Miscellaneous - The Short Story

A Definition

The short story is a fictional narrative that tends to be more concise and to the point than longer works of fiction such as novellas (in the modern sense of the term) and novels.

Short stories were a staple of early 19th century magazines. More recently, short stories are often collected in anthologies. Many authors today release collections of their short stories.

By the end of the 19th century, the growth of print magazines and journals created a strong demand for short fiction of between 3,000 and 15,000 words.

The demand for short stories by print magazines hit its peak in the mid 20th century. Since then, the number of commercial magazines that publish short stories has declined. Despite this, short stories have recently found a new life online, in publications, collections organized by author or theme, and blogs.

Short stories tend to be less complex than novels. Usually a short story focuses on only one incident, has a single plot, a single setting, a limited number of characters, and covers a short period of time.

In longer forms of fiction, stories tend to contain certain core elements of dramatic structure: exposition (the introduction of setting, situation and main characters); complication (the event of the story that introduces the conflict); rising action, crisis (the decisive moment for the protagonist and their commitment to a course of action); climax (the point of highest interest in terms of the conflict and the point of the story with the most action); resolution (the point of the story when the conflict is resolved); and moral.

Because of their short length, short stories may or may not follow this pattern. Many modern short stories only occasionally have exposition. More typical, though, is an abrupt beginning, with the story starting in the middle of the action. Plots of short stories do 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.

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 be read it in one sitting. Other definitions place the maximum word length at 7,500 words.

In modern usage, the term short story most often refers to a work of fiction no longer than 20,000 words and no shorter than 1,000.

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