Hey there! First off, I can tell you love to write and truly have a passion for it. Otherwise you wouldn't have written two versions of the same story. Keep working like this and you'll go far.I admire you!
Writing in present tense is hard to pull off, not only grammatically, but it's also harder to keep the writing "readable". If you can do it right though, it's just as good as past tense. Present tense is best for first person stories. I personally liked the past tense version of this story better.
It was far more readable, not quite as confusing, and it flowed better. I agree with PotterGeek101 in some ways. You should shorten some of you sentences to help with the flow of the writing. If they are all long or short, it can feel drawn out or choppy. Try to vary your sentence patterns. I'll give a few examples.
Jan ran through the words. Her heart raced in her chest. She tried not to scream out in fear.
^That was a bit choppy, right? If you had to keep reading sentences like that, you'd want to bash me in the skull with my own syntax.
Jan ran through the woods as fast as she could, her heart racing in her chest. She tried not to scream out in fear, but she was so terrified she couldn't hold her own voice inside.
^Both of those were good sentences, both of them were also really long. If I kept that up, you'd be confused and not have a great mental picture.
Jan ran through the woods as fast as she could. Her heart raced in her chest. She tried not to scream, but the fear inside forced it's way out.
^This is the best option in my opinion. I edited the last part of the last sentence to make it shorter, that way my sentence pattern is medium-short-long. It's more readable and interesting.
Here's the thing, this isn't poetry. Varying your sentences is important, but you don't really have to worry about too much, as long as it doesn't feel like your droning on or your writing is choppy. That being said, I think in this stories case, you should try to vary the sentence pattern more.
Some of you paragraphs are really long. If you split them into shorter paragraphs and keep the idea of each paragraph focused, it will read better. For instance, the first paragraph was like this:
It was six forty-nine in the evening when Priscilla arrived at home, stressed. She had missed the bus she normally took and the one after. She missed the first bus because her boss, who Priscilla thought an asshole, needed her to organize the speech that he should have begun preparing the week prior, but didn’t because he was incompetent, but to Priscilla he was just an asshole. Not an asshole because he was rude or malicious, but because Priscilla was the one that he came to when a mistake needed to be corrected, and mistakes often made their way to Priscilla. She missed the second bus because she was hungry and the line at Subway took longer than she expected because a mother with five children had trouble choosing between turkey and ham. As for the bus she did make, she had to stand between a woman who smelt like cat food and a man who had to yell in order to carry his voice through his cell phone.
^That's a whole lot of ideas rolled up into one paragraph. A paragraph organizes sentences (individual ideas) into related groups, (whole ideas). It's kind of like if one second, you were talking about an orchard, and then BLAM! Your in a farm house. The ideas are loosely related, but they don't quite fit in the same paragraph.
I would split it up like this:
It was six forty-nine in the evening when Priscilla arrived at home, stressed. She had missed the bus she normally took and the one after. She missed the first bus because her boss, who Priscilla thought an asshole, needed her to organize the speech that he should have begun preparing the week prior, but didn’t because he was incompetent, but to Priscilla he was just an asshole. Not an asshole because he was rude or malicious, but because Priscilla was the one that he came to when a mistake needed to be corrected, and mistakes often made their way to Priscilla.
She missed the second bus because she was hungry and the line at Subway took longer than she expected because a mother with five children had trouble choosing between turkey and ham. As for the bus she did make, she had to stand between a woman who smelt like cat food and a man who had to yell in order to carry his voice through his cell phone.
^The reason I have them split like this is because there are two ideas that can be grouped together. The first is why she missed the first bus, the second is why she missed the second bus. If you split the two of them, it keeps both ideas clear.
About the dialog. PG101 is right about the punctuation. It can be very confusing to pull off right, and I think it's something we all have trouble with. Here are examples exlpaining how to do it right.
Dialog that should end with a comma:
"Hey there," the man said, "what's your name?"
Notice that the second part in quotations doesn't begin with a capital letter. That's because it is one sentence with the first part, this is the sentence:
"Hey there, what's your name?"
So you would still keep "what's you name?" without a capital at the start.
Here's an example of a sentence you would use with a period or other punctuation at the end:
"I need a job." Joe said.
"You will find this house a splendid example of Victorian art." The snooty butler said.
"Get out!" She shouted.
Now, on to the story. It pretty much is about the main character going home, and how she feels about some aspects of her life. I believe you have this under short stories, but really it feels like an excerpt from a novel. If it's a short story, I think the idea is that she is a smoker that finds death inevitable, so she smokes anyway.
If it's a novel, it could go anywhere. You could make it about her relationship with Phillip and her struggles with the asshole boss, or about quitting her bad habit, or all of the above. I feel like you have an interesting and realistic character that you could really expand upon in a novel.
As a short story, it seems a little incomplete. Nothing too exciting happens, there's a good character, but she doesn't really go anywhere. As the first part of a novel, you have a good character that I want to know more about. She has interesting struggles and relationships. She also has something to over come. (Her addiction to cigarettes.)
This is your piece of writing and it's up to you where you take it. It is brimming with potential. You did a great job explaining an interesting character in a short period of time.
If you need anything or have any questions or complaints, PM and we'll discuss it. Great job, and keep writing!
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