Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28299494-20170403020638/@comment-24101790-20170403023057

I'm sorry, but this has quite a lot of issues for being so short. Starting with the punctuation and wording issues, before moving on to the story problems:

Punctuation improperly used in conjunction with titles. "it kind of looked like Vincent Van Goh's painting "Sunflowers."(period should be outside quotations as it's not included in the painting title)", "But Mom did, she worked in an office doing finance work for a company called "Military Deli."(.)" Punctuation used improperly in dialogue tags. "She kept yelling(comma missing) "It won't go away,(should be a period)""

Wording: "The next morning, Mom asked Dad and me if we smelt a stench of roses." Smelt is not the same as smelled. To smelt is a smithing term. To smell is used in regards to olfaction. "this time Dad had a concerned look on his face. So did Mom, but she looked more annoyed than concerned." seems pretty contradictory and redundant to use the adjective concerned so many times in a few sentences. You misspelled Vincent Van Gogh. "it kind of looked like Vincent Van Goh's painting" Redundancy: "Once it was burned completely five rose petals remained on the stump it was burned."

Story issues: Starting with the opening, "I'm going to start out by saying thank you. Thank you for reading this because I need help, and I only have so long to write this." How exactly do they not have the time to write this? The painting seems to be affecting the mother and no one else (other than the dog). Additionally it's a fairly generic opening to state that you don't have time to write something. Why wouldn't the protagonist be doing anything else to prevent/escape their fate? It works in Lovecraft's stories as the protagonist really has no other option left but to write. Here it feels like there is a lot more that can be done.

The premise is also pretty generic. We get a lot of haunted/cursed painting stories (see the items/objects category) and the plot points really follow the tropes set out by other stories. Person randomly gets painting from someone for little to no reason (typically cheap/free) "Abby wrote a note inside the box saying she had got it for free from someone she met on the street.", the painting exerts its influence ("Mom looked to be crying, I asked what was wrong. She said she couldn't sleep all night, she said that rose smell got a lot stronger."), person tries to burn it only for the painting to be unharmed or something to be left behind in its place "Once it was burned completely five rose petals remained on the stump it was burned.".

The story is also pretty lacking in description. Lines like: "She said it was growing to be unbearable very indiscriminately. I could hardly understand her.", "She didn't even blink. Her eyes unnaturally red.", etc. Really don't do a good job of delivering the inherent horror of something malevolently breaking someone down. It also seems to gloss over things that would strengthen the story's background. "About three days ago my thirty-one old mother inherited an old painting from my aunt, Abby." How did Abby die? If they're in the same age range, this seems out-of-the-ordinary. Why not use this opportunity to build up the tension?

I'm sorry, but this really needs a lot of work. As it currently stands, even if the mechanical issues were fixed, the story would still subscribe to a lot of the overused tropes we see with these types of stories. I would suggest that if you intend to post this that you overhaul the entire story because these plot issues really weaken it.