Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26705150-20160527060800/@comment-25569708-20160531072609

Alright, I read your story, and I have some varied thoughts on it. Before that, I'll list a few errors present:

"well respected painter" should be "well-respected painter"

"a spec of paint" should be "a speck of paint"

"which could have been a bible" should be "which could have been a Bible". When you are referring to a generic holy book as a "bible," it remains uncapitalized. However, if you are referring to the actual Bible, then it is capitalized.

"open ended" should be "open-ended"

"the back story of it" should be "the backstory of it"

"it’s been quite sometime since I have seen around there" should be "it’s been quite sometime since I have been around there"

"In the mean time" should be "In the meantime"

Alright, now for some things that I think should be changed for various reasons:

"Although the apartment residents only saw one aspect of Mr. Lynch’s paintings, the brighter kind. It was of the former types of people who appreciated the other side of his artwork, the macabre." This is awkward and wrong as two sentences, they should probably be combined into one.

"So while my neighbors glimpsed the grassy meadows of Mr. Lynch, the rest of us saw the unnameable humanoids and alien cityscapes for which he was most commonly known for. I think I was the only one who saw the latter of his paintings and I remember the first time I saw them in his flat.". Who are "the rest of us"? And how was the protag the only one who saw those paintings while the "rest of us" saw some too?

"The other Art supplies". "Art" should not be capitalized.

"the works of Horror". "Horror" should not be capitalized.

"The type of thing that was so far removed from the things Mr. Lynch was used to, but then again the local area was in the bible belt". I think you meant to have "That" at the beginning instead of "The", and "bible belt" should be "Bible Belt".

"So that left us with the very open ended question of where he could be and nobody had seen or heard from him in weeks.". This should be broken up into two sentences.

Alright, now let's talk about the pasta itself. I thought it started out well and the description and writing were pretty good. However, some things off the bat bothered me. This pasta talks a whole lot about Mr. Lynch, but we never get to see what the character is like. If he became the protag's friend and all, why not talk about their relationship a bit, or at least describe Mr. Lynch as a person some more? He currently feels like a one-dimensional character. Also, the writing in the beginning about the neighbors and the paintings is a bit confusing. I know they like his happy paintings, but did they either know about his dark ones and not care, or just not know of them completely? Some clarification could be useful in this regard.

Midway through your story, however, some problems start to show themselves. Once the protag enters Mr. Lynch's house and finds the liquid and book, why wouldn't he immediately recognize them from the big painting and vocalize it? In fact, the protag barely seems to respond or react to the things going on around him. He describes these things with hardly any tinge of emotion until the end, and even then not very much. He currently feels like a boring character to be stuck inside of. The entire plot point with the letters starts off as interesting, but it becomes apparent that they are too vague to be creepy and are only there to obviously elude to some big scare that is going to happen at the end of the story. Unfortunately, this scare never comes. The climax of the protag having to do this ritual seems very abrupt and odd. The ending lines are also frankly disappointing. It just currently feels as if the entire reading goes unrewarded in the end. The second half and ending could use revision, as well as some things from the first half which I have pointed out.

I hope my feedback helps you with this story and all future ones by you. Good luck fellow Creeper!