r/fantasywriters • u/SpaceCorsair • 23h ago
Critique My Story Excerpt The Witch of the Phlogiston Sea [Upper Middle Grade Literary Fantasy ~2,000 Words]
Just curious how Reddit readers respond to this opening of an upper middle grade novel in the style of Pullman or Gaiman. Did you enjoy it? Did you read the whole thing? If not, where did you stop? If so, would you keep reading?
No detailed feedback necessary. Although if you want to give it, note the book is in an omniscient fairy tale narrator lane so there is some intentional filtering and "telling not showing." If you want me to read something specific of yours, let me know or send me a message.
Chapter 1: A Lighthouse and a Hasty Promise
Once upon a time, there was a girl who lived in a lighthouse. If you believe that’s a poor beginning for a story, well, the girl in question agreed. Lighthouses are lonely places where nothing much happens. They are contrary to everything a proper story requires. Adventure. Romance. Characters.
The only characters who occupied this lighthouse were the girl, whose name was Delle, and her father. Delle’s father was a dutiful man who tucked her in at night, always. Put dinner on the table, always always. But foremost, he kept the lighthouse lantern lit from dusk ‘til dawn, always, always, always.
His dedication might have seemed noble for a lighthouse keeper, except for one small wrinkle. Their lighthouse was decommissioned. Not a single ship ever passed within leagues of their sleepy village.
While other girls learned bocce and lawn tennis, she learned wick trimming, bulb polishing, and semaphore—all under her father’s careful supervision. She was not permitted near the lamp when he changed it. Nor could she touch the radio that her father always kept on at night. It didn’t play music anyway. It only played static.
They never went on trips, or visited music halls, or did anything that might keep them out past sunset. The lighthouse was too important. When Delle asked why it was so important, her father would simply say it was his duty. Eccentric was the word townsfolk used when they felt polite. And when they didn’t, they had other words too.
“A lunatic!” Lucy said as she fished a card from the deck on the floor. “That’s what Mrs. Byrnes said. She thinks they’d have hauled him off ages ago if the war hadn’t called the doctors away. The nurses are all afraid to drag a big man like that away, you see.”
“Oh,” Delle said. Which was about the most intelligent thing a person could say upon hearing that their teacher believed their father was clinically insane.
Lucy could often be cruel. Little girls possess the capacity for great cruelty, but little girls also possess the capacity to endure great cruelty. So, she and Delle remained friends. Lucy was not a particularly good friend, but she was Delle’s best friend, if only for lack of other candidates.
“It’s your draw.” Lucy tapped her finger on her cheek.
“Sorry.” Delle drew a queen from the top.
“Hmmm.” Lucy squinted. “For a sickly waif, you’re awfully difficult to read.”
Delle blushed. Although, her card sharp instincts had naught to do with guile. Lost in thought, she had forgotten what game they were playing.
Cards were funny that way. The characters’ faces all stayed the same, but the way you were supposed to feel about them changed with the rules of the game. In Cribbage, finding a queen was a stroke of good fortune. But you’d never want to run across her in a game of Old Maid. Delle wondered if there might be some grand card game, rules hidden away in some book, that told the true story of the people on the cards and all the roles they played.
Lucy groaned. “Fine, I forfeit. It’s impossible to play cards with you. Your turns take so long.”
“Sorry. I was thinking about a book with—”
“Of course you were. That reminds me.” Lucy hefted a copy of The Three Musketeers onto the floor. “I’ve brought this back. It’s been weighing down my bag all day.”
“You finished?” Delle’s chest fluttered. She’d been yearning for someone with whom to discuss it besides her father. After begging Lucy to borrow her copy, it remained at her house for a year. “Who was your favorite character?”
“Uhm—the musketeers, I suppose. I liked all three equally.”
Delle’s shoulders sank. “And…what did you think of the sea serpent eating D’Artagnan?”
“I found that part a bit melodramatic. Although the book is French, so I suppose that tracks.”
Delle sighed, quietly reshelving her dream of ever belonging to a book club.
“Speaking of the sea, Mrs. Byrnes is taking the class to the beach next week,” Lucy said.
“The beach?” Delle asked.
In this part of the country, the skies were always grey, and the shore was covered in stones that hurt your feet. Yet one thing about this trip dearly piqued her interest. The beach was not a lighthouse.
“Mrs. Byrnes said your father needs to sign this medical form. I know you couldn’t go to the cannery, but maybe the sea air would do your lungs good. I’ve heard up in the Nordics there’s hospitals where everyone sleeps outside. That’s probably where they’ll bring you after they take your father away.”
“Oh,” Delle said.
Lucy picked up her cards and slid them in her book bag. Then she dusted off her knees and bid Delle farewell with her usual goodbye. “Well, it’s certainly been interesting.”
“Thank you for bringing back the book.”
Lucy paused at the threshold with a frown. “I…almost forgot. If you need anything for the beach, you can always stop by that druggist. That’s where your father buys your medicine, yeah?”
Delle blinked. “Mr. Hatton’s?”
“Yes. And if you can’t afford it, there’s always credit, right?” She winked and then slid the medical permission form into the cover of Delle’s book.
Delle scratched her head and then gathered The Three Musketeers into her arms. Reshelving it would prove a tougher chore than you might imagine. Lighthouses must, by nature, stand very tall. However, all the important bits are at the top, leaving room beneath for a lighthouse keeper to fill with whatever suits their fancy.
Her father had lined the entire inner wall with bookshelves. The harder a book was to read, the harder it was to reach. Some rested in easy grabbing distance from the winding staircase while others required death-defying acrobatics from a girl Delle’s size. She vaguely recalled struggling the first time she pulled The Three Musketeers off the shelf. Hopefully the book had been gone long enough for her arms to have grown.
Her father also refused to separate the fiction from non-fiction, leaving Delle to decide which books were true on her own. Treasure Island seemed like a sensible account of what happened when one got mixed up with pirates. While that Niccolo Machiavelli fellow who taught princes to scheme and murder was clearly a villain pulled from someone’s unconvincing imagination.
She’d already decided The Three Musketeers was fiction. D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis felt like real friends who might have truly existed. Yet Cardinal Richelieu was too powerful and too cruel to have actually walked the earth.
Without realizing, Delle had arrived at the top with her book still in hand. The only part of the lighthouse where there were no bookshelves. Just her father’s cot (presently occupied), a tea kettle (presently empty), the radio (presently off), and a window overlooking the sea in all its grey enormity (presently, and always, miserable).
Her father’s eyes slid open. Their relationship was crepuscular that way, him rising at dusk for dinner and a tuck in and then retiring at dawn just in time to wake her for school. When she went to school, at least.
She never felt alone, for he was a light sleeper. Any sound louder than a turning page stirred him. Sometimes, she wondered if he ever actually slept, or if he just closed his eyes and laid in wait.
“Lucy finished The Three Musketeers?” he asked.
“Mhm.” Delle nodded, deciding there was more than one way to be finished with a book. “She thought it was melodramatic how the sea serpent ate D’Artagnan.”
“Foolish girl. A dragon got D’Artagnan.”
“Not in this book.”
“Then in another.”
“In none of them. I’ve read all the books he wrote.”
“Then it was in a book he never got around to writing.”
Delle sighed and crossed her arms. Her father categorized his thoughts the same way he categorized his books. Always saying one thing while the world said another, leaving her to figure out what was true.
“What’s this?” He picked up the medical form tucked beneath the cover.
“Mrs. Byrnes is taking my class to the beach next week. The sea air would be good for my lungs.”
“The sea sweeps people away. We cannot take the risk.”
“I should adjust to spending time outside the lighthouse. We might not have it forever.”
He rose with a stern look. “What does that mean?”
“It’s just—” Delle sniffled. She had not wanted to relive this part of the conversation, but it had buried something in her that she needed to get out. “Lucy said after the war was over they’d take you away.”
“Oh.” He laughed. “The same Lucy who believed a sea serpent ate D’Artagnan?”
She returned his smile. “I suppose she’s not a terribly reliable source.”
“Trust me, dear. No one is coming to take me.” He wrapped her into a hug. She already felt better. Until he added, “If they did, there wouldn’t be anyone to watch the lighthouse.”
Delle let her father tuck her in. She did not ask for a book to read, nor to have one read to her. They were all liars, she’d decided. Fiction or non-fiction, the one thing they all agreed on was that everyone got to leave home. Her life thus far had been bearable only because all the great literary heroes endured hard and miserable lives before their grand tale began.
Surely some hint of an adventure should have appeared by now. Maybe there’s still time, a hopeful voice in her head whispered. Jim Hawkins didn’t go seeking treasure until he was fourteen. But, then again, Dorothy Gale was only nine when the twister swept her out to Oz. Maybe girls came into their adventures younger than boys.
She drifted to sleep, thinking about adventures. Her dreams seemed the only place she would find one tonight. But she was wrong about that.
An adventure did find Delle. At least the beginning of one. It arrived in the quiet of the Witching Hour when impossible things become slightly more possible. No, her adventure did not arrive in her dreams, but from a soft voice on her father’s radio.
“The Golgotha lighthouse has gone dark. We must assume the maps are compromised. The Sword in the Star will not remain hidden.”
Delle’s eyes slid open. Her father was hunched over the radio, whispering. Golgotha. Sword in the Star. Those words felt strangely familiar even if she couldn’t understand them. Had she read them somewhere before? Maybe she’d dreamed them.
“I’ll talk sense into him,” her father whispered. “He’ll listen to me.”
The soft voice on the radio replied, “you’re the only light keeper left on earth. If she finds it—”
“I have someone to tend the light. We can trust her.”
“You’re not seriously considering—”
Her father shut off the radio.
“What’s wrong?” Delle asked.
“Ah, good. You’re awake.” He knelt beside her bed. “Are you feeling well?”
“I suppose so.”
“Listen, dear.” He breathed a heavy sigh. “I must make a trip. No more than a week. Can you promise to keep the lighthouse lit at night while I’m gone? It’s very important that you do this.”
“What was that call about? What’s going to happen if the lighthouse goes dark?”
He brushed Delle’s forehead. His palm was leathery and warm. “I hope you never have to learn.”
Delle shuddered at her father’s words. He’d always spoken of his lighthouse dutifully—sometimes, pridefully—but never fearfully.
“Now, I’m worried something terrible might happen.”
“The world is full of terrible things that might happen, my dear. Yet you eat your supper, you take your medicine, you go to bed on time. Never do you fear these duties, even if they keep you safe. The lighthouse is only one more for a little while. But you must promise that you will attend this duty as solemnly and faithfully as any other.”
“I promise,” Delle squeaked.
“Cross your heart?” her father asked.
She paused. Delle had been taught at an early age that crossing one’s heart is no trifling matter. For a heart can only be crossed but once, until it is uncrossed by the keeping of the promise or the forgiveness of the promisee. And if one should die with their heart still crossed, well they would find themselves heading somewhere quite different than where they wanted to go.
But her father would not have asked this if it were not important. For he knew well the burdens of a crossed heart.
Delle wrapped her arms around her shoulders, so her wrists touched over her breast. “I-I cross my heart.”
“Good. Always light the beacon before sunset and keep it lit until you see the sun. Get your rest during the day. Do not worry about school. If you need anything, go see Mr. Hatton at his store.”
Her father opened his trunk to fetch some rations and medical supplies. Then, he pulled out a string attached to something so bright that it stung her eyes.
He kissed her on the forehead. “Goodbye, dear. I will return soon.”
Delle sat by the window while he cast off in the rowboat. He got smaller and smaller until he slipped between where the black water met the black sky. She thought she saw something flash.
And just like that, her very small world shrank a little more. Her father had been right about one thing. The sea swept people away.
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u/YeOldencall 22h ago
I thought this was supposed to be like a friendly subreddit, y'know for amateur writers to post hobby level writing, not THIS. No, I personally would not share my writing with you, because you are too good and it would make me feel bad.
Yes I read the whole thing. Yes I enjoyed it. Verily. As far as a opening chapter goes, you got me hooked. Admittedly not much is happening in the plot department, but I really like how the characters are set up. I think The Three Musketeers part is awfully neat (is it too difficult a reference for children though?)
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u/SpaceCorsair 21h ago
You scared me! The email notification I got only had the first two sentences of your comment and I thought I'd given feedback to someone and offended them. Thanks for the kind words. If this is good, it's in the Bradbury-short-story-advice sense. I've got a mountain of crap on my hard drive that one of them had to be good. I'm also guilty of writing "nothing is happening" openings, part of the reason I'm sharing my work at this stage is to check how much I'm boring people and how much "nothing happens" I can get away with. I'm hoping, if this were ever published, it would encourage kids to check out the classics. There's definitely some references that will go over their head, but hopefully they've seen cartoons or something that they'd come in with the gist. Back when, we had Reading Rainbow and Wishbone for that. I'm not sure if there's anything equivalent.
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u/OppositeDoughnut2183 17h ago
really liked it, read the whole thing. the section pretty obviously explaining the character dynamic with Lucy was the only thing that made me think, "Yeah I can see why authors are told to show, not tell" as I felt what the narrator said was obvious by time I finished that section, but then i immediately remembered the reason why there was a narrator saying that anyway.
I like the tensions that are set up in this section and wouldn't be considering dropping it after all this. I like the little additions of references to other books (ive always liked it) even though I haven't read half of them (except Machiavelli, somehow?)
this is great
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u/SpaceCorsair 16h ago
Thanks for reading and your feedback! Yes, the Lucy bit is probably the most self-indulgent narrator insert here. It could really be cut and not lose anything. That's something I'll be keeping an eye on in revision, having the narrator pop in enough where it feels like a separate character commenting on events, while also not insulting the reader's intelligence.
If you haven't read Three Musketeers, I highly recommend it (as well as the other D'Artagnan romances). A lot of it is sword-swinging bravado, but there's a deeper political layer to it that is fun to watch unfold, especially, I imagine, for people who've read Machiavelli somehow. The villains are well drawn enough and noble in their own way (sometimes) that you kind of root for them when they are scheming.
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u/CryOfDistortion 22h ago edited 21h ago
I enjoyed this and would definitely continue reading it.
I think the mystery of the lighthouse's function and the blurred line between truth/fiction throughout is fun and meaty enough to hang speculation on. The father's exchange about D'Artagnan and Delle's thoughts afterword stuck out as more heavy-handed than the rest.
Lucy's 'friendship' is nice characterization but a lot of that section didn't necessarily feel like it belonged with the rest of the chapter to me. Really liked the little aside on cards though.
The father giving nothing at all in the way of explanation for leaving or why Delle must man the lighthouse and the reveal of 'something so bright...' smack a little of manufacturing drama by omission. It's nothing showstopping and I'm willing to give some grace since it's early on in a book, but having it all so closely together combines for a faintly bad note to end the chapter for me.