Talk:It Has a Rather Lovely Ending/@comment-4332975-20130301024500

So as not to make the quote tower any bigger, I'll work from here.

The vagueness in this story ultimately comes down to the narrator. Though cast as the main character, he's actually more of a bystander, and the story reflects that. We know nothing, because he knows nothing.

While something possibly sinister goes on, the narrator tries to figure things out, but makes little headway. Whatever is going on happens outside the narrator's ability to see, with only occasional signs of wrongness seeping through. Now, this isn't bad. Don't think you've written a bad story. This is a good tactic for building paranoia.

On the other hand, since the narrator takes such a passive role, this can also lead to the reader being frustrated by the knowledge that something is going on, but not what. The reader wants to see the narrator try harder to learn the truth, because they can't...so the character has to take risks in the reader's place. This actually doesn't mean the character has to succeed in finding anything, but we want them to try. That is the difference between being left wondering, and being disturbed by how thoroughly the mysterious "They" have covered their tracks.

In the extreme case, we might actually see the main character fall victim to the phenomena themselves. In this story, that would work with the narrator talking about how, out of options, they began to play the game themselves. We would see them start out finding nothing, gradually seeing clues emerge, noticing a pattern but needing a little more time to see if their guess is right...then, the detail stops. The statements get more vague, and more praising of the game. Finally, they tell us, the reader, that they don't want to spoil the game for us, because, after all "It has a rather lovely ending."