The short story genre is well suited to experimentation in prose writing style and form, but most short story authors still work to create a distinct mood using classic literary devices (point of view, imagery, foreshadowing, metaphor, diction/word choice, tone, and sentence structure). This type of unresolved story invites open-ended readings and suggests a more complex understanding of reality and human behavior. While short stories of the past often revolved around a central theme or moral lesson, today it is common to find stories with ambiguous endings. However, contemporary short fiction is more likely to begin in the middle of the action ( in medias res), drawing readers right into a dramatic scene. Some stories follow a traditional narrative arc, with exposition (description) at the beginning, rising action, a climax (peak moment of conflict or action), and a resolution at the end. Short stories typically focus on a single plot instead of multiple subplots, as you might see in novels. In this concise, concentrated format, every word and story detail has to work extra hard! The setting of a short story is often simplified (one time and place), and one or two main characters may be introduced without full backstories. A piece of fiction shorter than 1,000 words is considered a “short short story” or “flash fiction,” and anything less than 300 words is rightfully called “microfiction.” What are the key elements of a short story? At around 10 to 25 pages, that makes short stories much shorter than novels, with only a few approaching novella length. There is no maximum length, but the average short story is 1,000 to 7,500 words, with some outliers reaching 10,000 or 15,000 words. What is a short story?Ī short story is a work of prose fiction that can be read in one sitting-usually between 20 minutes to an hour. So what is the secret behind those potent, carefully written gems? Here we tackle the definition of a short story, the key elements, examples, and some of the most common questions about short stories. Short stories give readers all the compelling characters, drama, and descriptive language of great fiction, but in a truly compact package. Compared to novels, short stories often get overlooked as an art form, but these singular works of fiction deserve a closer look.

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