Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26846606-20170702015740/@comment-24101790-20170705001431

Punctuation: You have a tendency to improperly use periods in dialogue. "“Dude, there could be some decent stuff in here.” Matt replied.", "“Nothing but junk.” Zach said as he walked around Matt.", "“I’m going to the bathroom.” Zach said", "“Look at me.” a soft voice whispered behind Matt.", etc. The only time you should really use a period at the end of dialogue is if you're finishing the sentence and there are no dialogue tags after the quotations.

Grammar: It's=it is, its=possession"He was weirded out by the picture, not because of this depiction of Jesus, but of it’s eyes.", "There was no real detail of it’s eyes, the area where it’s eyes were were painted a brownish red.", "Matt placed the painting down and started to make his way towards the fridge."

Tense shifting: A lot of your story is told in past tense ("Matt jumped and turned around quickly. Nobody was there") so it comes off as awkward when it randomly shifts to present tense at the end ("He reaches the table and notices a painting laying face down. He turns it over and stares down at it, seeing the same painting of Jesus with one slight change to it.")

Repetition issues: You have a tendency to repeatedly state character's names multiple times after they've already been established. Your story is about eighty sentences long and you re-state Matt's name about thirty times. Take these sentences for example: "He looks up to see Matt wielding a hammer with brownish red eyes angrily staring down at him. Matt gets on top of him and starts swinging the rusty hammer down at Zach’s head. Blood flies up onto Matt as Zach’s head is smashed in further and further. Soon enough, Matt gets off of Zach’s lifeless body." Once you've established the people performing the actions, it comes off as a bit repetitive to re-state them multiple times in the proceeding sentences.

Story issues: Unfortunately this story tends to follow a lot of the cursed painting tropes. The protagonist stumbles across an item at a garage sale/thrift store (also why were they at the shop in the first place. Establishing these characters and building up their friendship might have a stronger impact on the climax of the story). The item turns out to have a negative impact on the character. Murder ensues. There really isn't much build-up here and the possession scene feels really rushed. ("Slowly, his expression went from curiosity to being emotionless as he was hypnotized by the painting’s eyes. His expression soon grew angry as the he continued to stare at the painting.") There doesn't really feel like there's backstory here or anything to really up the tension.

Story issues cont.: The ending also feels pretty rushed with Zach just randomly being beaten to death with a hammer. If there was more build-up here or backstory to the items (the painting and the hammer), the story might feel a bit more involving, but right now this feels like it's borrowing a bit too much from other stories of this genre without really going beyond that.

Finally, the ending comes off as abrupt ("His blood covered face stares down at what remains of his friend. He turns around and exits through the front door as Zach’s blood flows towards the painting.") as you don't really conclude the story effectively. The audience really doesn't have any clue as to the painting's ultimate goal or its powers. If it possesses everyone who looked at it, how exactly did it last in the shop so long? Unfortunately there are quite a lot of issues here and since this story tends to lean a bit too heavily of cursed item stories without going beyond it, I would likely say that this story would be marked for deletion or at the very least, review.