Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-31753305-20170420160147/@comment-24101790-20170422152725

Capitalization: Dialogue needs to be capitalized properly. "me, 'what (What) are you doing with Bubbles?’", "me, 'please (Please) don't look at it anymore, please try to forget about Bubbles.’". "…and (And) yet, the summoning.", "said, ‘if (If) you talk about it, you’ll have to go in there too, please try to forget about Samantha.’", etc.

Punctuation: "'come and look', 'come and look'," As there's no intervening actions between these words, you really don't need to separate them with single quotations. "smearing the paint into a large swirling mark just above the young boys (boy's) head."

Wording: "It was a big dark painting in an ornate frame that my grandfather had inexplicable (inexplicably) appeared with years before and subsequently hung in its corner and forgotten." Awkward wording: "She was angry, angrier than I had ever seen her, but only for one split-second; surprised by her sudden appearance I began to cry and quickly she was my lovely Mum again, hugging me and sending me on my way." Once again, this would be a lot more effective if it was broken in separate sentences as it currently feels like a run-on sentence.

Story issues: The time jumps feel a bit awkward. "Five past ten, I let myself into the house and stood at the base of the stairs, and it was there, already calling out to me. All thought that I had imagined something left me, it was calling me and it knew. It knew why I was there."

"Ten thirty, I raised myself up onto my tippy-toes and reached up, grabbing at the base of the frame. With a slight jump, I unhooked it from the wall, surprised by the weight of it, almost tripping backwards, almost losing my footing on the stairs. I steadied myself and lowered Bubbles to lean against the wall, I was eye level now with his little white face, examining him closely."

"Ten forty-five, I moved my attention to that swirling mark where the paint was damaged. From here I could see it clearly, it was a rusty stain, scrubbed until the paint had formed a swirling cloud; but clearly discernible was a hand print at the centre of the swirl. Small and red."

Additionally the time marked feels a bit awkward. Why exactly did it take 25 minutes to make it to the painting after entering the hour. After unhooking the painting from the wall, it takes 15 minutes for them to examine it. I don't really think marking the time at each paragraph really adds much to the story and in fact detracts from the realistic feel you were going for up to that point. The marked time really doesn't add much to the story and creates a bit of disconnect.

Story issues cont.: While I liked the twist with his sister being imprisoned in the wall, I do feel like a bit more needs to be done with it to make it more effective. As a child going missing would draw attention, I feel like Samantha's disappearance should be mentioned a bit earlier in the story rather than the last two paragraphs. If I were writing the story, I would do something to tie Samantha to the painting and throw out a red herring that the painting is a sinister force. I covered a similar red herring in my story The Creeping Horror if you have any interest in seeing how I handled it. I think if you fixed these mechanical issues and took some of my story problems into account that this would be a strong candidate for passing the deletion appeal.