Short Story
Stories are the means by which we remember our history; recording and archiving those stories preserves them for future generations.”
– Chief Clarence Louie / Osoyoos Indian Band
Short story,brief fictional prose narrative that is shorter than a novel and that usually deals with only a few characters.
The short story is usually concerned with a single effect conveyed in only one or a few significant episodes or scenes. The form encourages economy of setting, concise narrative, and the omission of a complex plot; character is disclosed in action and dramatic encounter but is seldom fully developed. Despite its relatively limited scope, though, a short story is often judged by its ability to provide a “complete” or satisfying treatment of its characters and subject.
Add more Characteristics:
Setting,in literature, the location and time frame in which the action of a narrative takes place.
The makeup and behaviour of fictional characters often depend on their environment quite as much as on their personal characteristics. Setting is of great importance in Émile Zola’s novels, for example, because he believed that environment determines character.
Time and Place and Social Economic / religious believes of characters.
The setting of a short story is the time and place in which it happens. Authors often use descriptions of landscape, scenery, buildings, seasons or weather to provide a strong sense of setting.
Plot, in fiction, the structure of interrelated actions, consciously selected and arranged by the author. Plot involves a considerably higher level of narrative organization than normally occurs in a story or fable. According to E.M. Forster in Aspects of the Novel (1927), a story is a “narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence,” whereas a plot organizes the events according to a “sense of causality.”
In the history of literary criticism, plot has undergone a variety of interpretations. In the Poetics, Aristotle assigned primary importance to plot (mythos) and considered it the very “soul” of a tragedy. Later critics tended to reduce plot to a more mechanical function, until, in the Romantic era, the term was theoretically degraded to an outline on which the content of fiction was hung. Such outlines were popularly thought to exist apart from any particular work and to be reusable and interchangeable. They might be endowed with life by a particular author through his development of character, dialogue, or some other element. The publication of books of “basic plots” brought plot to its lowest esteem.
In the 20th century there have been many attempts to redefine plot as movement, and some critics have even reverted to the position of Aristotle in giving it primary importance in fiction. These neo-Aristotelians (or Chicago school of critics), following the leadership of the critic Ronald S. Crane, have described plot as the author’s control of the reader’s emotional responses—his arousal of the reader’s interest and anxiety and the careful control of that anxiety over a duration of time. This approach is only one of many attempts to restore plot to its former place of priority in fiction.
A plot is a series of events and character actions that relate to the central conflict.
Character
A character is a person, or sometimes even an animal, who takes part in the action of a short story or other literary work. Major and Minor Characters.
Characterization: Character description:
Direct (author tells the reader) and indirect (author shows the readers: how the author speaks, thinks, acts and how others behave towards, thinks about and act towards the character in question).
Conflict
The conflict is a struggle between two people or things in a short story. The main character is usually on one side of the central conflict. On the other side, the main character may struggle against another important character, against the forces of nature, against society, or even against something inside himself or herself (feelings, emotions, illness).
Theme-à The theme is the central idea or belief in a short story.