Short story

A short story is a piece of prose fiction, which can be read in a single sitting. Emerging from earlier
oral storytelling traditions in the 17th century, the short story has grown to encompass a body of
work so diverse as to defy easy characterization. At its most prototypical the short story features a
small cast of named characters, and focuses on a self-contained incident with the intent of evoking a
"single effect" or mood. In doing so, short stories make use of plot, resonance, and other dynamic
components to a far greater degree than is typical of an anecdote, yet to a far lesser degree than a
novel. While the short story is largely distinct from the novel, authors of both generally draw from a
common pool of literary techniques.
Short stories have no set length. In terms of word count there is no official demarcation between an
anecdote, a short story, and a novel. Rather, the form's parameters are given by the rhetorical and
practical context in which a given story is produced and considered, so that what constitutes a short
story may differ between genres, countries, eras, and commentators. Like the novel, the short story's
predominant shape reflects the demands of the available markets for publication, and the evolution
of the form seems closely tied to the evolution of the publishing industry and the submission
guidelines of its constituent houses.
The short story has been considered both an apprenticeship form preceding more lengthy works,
and a crafted form in its own right, collected together in books of similar length, price, and
distribution as novels. Short story writers may define their works as part of the artistic and personal
expression of the form. They may also attempt to resist categorization by genre and fixed formation.
Length
Determining what exactly separates a short story from longer fictional formats is problematic. A
classic definition of a short story is that one should be able to read it in one sitting, a point most
notably made in Edgar Allan Poe's essay "Thomas Le Moineau (Le Moile)" (1846). Interpreting this
standard nowadays is problematic, since the expected length of "one sitting" may now be briefer
than it was in Poe's era. Other definitions place the maximum word count of the short story at
anywhere from 1,000 to 4,000. In contemporary usage, the term short story most often refers to a
work of fiction no shorter than 1,000 and no longer than 20,000 words. Stories of fewer than 1,000
words are sometimes referred to as "short short stories", or "flash fiction."
As a point of reference for the genre writer, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America
define short story length in the Nebula Awards for science fiction submission guidelines as having a
word count of fewer than 7,500.
Longer stories that cannot be called novels are sometimes considered "novellas" or novelettes and,
like short stories, may be collected into the more marketable form of "collections", often containing
previously unpublished stories. Sometimes, authors who do not have the time or money to write a
novella or novel decide to write short stories instead, working out a deal with a popular website or
magazine to publish them for profit.
Characteristics
As a concentrated form of narrative prose fiction, the short story has been theorised through the
traditional elements of dramatic structure: exposition (the introduction of setting, situation and main
characters), complication (the event that introduces the conflict), rising action, crisis (the decisive
moment for the protagonist and his commitment to a course of action), climax (the point of highest
interest in terms of the conflict and the point with the most action) and resolution (the point when
the conflict is resolved). Because of their length, short stories may or may not follow this pattern.
For example, modern short stories only occasionally have an exposition, more typically beginning
in the middle of the action (in medias res). As with longer stories, plots of short stories also have a
climax, crisis, or turning point. However, the endings of many short stories are abrupt and open and
may or may not have a moral or practical lesson. As with any art form, the exact characteristics of a
short story will vary by creator. Short stories tend to be less complex than novels. Usually a short
story focuses on one incident; has a single plot, a single setting, and a small number of characters;
and covers a short period of time. The modern short story form emerged from oral story-telling
traditions, the brief moralistic narratives of parables and fables, and the prose anecdote, all of these
being forms of a swiftly sketched situation that quickly comes to its point. With the rise of the
realistic novel, the short story evolved in a parallel tradition, with some of its first distinctive
examples in the tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann. The character of the form developed particularly with
authors known for their short fiction, either by choice (they wrote nothing else) or by critical regard,
which acknowledged the focus and craft required in the short form. An example is Jorge Luis
Borges, who won American fame with "The Garden of Forking Paths", published in the August
1948 Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Another example is O. Henry (author of "Gift of the
Magi"), for whom the O. Henry Award is named. Other of his most popular, inventive and most
often reprinted stories (among over 600) include: A Municipal Report, An Unfinished Story, A
Blackjack Barginer, A Lickpenny Lover, Mammon and the Archer, Two Thanksgiving Day
Gentlemen, The Last Leaf. American examples include: Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, F. Scott
Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, John Cheever, and Raymond
Carver. Science fiction short story with a special poetic touch was a genre developed with great
popular success by Ray Bradbury. The genre of the short story was often neglected until the second
half of the 19th century. The evolution of printing technologies and periodical editions were among
the factors contributing to the increasing importance of short story publications. Among others,
pioneering role in founding the rules of the genre in the Western canon have: Rudyard Kipling
(United Kingdom), Anton Chekhov (Russia), Guy de Maupassant (France), Manuel Gutiérrez
Nájera (Mexico) and Rubén Darío (Nicaragua). An important theoretical example for storytelling
analysis is provided by Walter Benjamin in his illuminated essay The Storyteller where he argues
about the decline of storytelling art and the in communicability of experiences in the modern world.
Oscar Wilde’s essay The Decay of Lying and Henry James’s The Art of Fiction are also partly
related with this subject.
Predecessors
Short stories date back to oral storytelling traditions which originally produced epics such as
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Oral narratives were often told in the form of rhyming or rhythmic
verse, often including recurring sections or, in the case of Homer, Homeric epithets. Such stylistic
devices often acted as mnemonics for easier recall, rendition and adaptation of the story. Short
sections of verse might focus on individual narratives that could be told at one sitting. The overall
arc of the tale would emerge only through the telling of multiple such sections.
The other ancient form of short story, the anecdote, was popular under the Roman Empire.
Anecdotes functioned as a sort of parable, a brief realistic narrative that embodies a point. Many
surviving Roman anecdotes were collected in the 13th or 14th century as the Gesta Romanorum.
Anecdotes remained popular in Europe well into the 18th century, when the fictional anecdotal
letters of Sir Roger de Coverley were published.
In Europe, the oral story-telling tradition began to develop into written stories in the early 14th
century, most notably with Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Giovanni Boccaccio's
Decameron. Both of these books are composed of individual short stories (which range from farce
or humorous anecdotes to well-crafted literary fictions) set within a larger narrative story (a frame
story), although the frame-tale device was not adopted by all writers. At the end of the 16th century,
some of the most popular short stories in Europe were the darkly tragic "novella" of Matteo
Bandello (especially in their French translation).
The mid 17th century in France saw the development of a refined short novel, the "nouvelle", by
such authors as Madame de Lafayette. In the 1690s, traditional fairy tales began to be published
(one of the most famous collections was by Charles Perrault). The appearance of Antoine Galland's
first modern translation of the Thousand and One Nights (or Arabian Nights) (from 1704; another
translation appeared in 1710–12) would have an enormous influence on the 18th-century European
short stories of Voltaire, Diderot and others.
1790–1850
There are early examples of short stories published separately between 1790 and 1810, but the first
true collections of short stories appeared between 1810 and 1830 in several countries around the
same period.
The first short stories in the United Kingdom were gothic tales like Richard Cumberland's
"remarkable narrative" "The Poisoner of Montremos" (1791). Great novelists like Sir Walter Scott
and Charles Dickens also wrote some short stories.
One of the earliest short stories in the United States was Charles Brockden Brown's
"Somnambulism" from 1805. Washington Irving wrote mysterious tales including "Rip van Winkle"
(1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820). Nathaniel Hawthorne published the first part of
his Twice-Told Tales in 1837. Edgar Allan Poe wrote his tales of mystery and imagination between
1832 and 1849. Classic stories are "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The
Cask of Amontillado", "The Pit and the Pendulum", and the first detective story, "The Murders in
the Rue Morgue". In "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846) Poe argued that a literary work
should be short enough for a reader to finish in one sitting.
In Germany, the first collection of short stories was by Heinrich von Kleist in 1810 and 1811. The
Brothers Grimm published their first volume of collected fairy tales in 1812. E. T. A. Hoffmann
followed with his own original fantasy tales, of which "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King"
(1816) is the most famous.
In France, Prosper Mérimée wrote Mateo Falcone in 1829.
1850–1900
In the latter 19th century, the growth of print magazines and journals created a strong demand for
short fiction of between 3,000 and 15,000 words.
In the United Kingdom, Thomas Hardy wrote dozens of short stories, including "The Three
Strangers" (1883), "A Mere Interlude" (1885) and "Barbara of the House of Grebe" (1890). Rudyard
Kipling published short story collections for grown-ups, e.g. Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), as
well as for children, e.g. The Jungle Book (1894). In 1892 Arthur Conan Doyle brought the
detective story to a new height with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. H. G. Wells wrote his first
science fiction stories in the 1880s. One of his best known is "The Country of the Blind" (1904).
In the United States, Herman Melville published his story collection The Piazza Tales in 1856. "The
Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was the title story of Mark Twain's first book one
year later. In 1884, Brander Matthews, the first American professor of dramatic literature, published
The Philosophy of the Short-Story. At that same year, Matthews was the first one to name the
emerging genre "short story". Another theorist of narrative fiction was Henry James. James wrote a
lot of short stories himself, including "The Real Thing" (1892), "Maud-Evelyn" and The Beast in
the Jungle (1903). In the 1890s Kate Chopin published short stories in several magazines.
The most prolific French author of short stories was Guy de Maupassant. Stories like "Boule de
Suif" ("Ball of Fat", 1880) and "L'Inutile Beauté" ("The Useless Beauty", 1890) are good examples
of French realism.
In Russia, Ivan Turgenev gained recognition with his story collection A Sportsman's Sketches.
Nikolai Leskov created his first short stories in the 1860s. Late in his life Fyodor Dostoyevski wrote
"The Meek One" (1876) and "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" (1877), two stories with great
psychological and philosophical depth. Leo Tolstoy handled ethical questions in his short stories,
for example in "Ivan the Fool" (1885), "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" (1886) and "Alyosha
the Pot" (1905). The greatest specialist of the Russian short story, however, was Anton Chekhov.
Classic examples of his realistic prose are "The Bet" (1889), "Ward No. 6" (1892), and "The Lady
with the Dog" (1899). Maxim Gorky's best known short story is "Twenty-six Men and a Girl"
(1899).
The prolific Indian author of short stories Munshi Premchand, pioneered the genre in the Hindustani
language, writing a substantial body of short stories and novels in a style characterized by realism
and an unsentimental and authentic introspection into the complexities of Indian society.
Premchand's work, including his over 200 short stories (such as the story "Lottery") and his novel
Godaan remain substantial works.
A master of the short story, the Urdu language writer Saadat Hasan Manto, is revered for his
exceptional depth, irony and sardonic humour. The author of some 250 short stories, radio plays,
essays, reminiscences and a novel, Manto is widely admired for his analyses of violence, bigotry,
prejudice and the relationships between reason and unreason. Combining realism with surrealism
and irony, Manto's works such as the celebrated short story Toba Tek Singh are aesthetic
masterpieces which continue to give profound insight into the nature of human loss, violence and
devastation.
In India, Rabindranath Tagore published short stories, on the lives of the poor and oppressed such as
peasants, women and villagers under colonial misrule and exploitation.
In Poland, Bolesław Prus was the most important author of short stories. In 1888 he wrote "A
Legend of Old Egypt".
Machado de Assis, one of the majors novelist from Brazil was the most important short story writer
from his country at the time, under influences (among others) of Xavier de Maistre, Lawrence
Sterne, Guy de Maupassant. In the end of the 19th century the writer João do Rio became popular
by short stories about the bohemianism. Writing about the former slaves, and very ironical about
nationalism, Lima Barreto died almost forgotten, but became very popular in the 20th century.
In Portuguese literature, the major names of the time are Almeida Garrett and the historian and
novelist Alexandre Herculano. Still influential, Eça de Queiroz produced some short stories with a
style influenced by Émile Zola, Balzac and Dickens.
1900–1945
In the United Kingdom, periodicals like The Strand Magazine and Story-Teller contributed to the
popularity of the short story. Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916), also known by his pen name of
Saki, wrote satirical short stories about Edwardian England. W. Somerset Maugham, who wrote
over a hundred short stories, was one of the most popular authors of his time. P. G. Wodehouse
published his first collection of comical stories about valet Jeeves in 1917. Many detective stories
were written by G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. Short stories by Virginia
Woolf are "Kew Gardens" (1919) and "Solid Objects," about a politician with mental problems.
Graham Greene wrote his Twenty-One Stories between 1929 and 1954. A specialist of the short
story was V. S. Pritchett, whose first collection appeared in 1932. Arthur C. Clarke published his
first science fiction story, "Travel by Wire!" in 1937. Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark and L. P. Hartley
were other popular British storytellers whose career started in this period.
In Ireland, James Joyce published his short story collection Dubliners in 1914. These stories,
written in a more accessible style than his later novels, are based on careful observation of the
inhabitants of his birth city.
In the first half of the 20th century, a number of high-profile American magazines such as The
Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, Scribner's, The Saturday Evening Post,
Esquire, and The Bookman published short stories in each issue. The demand for quality short
stories was so great and the money paid for such so well that F. Scott Fitzgerald repeatedly turned to
short-story (as Matthews preferred to write it) writing to pay his numerous debts. His first collection
Flappers and Philosophers appeared in book form in 1920. William Faulkner wrote over one
hundred short stories. Go Down, Moses, a collection of seven stories, appeared in 1941. Ernest
Hemingway's concise writing style was perfectly fit for shorter fiction. Stories like "A Clean, Well-
Lighted Place" (1926), "Hills Like White Elephants" (1927) and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro"
(1936) are only a few pages long, but carefully crafted. Dorothy Parker's bittersweet story "Big
Blonde" debuted in 1929. A popular science fiction story is "Nightfall" by Isaac Asimov.
Katherine Mansfield from New Zealand wrote many short stories between 1912 and her death in
1923. "The Doll's House" (1922) treats the topic of social inequity.
Two important authors of short stories in the German language were Thomas Mann and Franz
Kafka. In 1922 the latter wrote "A Hunger Artist", about a man who fasts for several days.
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892–1927) is called the Father of the Japanese short story.
In Brazil, the most famous modern short story writer is Mário de Andrade. At the time, Paulistan
writer António de Alcantâra Machado became very popular from his collection of short stories
titled, Brás, Bexiga e Barra Funda (1928), about several Italian neighborhoods, but now he is
mostly read in just São Paulo. Also, novelist Graciliano Ramos and poet Carlos Drummond de
Andrade have significant short story works.
Portuguese writers like Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Florbela Espanca and Fernando Pessoa wrote well-
known short stories, although their major genre was poetry.
After 1945
The period following World War II saw a great flowering of literary short fiction in the United
States. The New Yorker continued to publish the works of the form’s leading mid-century
practitioners, including Shirley Jackson, whose story, "The Lottery", published in 1948, elicited the
strongest response in the magazine’s history to that time. Other frequent contributors during the last
1940s included John Cheever, John Steinbeck, Jean Stafford, and Eudora Welty. J. D. Salinger's
Nine Stories (1953) experimented with point of view and voice, while Flannery O'Connor's story "A
Good Man is Hard to Find" (1955) reinvigorated the Southern Gothic style. Cultural and social
identity played a considerable role in much of the short fiction of the 1960s. Philip Roth and Grace
Paley cultivated distinctive Jewish-American voices. Tillie Olsen’s "I Stand Here Ironing" (1961)
adopted a consciously feminist perspective. James Baldwin’s collection Going to Meet the Man
(1965) told stories of African-American life. Frank O'Connor’s The Lonely Voice, an exploration of
the short story, appeared in 1963. Wallace Stegner's short stories are primarily set in the American
West. Stephen King published many short stories in men's magazines in the 1960s and after. The
1970s saw the rise of the postmodern short story in the works of Donald Barthelme and John Barth.
Traditionalists including John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates maintained significant influence on
the form. Minimalism gained widespread influence in the 1980s, most notably in the work of
Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie.
Canadian short story writers include Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, and Lynn Coady.
In the United Kingdom, Daphne du Maurier wrote suspense stories like "The Birds" (1952) and
"Don't Look Now" (1971). Roald Dahl was the master of the twist-in-the-tale. Short story
collections like Lamb to the Slaughter (1953) and Kiss Kiss (1960) illustrate his dark humour.
In Italy, Italo Calvino published the short story collection Marcovaldo, about a poor man in a city, in
1963.
In Brazil, the short story became popular among female writers like Clarice Lispector, Lygia
Fagundes Telles, Adélia Prado, who wrote about their society from a feminine viewpoint, although
the genre has great male writers like Dalton Trevisan, Autran Dourado Moacyr Scliar and Carlos
Heitor Cony too. Also, writing about poverty and the favelas, João Antonio became a well known
writer. Other post-modern short fiction authors include writers Hilda Hilst and Caio Fernando
Abreu. Detective literature was led by Rubem Fonseca. It is also necessary to mention João
Guimarães Rosa, wrote short stories in the book Sagarana using a complex, experimental language
based on tales of oral traditional.
Portuguese writers like Virgílo Ferreira, Fernando Goncalves Namora and Sophia de Mello Breyner
Andresen are among the most influential short story writers from 20th-century Portuguese language
literature. Manuel da Silva Ramos is one of the most well-known names of postmodernism in the
country. Nobel Prize-winner José Saramago published few short stories, but became popular from
his novels.
The Angolan writer José Luandino Vieira is one of the most well-known writers from his country
and has several short stories. José Eduardo Agualusa is also increasingly read in Portuguese-
speaking countries.
Mozambican Mia Couto is a widely known writer of post modern prose, and he is read even in non-
Portuguese speaking countries. Other Mozambican writers such as Suleiman Cassamo, Paulina
Chiziane and Eduardo White are gaining popularity with Portuguese-speakers too.
The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges is one of the most famous writers of short stories in the
Spanish language. "The Library of Babel" (1941) and "The Aleph" (1945) handle difficult subjects
like infinity. Two of the most representative writers of the Magical realism genre are also widely
known Argentinian short story writers: Adolfo Bioy Casares and Julio Cortázar.
The Uruguayan writer Juan Carlos Onetti is known as one of the most important magical realist
writer from Latin America.
In Colombia, the Nobel prize laureate author Gabriel Garcia Marquez is the main novelist and short
story writer, known by his magical realist stories and his defense of the Communist Party in his
country.
The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, also a Nobel prize winner, has significant short story
works.
The Egyptian Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mafouz is the most well-known author from his country,
but has only a few short stories.
Japanese world-known short story writers include Kenzaburō Ōe (Nobel prize winner of 1994),
Yukio Mishima and Haruki Murakami.
Multi-awarded Philippine writer Peter Solis Nery is one of the most famous writers of short stories
in Hiligaynon language. His stories "Lirio" (1998), "Candido" (2007), "Donato Bugtot" (2011), and
"Si Padre Olan kag ang Dios" (2013) are all gold prize winners at the Palanca Awards of Philippine
Literature.
eShort
Jamie Krakover defined eshorts in The Writers' Lens:
" For those unfamiliar with eshorts, they are short stories ranging from 12-150 pages, usually
linked to a series. They vary in price from free to $3.99 and are available in electronic format only.
The stories told in eshorts are often told from a perspective other than the main character in a series
or tell of a side event that is loosely linked to the overall story. They are a great way for readers to
revisit their favourite stories and characters in a new light. Stories of this nature normally would
require a collection before they could be printed but because of the emergence of ebooks and their
pricing scheme, they are available almost as quickly as authors write them."
Recognition
Alice Munro, "master of the contemporary short story" according to her citation for the 2013 Nobel
Prize in Literature, said she hopes the award would bring readership for the short story in general.