted it to a few publications, but I can't get it to land.
It's a weird story, and there's something I'm missing. Or maybe it's just a bad story. I don't know. Thus, I am here. I'd like to know if it's too convoluted or stupid.
Critiques:
Posted Dec 19, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC
Thank you for posting.
From Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse to Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation, lighthouses definitely are great symbols. The setting works especially in the horror-eerie realm of things and this piece definitely fits more in the New Weird genre.
Polish his light? Sadly this cheery little ditty gets stuck in my head whenever I read the word Lighthouse. Then there is this whole ugly rabbit hole of Alex and Droogs that follows.
Mathematics I do not think this piece is in and of itself derivative of Annihilation, but there are too many elements for it to not come to my mind:
the glowing fungus words vibrating along the walls in the silo/tower building AND the incomprehensible words/runes along the walls
the botanist and the lighthouse keeper having their memories altered
the botanist’s husband clone/creation and the repeating cycle of lighthouse keepers
the lighthouse part of the border and epicenter of things
True, we could all probably pat ourselves on our heads and rub out tummies while showing how large pieces of Annihilation are really kind of a re-do of The Shadow over Innsmouth with a team of investigators going into a laid waste place…blah blah. But the words on the wall and the lighthouse setting with the copied/repeated bodies made me really think about Vandermeer’s story.
Characters We got LK1 and LK2 with a whole host of dead LK’s, but this does mean we also have a sort of hidden character of LK0, the one who lit the wick just before LK1.
Sin Qua Non There is only the slightest edge as to the why the keepers are here. The ceremony must be a constant loop or else…or else what? The cosmic horror potential is not given enough room to creep to the surface. No hybrid children watch the sea, pray for father roaming free. I think that’s actually Metallica's lyrics from Face the thing that should not be but it might be a direct quote from Lovecraft. The horror is too muted, but the eerie is right level.
How to kick it up without going into a full blown discovery with evidentiary briefs and depositions?
What I thought was going on… Lighthouse keepers are part of this constant repeated cycle each day in part as a throwback to all those myths about the Sun and the Moon being new each new time they show up. There is a ritual or ceremony here where they add something to the wall then replace themselves the next day. They are keeping something at bay or lighting the way for something else to see. There is a limited understanding passed on from the one before to the new one. We start in the POV of one that is off-caliber but not really given why OR if she is off what happened to the one previous. I kept expecting LK1,2 to find LK0’s body not at the toss point, but in the wrong place because LK1 is off-script.
Mortui non mordant The dead don’t bite or lie or whatever. The horror here of why the ritual is happening on repeat ad nauseum needs a bit more than the shadow at sea. I think the corpses presence can be used maybe to bring some of that more out.
The runes as well and the music as well once LK2 enters. I mean is the Lightkeeping draining them of their memory or the thing they are keeping at bay? LK1 or LK2 can have an insight/cue to what will be lost or what is lost. LK1 can recall where the hands must go to play the piece, but not remember why and directly ask why. There are things there that can be added without fully being answered.
Defenestration, Loops, and Broken Glass repaired The addition to the list with the broken glass reads off. Won’t this mean that LK3, 4, 5…will have the repair glass. There is a whole new step added presumably requiring now each to throw the old LK out the window. If it was always there, does that change things or work better? It seems like the Old Lady who swallowed a Fly where there is going to have to be little additions added on now for each subsequent LK.
Prose I think the passivity of the voice here works. However a lot of this read with a certain staccato flow/beat to me that at times made me aware of reading the trope of the waking up amnesiac. Instead of “The woman lightly dragged her fingers on the rough surface as she ascended, wondering at the bizarre symbols that looked like text.” I wonder if “Her fingers dragged across the rough-cut symbols”…yada yada Braille symbolism/music. There is a lot of deliberate choices made in the text to go with all action via LK1–WHICH THEN makes the jump from LK1 to LK2 feel like an extreme head hop at first. I think switching this up can lead to a more claustrophobic trapped feeling—which is key to the horror/eerie here. Honestly I did not feel the trapped-ness, isolation because of the amnesia.
I kept thinking about Alzheimer’s and dementia. Isn’t there a Steven King character who has Alzheimer’s and keeps seeing things from other sides of the Thinnies? Or am I conflating things? Therein lies a bit of the problem in generating the horror for some readers, we’ll go off the rails with our thinking caps and lose sight of the bigger picture. A confused unreliable narrator asks for the reader to question more analytically and include possibilities of mental illness alongside dementia.
Rejection and Landing Honestly I have read a whole lot worse on certain e-zine level stuff and don’t really know who this was submitted to or how that specific place’s process works. I did not find this too convoluted or silly. I like the piece’s tone and presence. The prose was clear, but not evocative enough to grip me in a way that new weird should. New weird can get pretty purple while this is deliberately spartan. The element of why/horror and fear of being trapped in an endless cycle of suicide is scary stuff, but the rinse and repeat of Sysiphusian here read a bit more at prop. The emotional connection to the LK’s is not there, but hard to envision how to bring it up to speed without more internal telling of the LK reflecting upon the idea that their memory has been stolen deliberately (or eaten, devoured…whatever) to bring forth something. It is hard when this seems daily and not say yearly. It is a hard balance to strike, but I think this piece would work better with actually a bit more. I think it could breathe freer at the 5K range. I also do wonder how much of the not being accepted has to do with the Vandermeer comparisons that are likely in my mind. Make sense? Helpful? Harsh?
Interesting re: Annihilation. I've never read it (although I did see the movie, after I wrote this, but didn't make the connections you've revealed). That just makes me like this piece even less if I've inadvertently stolen ideas.
I think you picked up on what the plot is, which makes me feel a little better - you got the idea of what I was trying to do. As usual, your comments are extremely helpful, and I appreciate how much thought you put into this dumb little piece that I wrote. I'm really not sure how to add more detail without giving too much away and treating the reader like a dummy. I might just scrap this one and stick to what I know.
Thank you. Re: Annihilation the book is substantially different from the movie. I don't think the whole crawler monster writing fungal bioluminescent streams of phrases is even in the film. I don't think I would have made the same links if just going from the film. I'd recommend reading it as a book for how well it creates a certain eerie uncertainty and weirdness. There are issues and it is not perfect, but the Botanist is one of my favorite characters.
Oh, I thought of a trick for you. Right before the woman drowned, she remembered everything. So you tell how the circle started, and then end the story with the identical woman starting the circle again.
Hello, and thanks for sharing your work! I remember reading and enjoying some of your critiques over the summer, and thought I would do my best to help you here with The Lighthouse Keeper if I can.
Overall Thoughts
This was an interesting idea for a circular mystery that I found intriguing but ultimately not all that rewarding. I couldn’t connect with the POV character because she didn’t really have any characteristics, other than being confused a lot. I was also somewhat confused throughout - the neat instructional refrain, the carved symbols on the wall, the stranger’s circle project that the woman supposedly isn’t right for … lots of questions! I was interested but maybe too dumb to figure it out. What did the woman do wrong, really? What was the circle project about? Was the stranger rolling up to the beach in a sunken ghost ship submarine? I think the dialog and action in the final few pages moves well, but because the setup isn’t quite right the story kind of ends with an “oh” instead of a “ooooooooH”. Hopefully I can be more specific about some of these issues below.
Pacing and Structure
Apologies, but the opening isn’t very catchy at all. I think you can hook better than this.
She looked down. Everything was wet.
Very nondescript language here. Sorry if this is overstepping, but I think you could probably restructure the whole setup of the mystery around the exploration of the lighthouse, as the woman goes up floor by floor. As it is, I don’t have a very good sense of the interior, although I think the descriptions of the beach/water work well. Lighthouse interior:
She passed a mess room, an empty bedroom, the watch room, and the service room until the staircase ended in the lantern room.
That’s a lot of rooms I have nothing in my head for. Even worse, you describe some of these rooms much later, in passing, when they don’t even matter. Couldn’t there be some way to break the instructions up spatially, have a different thing need to happen on each floor on the way up? And near the top she starts seeing the shadow approaching out in the water, and by the time she gets to the top it’s gone, and the footprints are there (and she has to go all the way back down to open the door). This structural change might help clarify and compartmentalize the lead-up.
Anyways, for me the first two-thirds drags and the story really gets moving around the ‘always open the door’ bit.
Writing Mechanics and Flow
Mechanically, you’re a good writer and I don’t want to line edit or nitpick or do anything like that. Some of these sentences are a little wooden; a little ‘she did this, she did that’. You refuse to let the reader inside the woman’s head, fully. Every once in a while we get a little authorial instruction about what she’s ruminating on or what she’s confused about, but there’s nothing human to connect to, and I think if you want to make the mystery of the lighthouse confusing initially then this needs to be counterbalanced with something ELSE in the woman, and maybe that something is a little bit of personality? The italicized self-questions don’t count.
Fear and confusion warred within her.
Isn’t this just telling, not showing?
Tone
Creepy, bleak, hazy. I never know what to say in the Tone section and should probably just stop including it. But I think you mentioned Lovecraftian in one of your other comments; I didn’t really find that to be the case personally (maybe the woman needs to spend more time having her sanity assailed, gibbering, etc.? Classic HP). Eerie, lonely: yes.
Characterization
The stranger was inscrutable and menacing. Good characterization through actions/dialog near the end of the story. Creepy. Is there a good reason why the stranger needs to be identical to the woman? Can’t the stranger show up and be their own character and then introduce a new body or doll or husk or whatever to be the new woman in the next cycle of the lighthouse thing? I guess I just don’t get why the stranger needs to personally inhabit (and then psychically leave?) this wet body, because it adds potential problems with regards to description (“the stranger”, “the woman”, “she”) and plot clarity.
I think I mentioned above that the woman doesn’t have a personality beyond confused and I can also see why you would’ve done that on purpose, but I don’t love it because it means I’m perpetually on the outside of this story’s perspective struggling to look into the world and it just feels unnecessarily cruel, like making me do extra homework or something.
Dialogue
Dialog was sparse, serviceable, not cringy. I think you’re good there, personally.
Setting and Worldbuilding
What’s the deal with this circle project, or with the shadow that transports the stranger/new woman to the lighthouse, or the glowing wall runes, or the need to kill these women to replace them? Why is it so significant that she didn’t light the wick; that the version preceding her (??) had? Did she really hesitate THAT much before going to open the door? I really had to go back and try to figure out how the woman screwed up. You aren’t required to answer these things, but the questions stack up and I was not particularly pleased to find that the big payoff is finding out that the whole mess starts again from the start. There’s this episode of Black Mirror entitled White Bear that’s also about a loop, where you know much more about the situation by the end than you did at the beginning, and the ending credits of the episode revisit various moments from the earlier parts of the story so you can remember what you THOUGHT was happening back then vs. what you KNOW was happening now … Anyways, there’s a lot of opportunity for reader payoff in this kind of circularity that you don’t take advantage of.
Writer’s Questions
The story might be unnecessarily convoluted - see some of my questions about the worldbuilding above. If even one or two of these points can be clarified, the other parts of the mystery might be more enticing. I know you don’t want to lead the reader too much, but it feels too muddy, too much like you threw everything at the wall to see if it could stick.
Hopefully you find some of this helpful or productive! Feel free to hit me with any follow-up questions.
Starting off, things are already kind of weak. Once you have her do something (put her hands on her hips) and then immediately undo spins the reader around and makes them confused and lost before they even really got into the story. If you are intent on keeping this, at least add some more substance around it. Go into details or sensations, the feel of the damp fabric or why damp fabric would warrant not resting one's hands on their hips. You only got around to describing the wet denim against her skin 6 pages in. By then, readers would have been long tuned out.
Next, you kind of contradict yourself. First you say that her clothes are damp, then you say that they are wet. Those two words represent vast different levels of water saturation. Sweating after a jog makes clothes damp. Falling into a swimming pool makes them wet. Getting a good grasp of how to effectively utilize vocabulary will help engage the reader. This is evident in the very next sentence. Instead of saying round space where she stood, say something like; the rounded walls that environed her.
The sub-par vocabulary in the story makes it feel very monotone. This disengages the reader. For example, instead of saying: "They covered the entire surface" Say "Their coverage extended to..." I cannot emphasize enough, the importance of well-used vocabulary.
The best thing that you can do right now to identify the monotone parts is to read your story aloud. The parts that don't sound "smooth" likely need to be fixed up.
Another thing to do is to re-assess the practicality of everything. This will help keep your reader engaged.
Should a desk really be facing a window like that? Imagine trying to get work done while the afternoon sun is shining in your face.
The woman has reduced mental facilities. However, she seems well aware of it. It takes sufficient mental facilities to be self-aware of such things. Dumb people are often too dumb to realize that they are dumb. The majority of mistakes that people make in a hazy state are either pointed out by someone else or by the person in a state of greater clarity. The woman should not be able to notice her mistakes this frequently.
The story measures the floor with inches. Does this mean it takes place in America, Liberia, or Burma? You can subtlety add hints of worldbuilding into the story.
Why is she surprised with what she sees in her own reflection. Can't she tell she has pale skin by seeing the back of her hand? Can't she feel that her hair is wet?
Another thing I've noticed is that this work struggles with telling instead of showing. (This also contributes to the story sounding monotone at times). Like you say that the sky deepened. What the hell does that mean? Show the actual changes happening in the sky.
The problems seem to subside as the story continues onward. This means two things: 1. You have written the different parts at different times and skill levels. 2. Have improved while writing this
I do like the black mass in the ocean part. It grabs the reader's interest and attention. An interesting contrast to the less interesting work that she is doing in the lighthouse.
The work in the lighthouse seems to drag on way too long. Typically works tend to gloss over the monotony and get into the interesting parts. Especially in today's entertainment meta.
It may also help to give this woman personality early on. Generally, stories get the viewer to like the characters, so they become invested in what they do. You don't care about the daily life of a stranger. Don't make the character seem like a stranger. Get the reader attached to them ASAP.
I agree with another poster who liked the passive voice. I feel like I can be of best use by commenting on the writing itself instead of the story and what is good or could make it better.
As far as rejections and whatnot, I like what William Goldman (the "G" in MGM) said when asked how he knows when a movie is good -- "nobody knows anything"
All of my comments should be prefaced with “in my opinion” and with the understanding that I can’t take my own advice. Also, my paragraph count might be off. Without further ado, here's what I got:
1st para:
“deja vu in reverse” is cute, but does it mean anything other than “forgot”?
2nd para:
how come she needed to look down to realize that her clothes were wet? Is she not fully with it?
3rd para:
“round space” -- can’t you just use “room”?;
change “small desk with a chair” to “small desk and a chair” to avoid using “with” twice in that sentence
4th para:
“taped to the surface of the desk”
I’d say get rid if “surface of the” -- what else would it be taped to?
Why is the knife oddly shaped? I like the attention to detail, but I don’t know if we need to know that the knife is oddly shaped or even what an oddly shaped knife could look like
I like the list on the note
5th para:
“aloud” is redundant
“momentarily” can be cut
Why is the sound of her own voice peculiar to her? I know it’s weird to hear our own voices on some recording, but when we’re talking our voices generally sound “normal” to us. Is something going on with her or the room to make her voice sound peculiar?
“Circular” can be cut -- the reader already knows that the room is round
6th para:
Markings cover the “entire surface” -- that’s hard to picture, isn’t that just a coat of paint?
Are you trying to say that there were a lot of markings?
“Odd geometric shapes” -- I think “geometric” can be cut, also the knife is already oddly shaped, so I don’t know how I feel about these oddly shaped markings on the wall unless this oddity is going to be part of the theme/action
7th para:
She’s already been startled, so maybe go with another word
How come the humming starts as she’s reaching for the wall this time, but the first time it seemed to me that the humming was a result of her touching the wall?
9th para:
Cut “eventually”
Does she have only one eye, or did her eyes land on the lighthouse paperweight?
I was confused if “lighthouse paperweight” meant a paperweight shaped like a lighthouse or the paperweight that belonged to the lighthouse
I think “carved in miniature but” can be cut
11th para:
How does sky deepen? Do you mean the darkness?
“Where is my head at today?” okay, so something is wrong with the character and she appears to recognize this
12th para:
“leading higher into the tower” can be cut or just re-work this to read something like “she climbed the spiral staircase . . .” since we know that she’s in a lighthouse, so we can picture the tight quarters and spiral staircase
Now I’m losing track of the paragraph count, so I’m just gonna go with pages:
P. 3
Apex is usually used to refer to a point or a peak, so I don’t think it works with cliffs
“rock that jutted out into a rocky” -- maybe cut “rocky” to avoid rock & rocky in same sentence
cut “for several seconds”
“Desolate” and “no people” -- let’s send this one to the Dept. of Redundancy Dept. for further review : )
P. 4
How does she see wind if there are no markers or buoys to blow in the wind?
How does she see something beneath the surface of the dark sea?
“That kernel . . . bloomed” -- I get what this means, but I’d vote for using another word as bloomed is generally used for positive activity
Knows little about anything except what is right in front of her -- this seems to contradict the story thus far, as she doesn’t even seem to know much about what is right in front of her
Change “then with more power” to “then with more force”
P. 5
I’m confused about seeing her own reflection -- wouldn’t she see her reflection when the light is pointed away from her and into the class, not at her and away from the glass? I’ve also never been in a lighthouse, so I can’t really say
“Wrecked boat don’t move” -- 1. They can 2. She’s has already told herself that she doesn’t know anything about boats
P. 6
Now we go from her not remembering anything from this day to anything ever
“As she made her way” . . . “as she finished”: maybe change one “as she” to avoid repetition
Dark ocean + dark sky, how could she see any shadows, extraordinary or not?
P. 7
“Notes were very specific” -- I’d cut “very”
Startled again (I did a control+F -- she’s “startled 5 times)
P. 8
Her calling out as she’s going to answer the door doesn’t seem to fit the mood of the story -- feels a little too light-hearted and friendly
Cut “without another word” -- if you don’t write it, we’ll still know that there weren’t any more words exchanged
Cut “began to” change to “past her and walked up the stairs” (someone I only know from this forum is always reminding me to cut began/begin etc. and just get to it
“The pair . . . climbed the stairs” -- this sentence can be cut, we know that they’re not speaking as long as you don’t write any dialogue
Also, “the pair” feels unnatural when “the two” would do just fine despite its quotidian nature
“Without reading it” can be cut -- if she just picks it up and puts it in her pocket, we’ll know that she didn’t read it
Cut “after looking at it for a while”
Cut “quickly” -- scribbled already gives that image
P. 9
Change “she moved . . . carefully” to something like “she moved away from the desk to examine the walls”
Her ears tilted or her head tilted?
“Playing music on the wall” -- I know what you’re saying, but it sounds off, i’d go with “took her hand away to stop the music/humming” or something
Cut “when she finished”
“Apparently” doesn’t fit with the narrator’s voice and word choice thus far (in my opinion)
“The idea of . . . bothered her.” -- I’m not so crazy about the choice of “bother” here -- it’s a pretty meek work compared to the intensity of the moment in the story, plus I wouldn’t say it fits with the rest of the story and all the peculiar oddities and music playing walls
P.10
“She studied” -- I’m not sure who is studying whom here (I think it’s the stranger studying the first woman, but I’m not entirely sure)
“Following an . . . understand” -- feels like this impulse is fear
I don’t understand what the stranger is getting at with “you are not right” & “you think too much, ask too much” -- I think it’s a good start to something interesting, but since the woman doesn’t think or ask, I don’t know if it fits
“You . . . the door.” -- but she did answer the door, I could see this line making sense if the stranger barged in before the woman got to the door, but otherwise it contradicts the story
“I . . . cables” is almost a non sequitur here, try flipping it with “I did answer the door.”
How is a person “a miscalculation”?
The circle -- the threatening stranger kind of turns into someone we’re supposed to be rooting for here as the keeper of the circle
P. 11
Change “came up short” to “came up empty”
“not before . . . that day” needs to be reworded
“almost to herself” -- I don’t know if this works because the stranger is in the middle of explaining the circle to the woman, so why does she now talk to herself
Also, the same person who tells me not to use “begin/began” says don’t do things half-way -- she either says it to herself or doesn’t, but not in between (could apply to the half smile from earlier in the story, too)
“Must be continuity” -- I’m confused if we are to root for the stranger or not, and maybe that’s what you’re going for, but just wanted to put it out there since so much of what has happened so far seems to indicate that we are to root for the woman
Cut “she stammered” as we know she stammered by the writing
“The stranger . . . a moment” can be cut
“The woman wanted . . . glass” -- I feel like it has already been established that there is a cold wind coming through, also, how do you look away from a blast of air?
“Grabbed, hard, in a viselike grip” is redundant, I’d just delete “hard” or maybe even “grabbed, hard”
I’m not feeling the laundry chute simile
A lot of “as she”
Delete “just” in “just before the shock”
Delete “what looked like” -- give us the bodies!
bobbing & drifting -- I thought the bodies were down at the seafloor, not bobbing in the surf
[deleted]
Tell me, what the story is about?
The ending didn’t resolve anything. Where did the identical stranger come from? What caused the circle? You didn’t explain anything. Beside a cool concept, I got nothing from the story. A mystery is cool. Too much mystery is boring, and the entire story a mystery is pointless.
Overall, the piece is devoid of emotion. You showed us what was going on, what the woman said, even what the woman thought, but almost never what she felt, and therefore, I couldn’t bond with her. I didn’t care what happened to her.
As for writing, you used the word “she” 101 times in the story. Almost all your sentences started with a subject and a verb. Try to vary your sentences and make them ebb and flow so we don’t pay attention to them.
The pace is also the same throughout the story. Everything was very matter of fact. You never slowed down to ponder or expanded a moment to make us feel and wonder. Therefore, the story is monotonous.
IMO, you need to develop the story further. The story should to be about how the circle started or about the one factor that breaks the circle. That way, you can slowly reveal how the circle started.
These are all things I think I subconsciously knew. My writing style is normally more straightforward, and this was a bit experimental for me. I really appreciate your comments.
You know the reason I recognized these problems is that I had them too. So don’t feel bad. It’s fixable. It might take a bit of time but definitely fixable.
I'm not sure it's in my wheelhouse to fix it without wrecking the tone I wanted to strike. It may be that I'm just not cut out for writing vague Lovecraftian fiction. Lol. Still... thanks again.
Don’t delete this version. Just write a new version. I write multiple versions of the same story all the time. It’s a good exercise for us writers to do. There is no harm in doing it. If you’re lucky, you end up with something you will like much better, and honestly, all my latest versions are better than the originals because we do grow as writers. We may not see it but we do. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.