Short story

The short story is a crafted form in its own right. Short stories make use of plot, resonance, and other dynamic components as in a novel, but typically to a lesser degree. While the short story is largely distinct from the novel or novella/short novel, authors generally draw from a common pool of literary techniques. The short story is sometimes referred to as a genre.^[1]

Determining what exactly defines a short story has been recurrently problematic.^[2] 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 "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846).^[3] H.G. Wells described the purpose of the short story as "The jolly art, of making something very bright and moving; it may be horrible or pathetic or funny or profoundly illuminating, having only this essential, that it should take from fifteen to fifty minutes to read aloud."^[4] According to William Faulkner, a short story is character-driven and a writer's job is to "...trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.”^[5]

Some authors have argued that a short story must have a strict form. Somerset Maugham thought that the short story "must have a definite design, which includes a point of departure, a climax and a point of test; in other words, it must have a plot".^[4] Hugh Walpole had a similar view: "A story should be a story; a record of things happening full of incidents, swift movements, unexpected development, leading through suspense to a climax and a satisfying denouement."^[4]

This view of the short story as a finished product of art is however opposed by Anton Chekov, who thought that a story should have neither a beginning nor an end. It should just be a "slice of life", presented suggestively. In his stories, Chekov does not round off the end but leaves it to the readers to draw their own conclusions.^[4]

Sukumar Azhikode defined a short story as "a brief prose narrative with an intense episodic or anecdotal effect".^[2] Flannery O'Connor emphasized the need to consider what is exactly meant by the descriptor short.^[6] 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.^[4]

William Boyd, a British author and short story writer, has said:

[a short story] seem[s] to answer something very deep in our nature as if, for the duration of its telling, something special has been created, some essence of our experience extrapolated, some temporary sense has been made of our common, turbulent journey towards the grave and oblivion.^[7]

In the 1880s, the term "short story" acquired its modern meaning – having initially referred to children's tales.^[8] During the early to mid-20th century, the short story underwent expansive experimentation which further hindered attempts to comprehensively provide a definition.^[2] 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", of stories previously unpublished or published, but elsewhere. 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. Around the world, the modern short story is comparable to lyrics, dramas, novels and essays – although examination of it as a major literary form remains diminished.^[2][9]

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Novel

Novel

A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the Italian: novella for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the Latin: novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of novellus, diminutive of novus, meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels.

Novella

Novella

A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word novella derives from the Italian novella meaning a short story related to true facts.

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States, and of American literature. He was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story, and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction. He is the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

Essay

Essay

An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal and informal: formal essays are characterized by "serious purpose, dignity, logical organization, length," whereas the informal essay is characterized by "the personal element, humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme," etc.

The Philosophy of Composition

The Philosophy of Composition

"The Philosophy of Composition" is an 1846 essay written by American writer Edgar Allan Poe that elucidates a theory about how good writers write when they write well. He concludes that length, "unity of effect" and a logical method are important considerations for good writing. He also makes the assertion that "the death... of a beautiful woman" is "unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world". Poe uses the composition of his own poem "The Raven" as an example. The essay first appeared in the April 1846 issue of Graham's Magazine. It is uncertain if it is an authentic portrayal of Poe's own method.

Plot (narrative)

Plot (narrative)

In a literary work, film, or other narrative, the plot is the sequence of events in which each event affects the next one through the principle of cause-and-effect. The causal events of a plot can be thought of as a series of events linked by the connector "and so". Plots can vary from the simple—such as in a traditional ballad—to forming complex interwoven structures, with each part sometimes referred to as a subplot or imbroglio.

Hugh Walpole

Hugh Walpole

Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, CBE was an English novelist. He was the son of an Anglican clergyman, intended for a career in the church but drawn instead to writing. Among those who encouraged him were the authors Henry James and Arnold Bennett. His skill at scene-setting and vivid plots, as well as his high profile as a lecturer, brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America. He was a best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s but has been largely neglected since his death.

Sukumar Azhikode

Sukumar Azhikode

Koloth Thattarath Sukumaran, popularly known as Sukumar Azhikode was an Indian academic, orator, critic and writer of Malayalam literature, known for his contributions to Malayalam language and insights on Indian philosophy. He was a scholar in Sanskrit, Malayalam, and English languages and his work, Tatvamasi, published in 1984, is a notable work for its detailed interpretation of Indian philosophy, Vedas and Upanishads. He was a recipient of several honours including Sahitya Akademi Award, Kerala Sahithya Akademi Award, Vayalar Award, Vallathol Award and Ezhuthachan Puraskaram, the highest literary award of the Government of Kerala. The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian honour of the Padma Shri in 2007, which he refused citing the award was a discrimination.

Anecdote

Anecdote

An anecdote is "a story with a point", such as to communicate an abstract idea about a person, place, or thing through the concrete details of a short narrative or to characterize by delineating a specific quirk or trait. Occasionally humorous, anecdotes differ from jokes because their primary purpose is not simply to provoke laughter but to reveal a truth more general than the brief tale itself.

Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor

Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and 31 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries.

Magazine

Magazine

A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combination of the three.

Lyrics

Lyrics

Lyrics are words that make up a song, usually consisting of verses and choruses. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist. The words to an extended musical composition such as an opera are, however, usually known as a "libretto" and their writer, as a "librettist". The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit. Some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of expression. Rappers can also create lyrics that are meant to be spoken rhythmically rather than sung.

In terms of length, word count is typically anywhere from 1,000 to 4,000 for short stories; however, some have 15,000 words and are still classed as short stories. Stories of fewer than 1,000 words are sometimes referred to as "short short stories", or "flash fiction".^[10]

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.^[11] 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.^[12]

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 fewer than 7,500 words.^[13]

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Word count

Word count

The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and advertising. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds. When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for English.

Flash fiction

Flash fiction

Flash fiction, also called minimalist fiction, is a fictional work of extreme brevity that still offers character and plot development. Identified varieties, many of them defined by word count, include the six-word story; the 280-character story ; the "dribble" ; the "drabble" ; "sudden fiction" ; "flash fiction" ; and "microstory".

Anecdote

Anecdote

An anecdote is "a story with a point", such as to communicate an abstract idea about a person, place, or thing through the concrete details of a short narrative or to characterize by delineating a specific quirk or trait. Occasionally humorous, anecdotes differ from jokes because their primary purpose is not simply to provoke laughter but to reveal a truth more general than the brief tale itself.

Nebula Award

Nebula Award

The Nebula Awards annually recognize the best works of science fiction or fantasy published in the United States. The awards are organized and awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), a nonprofit association of professional science fiction and fantasy writers. They were first given in 1966 at a ceremony created for the awards, and are given in four categories for different lengths of literary works. A fifth category for film and television episode scripts was given 1974–78 and 2000–09, and a sixth category for game writing was begun in 2018. In 2019 SFWA announced that two awards that were previously run under the same rules but not considered Nebula awards—the Andre Norton Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction and the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation—were to be considered official Nebula awards. The rules governing the Nebula Awards have changed several times during the awards' history, most recently in 2010. The SFWA Nebula Conference, at which the awards are announced and presented, is held each spring in the United States. Locations vary from year to year.

Science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction, which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life. Science fiction can trace its roots to ancient mythology. It is related to fantasy, horror, and superhero fiction and contains many subgenres. Its exact definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers.

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Short stories date back to oral storytelling traditions which originally produced epics such as the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and 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.

According to Azhikode, the short story has existed "in the most ancient times as the parable, the adventure-story of men, gods and demons, the account of daily events, the joke".^[14] All languages have had variations of short tales and stories almost since their inceptions.^[14] Emerging in the 17th century from oral storytelling traditions, the short story has grown to encompass a body of work so diverse as to defy easy characterization. "The short story as a carefully contrived literary form is of modern origin", wrote Azhikode.^[14]

Another 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 throughout Europe well into the 18th century with the publication of the fictional anecdotal letters of Sir Roger de Coverley.

In Europe, the oral story-telling tradition began to develop into written form 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 fiction, 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. Traditional fairy tales began to be published in the late 17th century; one of the most famous collections was by Charles Perrault. The appearance of Antoine Galland's first modern translation of the 1001 Arabian Nights, a storehouse of Middle Eastern folk and fairy tales, is the Thousand and One Nights (or Arabian Nights) (from 1704; another translation appeared in 1710–12). His translation would have an enormous influence on the 18th-century European short stories of Voltaire, Diderot and others.

In India, there is a rich heritage of ancient folktales as well as a compiled body of short fiction which shaped the sensibility of modern Indian short story. Some of the famous Sanskrit collections of legends, folktales, fairy tales, and fables are Panchatantra, Hitopadesha and Kathasaritsagara. Jataka tales, originally written in Pali, is a compilation of tales concerning the previous births of Lord Gautama Buddha. The Frame story, also known as the frame narrative or story within a story, is a narrative technique that probably originated in ancient Indian works such as Panchatantra.

The evolution of printing technologies and periodical editions were among the factors contributing to the increasing importance of short story publications. Pioneering the rules of the genre in the Western canon were, among others, Rudyard Kipling (United Kingdom), Anton Chekhov (Russia), Guy de Maupassant (France), Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera (Mexico) and Rubén Darío (Nicaragua).

1790–1850

Early examples of short stories were published separately between 1790 and 1810, but the first true collections of short stories appeared between 1810 and 1830 in several countries.^[15]

The first short stories in the United Kingdom were gothic tales like Richard Cumberland's "remarkable narrative", "The Poisoner of Montremos" (1791).^[16] Novelists such as Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens also wrote influential short stories during this time. Germany soon followed the United Kingdom's example by producing short stories; the first collection of short stories was by Heinrich von Kleist in 1810 and 1811.

Edgar Allan Poe became one of the first American short story writers, taking a cosmopolitan approach to writing. His concise technique, deemed the "single effect", has had tremendous influence on the formation of the modern short story.^[14]

Examples include:

• France
  • Prosper Mérimée
    • Mateo Falcone (1829)
• Germany
  • E. T. A. Hoffmann
    • "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" (1816),
    • "The Sandman",
  • Brothers Grimm
    • first volume of collected fairy tales (1812)
• United States
  • Edgar Allan Poe
    • "The Fall of the House of Usher",
    • "The Tell-Tale Heart",
    • "The Cask of Amontillado",
    • "The Pit and the Pendulum",
    • "The Gold Bug",
    • "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"- one of the first detective stories
    • "The Purloined Letter"- one of the first detective stories
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne
    • Twice-Told Tales (1837)
  • John Neal
    • "Otter-Bag, the Oneida Chief" (1829)
    • "David Whicher" (1832)

1850–1900

In the latter half 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. In 1890s Britain, literary periodicals such as The Yellow Book, Black & White, and The Strand Magazine popularized the short story.^[17] Britain was not alone in the endeavor to strengthen the short story movement. French author Guy de Maupassant composed the short stories "Boule de Suif" ("Ball of Fat", 1880) and "L'Inutile Beauté" ("The Useless Beauty", 1890), which are important examples of French realism. Russian author Anton Chekhov was also influential in the movement.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in India, many writers created short stories centered on daily life and the social scene of the different socioeconomic groups. Rabindranath Tagore published more than 150 short stories on the lives of the poor and oppressed such as peasants, women, and villagers under colonial misrule and exploitation. Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Tagore's contemporary, was another pioneer in Bengali short stories. Chattopadhyay's stories focused on the social scenario of rural Bengal and the lives of common people, especially the oppressed classes. The prolific Indian author of short stories Munshi Premchand, pioneered the genre in the Hindustani language, writing over 200 short stories and many novels in a style characterized by realism and an unsentimental and authentic introspection into the complexities of Indian society.

In the United States, Washington Irving was responsible for creating some of the first short stories of American origin, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle".^[18] Twenty years later, in 1884, Brander Matthews, the first American professor of dramatic literature, published The Philosophy of the Short-Story. During that same year, Matthews was the first one to name the emerging genre "short story".^[19] Another theorist of narrative fiction was Henry James, who produced some of the most influential short narratives of the time.

The spread of the short story movement continued into South America, specifically Brazil. The novelist Machado de Assis was an important short story writer from Brazil at the time, under the influences of Xavier de Maistre, Laurence Sterne, Guy de Maupassant, among others. At the end of the 19th century, the writer João do Rio became popular by short stories about the bohemianism. Lima Barreto wrote about the former slaves and nationalism in Brazil, with his most recognized work being Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma.^[20]

Examples include:

• India
  • Rabindranath Tagore
    • "The Kabuliwala"
    • "The Hungry Stone"
    • "The Wife's Letter"
    • "The Parrot's Training"
    • "Punishment"
  • Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay
    • "Bindu's Son"
    • "Abhagi's Heaven"
    • "Mahesh"
    • "Ram's Good Lesson"
    • "Lalu" (3 parts)
    • "The Husband"
  • Premchand
    • "The Shroud"
    • "The Cost of Milk"
    • "Lottery"
• Poland
  • Bolesław Prus
    • "A Legend of Old Egypt" (1888)
• Portugal
  • Almeida Garrett
  • Alexandre Herculano
  • Eça de Queiroz
• Russia
  • Ivan Turgenev
    • A Sportsman's Sketches
  • Fyodor Dostoyevski
    • "The Meek One" (1876)
    • "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" (1877)
  • Leo Tolstoy
    • "Ivan the Fool" (1885)
    • "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" (1886)
    • "Alyosha the Pot" (1905)
  • Anton Chekhov
    • "The Bet" (1889)
    • "Ward No. 6" (1892)
    • "The Lady with the Dog" (1899)
  • Maxim Gorky
    • "Twenty-six Men and a Girl" (1899)
• United Kingdom
  • Thomas Hardy
    • "The Three Strangers" (1883),
    • "A Mere Interlude" (1885),
    • "Barbara of the House of Grebe" (1890)
  • Rudyard Kipling
    • Plain Tales from the Hills (1888)
    • The Jungle Book (1894)
  • Arthur Conan Doyle
    • The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)- detective story
  • H.G. Wells- Science fiction
    • "The Country of the Blind" (1904)
• United States
  • Herman Melville
    • The Piazza Tales (1856)
  • Mark Twain
    • "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"
  • Henry James
    • "The Real Thing" (1892)
    • "Maud-Evelyn"
    • The Beast in the Jungle (1903)
  • Kate Chopin
  • Stephen Crane

1900–1945

In the United Kingdom, periodicals like The Strand Magazine and Story-Teller contributed to the popularity of the short story. Several authors during this time wrote short stories centered on the devices of satire and humor. One such author, Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916), also known by his pen name of Saki, wrote satirical short stories about Edwardian England. P.G. Wodehouse published his first collection of comical stories about the valet, Jeeves, in 1917. Other common genres of short stories during the early to mid 1900s in England were detective stories and thrillers. Many of these detective stories were written by authors such as G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L. Sayers. Graham Greene wrote his collection of short stories, Twenty-One Stories, between 1929 and 1954. Many of these short stories are classified in the genres of thriller, suspense, or even horror. The European short story movement during this time was not unique to England. 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 so well that F. Scott Fitzgerald repeatedly turned to short-story writing to pay his numerous debts. His first collection, Flappers and Philosophers, appeared in book form in 1920. Ernest Hemingway's concise writing style was perfectly suited for shorter fiction. Influenced by the short stories of Stephen Crane and Jack London, Hemingway's work "marks a new phase in the history of the short story".^[21] The creation and study of the short story as a medium began to emerge as an academic discipline due to Blanche Colton Williams' “groundbreaking work on structure and analysis of the short story” ^[22]: 128 and her publication of A Handbook on Short Story Writing (1917), described as “the first practical aid to growing young writers that was put on the market in this country.” ^[23]   

In Uruguay, Horacio Quiroga became one of the most influential short story writers in the Spanish language. With a clear influence from Edgar Allan Poe, he had a great skill in using the supernatural and the bizarre to show the struggle of man and animal to survive. He also excelled in portraying mental illness and hallucinatory states.

In India, Saadat Hasan Manto, the master of the short story in the Urdu language, is revered for his exceptional depth, irony, and sardonic humor. 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 that continue to give profound insight into the nature of human loss, violence, and devastation. Another famous Urdu writer is Ismat Chughtai, whose short story, "Lihaaf" (The Quilt), on a lesbian relationship between an upper-class Muslim woman and her maidservant created great controversy following its publication in 1942.

Notable examples in the period up to World War II include:

• Bohemia
  • Franz Kafka
    • "A Hunger Artist" (1922)
• Brazil
  • Mário de Andrade
  • António de Alcantâra Machado
    • Brás, Bexiga e Barra Funda (1928)
  • Graciliano Ramos
  • Carlos Drummond de Andrade
• England
  • Virginia Woolf
    • "Kew Gardens" (1919)
    • "Solid Objects"
  • W. Somerset Maugham
  • V.S. Pritchett
  • Evelyn Waugh
  • Muriel Spark
  • L.P. Hartley
  • Arthur C. Clarke
    • "Travel by Wire!" (1937)
• Germany
  • Thomas Mann
• Hindi
  • Jaishankar Prasad
• Japan
  • Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
• New Zealand
  • Katherine Mansfield
    • "The Doll's House" (1922)
• Portugal
  • Mário de Sá-Carneiro
  • Florbela Espanca
  • Fernando Pessoa
• United States
  • O. Henry
    • "The Ransom of Red Chief",
    • "The Cop and the Anthem",
    • "The Skylight Room",
    • "After Twenty Years",
    • "The Last Leaf",
    • "A Retrieved Reformation"
  • Ernest Hemingway
    • "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (1926)
    • "Hills Like White Elephants" (1927)
    • "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1936)
  • William Faulkner
    • Go Down, Moses
  • Dorothy Parker
    • "Big Blonde" (1929)
  • Isaac Asimov
    • "Nightfall"

Since 1945

Following World War II, the artistic range and numbers of writers of short stories grew significantly.^[24] Due in part to frequent contributions from John O'Hara, The New Yorker would come to exercise substantial influence as a weekly short story publication for more than half a century.^[25] Shirley Jackson's story, "The Lottery" (1948), elicited the strongest response in the magazine's history to that time. Other frequent contributors during the 1940s included John Steinbeck, Jean Stafford, Eudora Welty, and John Cheever, who is best known for "The Swimmer" (1964), beautifully blending realism and surrealism.

Many other American short story writers greatly influenced the evolving form of the short story. For example, J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories (1953) experimented with point of view and voice, while Flannery O'Connor's well-known 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. Science fiction stories with a special poetic touch was a genre developed with great popular success by Ray Bradbury. Stephen King published many science fiction short stories in men's magazines in the 1960s and after. King's interest is in the supernatural and macabre. Donald Barthelme and John Barth produced works in the 1970s that demonstrate the rise of the postmodern short story. While traditionalism maintained a significant influence on the form of the short story, minimalism gained widespread influence in the 1980s, most notably in the work of Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie. Carver helped usher in an "extreme minimalist aesthetic" and expand the scope of the short story, as did Lydia Davis, through her idiosyncratic and laconic style.^[26]

The Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges is one of the best-known writers of short stories in the Spanish language. "The Library of Babel" (1941) and "The Aleph" (1945) handle difficult subjects like infinity. Borges won American fame with "The Garden of Forking Paths", published in the August 1948 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Two of the most representative writers of the Magical realism genre are also widely known Argentinean short story writers, Adolfo Bioy Casares and Julio Cortázar. The Nobel laureate author Gabriel García Márquez and the Uruguayan writer Juan Carlos Onetti are further significant magical realist short story writers from the Hispanic world. In Brazil, João Antonio made a name for himself by writing about poverty and the favelas. Detective literature there was led by Rubem Fonseca. João Guimarães Rosa wrote short stories in the book Sagarana, using a complex, experimental language based on tales of oral tradition.

The role of the bi-monthly magazine Desh (first published in 1933) was key in development of the Bengali short story. Two of the most popular detective story writers of Bengali literature are Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay (the creator of Byomkesh Bakshi) and Satyajit Ray (the creator of Feluda).

Notable examples in the post-World War II period include:

• Angola
  • José Luandino Vieira
  • José Eduardo Agualusa
• Bengali
  • Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay,
  • Manik Bandyopadhyay
  • Mahasweta Devi,
  • Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay,
  • Suchitra Bhattacharya,
  • Ramapada Chowdhury
  • Humayun Ahmed
• Brazil
  • Clarice Lispector,
  • Lygia Fagundes Telles
  • Adélia Prado
  • Dalton Trevisan,
  • Autran Dourado Moacyr Scliar
  • Carlos Heitor Cony,
  • Hilda Hilst
  • Caio Fernando Abreu
• Egypt
  • Naguib Mahfouz- was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988
• Hindi
  • Amrita Pritam
  • Dharamvir Bharati
  • Bhisham Sahni
  • Krishna Sobti
  • Nirmal Verma
  • Kamleshwar (writer)
  • Mannu Bhandari
  • Harishankar Parsai
• Italy
  • Italo Calvino
    • Marcovaldo (1963)
• Japan
  • Kenzaburō Ōe (Nobel prize winner of 1994),
  • Yukio Mishima
  • Haruki Murakami.
• Mozambique
  • Suleiman Cassamo,
  • Paulina Chiziane,
  • Eduardo White
  • Mia Couto
• Peru
  • Mario Vargas Llosa- Nobel Prize Laureate
• Philippines
  • Peter Solis Nery
    • "Lirio" (1998)
    • "Candido" (2007)
    • "Donato Bugtot" (2011)
    • "Si Padre Olan kag ang Dios" (2013)
• Portugal
  • Vergílio Ferreira,
  • Fernando Goncalves Namora
  • Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
  • José Saramago
  • Manuel da Silva Ramos
• United Kingdom
  • Daphne du Maurier
    • "The Birds" (1952)
    • "Don't Look Now" (1971)
• United States
  • Frank O'Connor
    • The Lonely Voice
  • Wallace Stegner
  • John Updike
  • Joyce Carol Oates

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Ramayana

Ramayana

The Rāmāyana is a Sanskrit epic from ancient India, one of the two important epics of Hinduism, known as the Itihasas, the other being the Mahābhārata. The epic, traditionally ascribed to the Maharishi Valmiki, narrates the life of Rama, a legendary prince of Ayodhya city in the kingdom of Kosala. The epic follows his fourteen-year exile to the forest urged by his father King Dasharatha, on the request of Rama's stepmother Kaikeyi; his travels across forests in the Indian subcontinent with his wife Sita and brother Lakshmana, the kidnapping of Sita by Ravana – the king of Lanka, that resulted in war; and Rama's eventual return to Ayodhya to be crowned king amidst jubilation and celebration.

Mahabharata

Mahabharata

The Mahābhārata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the Rāmāyaṇa. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pāṇḍava princes and their successors.

Homer

Homer

Homer was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history.

Iliad

Iliad

The Iliad is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the Odyssey, the poem is divided into 24 books and was written in dactylic hexameter. It contains 15,693 lines in its most widely accepted version. Set towards the end of the Trojan War, a ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states, the poem depicts significant events in the siege's final weeks. In particular, it depicts a fierce quarrel between King Agamemnon and a celebrated warrior, Achilles. It is a central part of the Epic Cycle. The Iliad is often regarded as the first substantial piece of European literature.

Odyssey

Odyssey

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the Iliad, the poem is divided into 24 books. It follows the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. After the war, which lasted ten years, his journey lasted for ten additional years, during which time he encountered many perils and all his crewmates were killed. In his absence, Odysseus was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage.

Mnemonic

Mnemonic

A mnemonic device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding.

Narrative

Narrative

A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional or fictional. Narratives can be presented through a sequence of written or spoken words, through still or moving images, or through any combination of these. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, which is derived from the adjective gnarus. Narration is a rhetorical mode of discourse, broadly defined, is one of four rhetorical modes of discourse. More narrowly defined, it is the fiction-writing mode in which a narrator communicates directly to an audience. The school of literary criticism known as Russian formalism has applied methods that are more often used to analyse narrative fiction, to non-fictional texts such as political speeches.

Anecdote

Anecdote

An anecdote is "a story with a point", such as to communicate an abstract idea about a person, place, or thing through the concrete details of a short narrative or to characterize by delineating a specific quirk or trait. Occasionally humorous, anecdotes differ from jokes because their primary purpose is not simply to provoke laughter but to reveal a truth more general than the brief tale itself.

Parable

Parable

A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, that illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, whereas parables have human characters. A parable is a type of metaphorical analogy.

Gesta Romanorum

Gesta Romanorum

Gesta Romanorum, meaning Deeds of the Romans, is a Latin collection of anecdotes and tales that was probably compiled about the end of the 13th century or the beginning of the 14th. It still possesses a two-fold literary interest, first as one of the most popular books of the time, and secondly as the source, directly or indirectly, of later literature, in Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, Giovanni Boccaccio, Thomas Hoccleve, William Shakespeare, and others.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his 10-year-old son Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament.

Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was sometimes simply known as "the Certaldese" and one of the most important figures in the European literary panorama of the fourteenth century. Some scholars define him as the greatest European prose writer of his time, a versatile writer who amalgamated different literary trends and genres, making them converge in original works, thanks to a creative activity exercised under the banner of experimentalism.

The numbers of 21st-century short story writers run into the thousands. Female short story writers have gained increased critical attention, with British authors, in particular, exploring modern feminist politics in their writings.^[27]

Sales of short-story fiction are strong. In the UK, sales jumped 45% in 2017, driven by collections from international names such as Alice Munro, a high number of new writers to the genre, including famous names like actor Tom Hanks (plus those who publish their work using readily accessible, digital tools), and the revival of short story salons such as those held by the short fiction company Pin Drop Studio.^[28]

More than 690,000 short stories and anthologies were sold in the UK in 2017, generating £5.88 million, the genre's highest sales since 2010.^[29] Throughout the 2010s, there was frequent speculation about a potential "renaissance"; Sam Baker called it a "perfect literary form for the 21st century".^[30]

In 2012, Pin Drop Studio launched what became a regular short story salon, held in London and other major cities. Short story writers who have appeared at the salon to read their work to live audiences include Ben Okri, Lionel Shriver, Elizabeth Day, A.L. Kennedy, William Boyd, Graham Swift, David Nicholls, Will Self, Sebastian Faulks, Julian Barnes, Evie Wylde and Claire Fuller.^[31][32][33]

Canadian short story writers include Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant and Lynn Coady. In 2013, Alice Munro became the first writer of nothing but short stories to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her award-winning short story collections include Dance of the Happy Shades, Lives of Girls and Women, Who Do You Think You Are?, The Progress of Love, The Love of a Good Woman and Runaway.

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Ben Okri

Ben Okri

Ben Okri is a Nigerian-British poet and novelist. Okri is considered one of the foremost African authors in the post-modern and post-colonial traditions, and has been compared favourably to authors such as Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez. In 1991, Okri won the Booker Prize with his novel The Famished Road.

Lionel Shriver

Lionel Shriver

Lionel Shriver is an American author and journalist who lives in the United Kingdom. Her novel We Need to Talk About Kevin won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005.

Elizabeth Day

Elizabeth Day

Elizabeth Day is an English novelist, journalist and broadcaster. She was a feature writer for The Observer from 2007 to 2016, and wrote for You magazine. Day has written six books, and is also the host of the podcast How to Fail with Elizabeth Day.

A. L. Kennedy

A. L. Kennedy

Alison Louise Kennedy is a Scots writer, academic and stand-up comedian. She writes novels, short stories and non-fiction, and is known for her dark tone and her blending of realism and fantasy. She contributes columns and reviews to European newspapers.

Graham Swift

Graham Swift

Graham Colin Swift FRSL is an English writer. Born in London, England, he was educated at Dulwich College, London, Queens' College, Cambridge, and later the University of York.

David Nicholls (writer)

David Nicholls (writer)

David Alan Nicholls is a British novelist and screenwriter.

Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes

Julian Patrick Barnes is an English writer. He won the Man Booker Prize in 2011 with The Sense of an Ending, having been shortlisted three times previously with Flaubert's Parrot, England, England, and Arthur & George. Barnes has also written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. In addition to novels, Barnes has published collections of essays and short stories.

Evie Wyld

Evie Wyld

Evelyn Rose Strange "Evie" Wyld is an Anglo-Australian author. Her first novel, After the Fire, A Still Small Voice, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 2009, and her second novel, All the Birds, Singing, won the Encore Award in 2013 and the Miles Franklin Award in 2014. Her third novel, The Bass Rock, won the Stella Prize in 2021.

Claire Fuller

Claire Fuller

Claire Fuller is an English author. She won the 2015 Desmond Elliott Prize for her first novel, Our Endless Numbered Days, the BBC Opening Lines Short Story Competition in 2014, and the Royal Academy & Pin Drop Short Story Award in 2016. Her second novel, Swimming Lessons, was shortlisted for the 2018 Royal Society of Literature Encore Award. Bitter Orange, her third, was nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award. Her most recent novel, Unsettled Ground, won the Costa Book Awards Novel Award 2021 and was shortlisted for the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction

Alice Munro

Alice Munro

Alice Ann Munro is a Canadian short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Munro's work has been described as revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its tendency to move forward and backward in time. Her stories have been said to "embed more than announce, reveal more than parade."

Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant

Mavis Leslie de Trafford Gallant,, née Young, was a Canadian writer who spent much of her life and career in France. Best known as a short story writer, she also published novels, plays and essays.

Dance of the Happy Shades

Dance of the Happy Shades

Dance of the Happy Shades is a book of short stories by Alice Munro, published by Ryerson Press in 1968. It was her first collection of stories and won the 1968 Governor General's Award for English Fiction. The title of the main story is the English translation provided for the ballet in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice when it was first presented in London.

Prominent short story awards such as The Sunday Times Short Story Award, the BBC National Short Story Award,^[34] the Royal Society of Literature's V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize,^[35] The London Magazine Short Story Prize [1], the Pin Drop Studio Short Story Award and many others attract hundreds of entries each year. Published and non-published writers take part, sending in their stories from around the world.^[36][37][38]

In 2013, Alice Munro was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature—her citation read "master of the contemporary short story."^[39] She said she hopes the award will bring readership for the short story, as well as recognising the short story for its own merit, rather than "something that people do before they write their first novel."^[40] Short stories were cited in the choice of other laureates as well: Paul Heyse in 1910 and Gabriel García Márquez in 1982.^[41][42]

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Alice Munro

Alice Munro

Alice Ann Munro is a Canadian short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Munro's work has been described as revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its tendency to move forward and backward in time. Her stories have been said to "embed more than announce, reveal more than parade."

Nobel Prize in Literature

Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction". Though individual works are sometimes cited as being particularly noteworthy, the award is based on an author's body of work as a whole. The Swedish Academy decides who, if anyone, will receive the prize. The academy announces the name of the laureate in early October. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895. Literature is traditionally the final award presented at the Nobel Prize ceremony. On some occasions the award has been postponed to the following year, most recently in 2018 as of May 2022.

Paul Heyse

Paul Heyse

Paul Johann Ludwig von Heyse was a distinguished German writer and translator. A member of two important literary societies, the Tunnel über der Spree in Berlin and Die Krokodile in Munich, he wrote novels, poetry, 177 short stories, and about sixty dramas. The sum of Heyse's many and varied productions made him a dominant figure among German men of letters. He was awarded the 1910 Nobel Prize in Literature "as a tribute to the consummate artistry, permeated with idealism, which he has demonstrated during his long productive career as a lyric poet, dramatist, novelist and writer of world-renowned short stories." Wirsen, one of the Nobel judges, said that "Germany has not had a greater literary genius since Goethe." Heyse is the fifth oldest laureate in literature, after Alice Munro, Jaroslav Seifert, Theodor Mommsen and Doris Lessing.

Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo or Gabito throughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, particularly in the Spanish language, he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. He pursued a self-directed education that resulted in leaving law school for a career in journalism. From early on he showed no inhibitions in his criticism of Colombian and foreign politics. In 1958, he married Mercedes Barcha Pardo; they had two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo.

Short stories are sometimes adapted for radio, TV or film:

• Radio dramas, as on NBC Presents: Short Story (1951–52). A popular example of this is "The Hitch-Hiker", read by Orson Welles.
• Short films, often rewritten by other writers, and even as feature films; such is the case of "Children of the Corn", "The Shawshank Redemption", "The Birds", "Brokeback Mountain", "Who Goes There?", "Duel", "A Sound of Thunder", "The Body", "Total Recall", "The Lawnmower Man", "Hearts in Atlantis", and "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty".
• Television specials, such as "12:01 PM" (a 1993 television movie), "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (an October 11, 1963, episode of The Twilight Zone), "The Lottery", and "Button, Button" (on The Twilight Zone).

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Radio drama

Radio drama

Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story: "It is auditory in the physical dimension but equally powerful as a visual force in the psychological dimension." Radio drama includes plays specifically written for radio, docudrama, dramatized works of fiction, as well as plays originally written for the theatre, including musical theatre, and opera.

NBC Presents: Short Story

NBC Presents: Short Story

NBC Presents: Short Story was a half-hour program offering dramatizations of contemporary American short stories by famed writers such as William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Shirley Jackson.

Orson Welles

Orson Welles

George Orson Welles was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter who is remembered for his innovative work in film, radio, and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time.

Short film

Short film

A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits". In the United States, short films were generally termed short subjects from the 1920s into the 1970s when confined to two 35 mm reels or less, and featurettes for a film of three or four reels. "Short" was an abbreviation for either term.

Children of the Corn

Children of the Corn

"Children of the Corn" is a short story by Stephen King, first published in the March 1977 issue of Penthouse, and later collected in King's 1978 collection Night Shift. The story is about a couple who end up in an abandoned Nebraska town that is inhabited by a cult of murderous children who worship a demon that lives in the local cornfields. The story has been adapted into several films, spawning a horror feature film franchise of the same name beginning in 1984. In 2009, the story was included in the book Stephen King Goes to the Movies.

The Birds (story)

The Birds (story)

"The Birds" is a horror story by the British writer Daphne du Maurier, first published in her 1952 collection The Apple Tree. The story is set in du Maurier's home county of Cornwall shortly after the end of the Second World War. A farmhand, his family and community come under lethal attack from flocks of birds. By the end of the story, it becomes clear that all of Britain is under aerial assault.

Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain is a 2005 American neo-Western romantic drama film directed by Ang Lee and produced by Diana Ossana and James Schamus. Adapted from the 1997 short story of the same name by Annie Proulx, the screenplay was written by Ossana and Larry McMurtry. The film stars Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, and Michelle Williams and depicts the complex romantic relationship between two American cowboys, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, in the American West from 1963 to 1983.

Duel (1971 film)

Duel (1971 film)

Duel is a 1971 American action-thriller television film directed by Steven Spielberg. It centers on a business commuter, played by Dennis Weaver, driving his car through California to meet a client. However, he finds himself chased and terrorized by the mostly-unseen driver of a semi-truck. The screenplay by Richard Matheson adapts his own short story of the same name.

A Sound of Thunder

A Sound of Thunder

"A Sound of Thunder" is a science fiction short story by American writer Ray Bradbury, first published in Collier's magazine in the June 28, 1952, issue and later in Bradbury's collection The Golden Apples of the Sun in 1953.

Hearts in Atlantis

Hearts in Atlantis

Hearts in Atlantis (1999) is a collection of two novellas and three short stories by Stephen King, all connected to one another by recurring characters and taking place in roughly chronological order.

Television special

Television special

A television special is a standalone television show which may also temporarily interrupt episodic programming normally scheduled for a given time slot. Some specials provide a full range of entertainment and informational value available via the television medium, in various formats, and in any viewing lengths.

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet

"Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" is the third episode of the fifth season American television anthology series The Twilight Zone, based on the short story of the same name by Richard Matheson, first published in the short story anthology Alone by Night (1961). It originally aired on October 11, 1963 and is one of the most well-known and frequently referenced episodes of the series. The story follows a passenger on an airline flight who notices a hideous creature trying to sabotage the aircraft during flight.

As a concentrated, concise form of narrative and descriptive prose fiction, the short story has been theorised about 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. In general, short stories feature endings which are either conclusive or open-ended.^[43] Ambiguity is a recurrent trope in short stories; whether in their ending, characterisation or length.^[44] As with any art form, the exact characteristics of a short story will vary depending on who is its creator.

Characteristic of short story authors, according to professor of English, Clare Hanson, is that they are "losers and loners, exiles, women, blacks – writers who for one reason or another have not been part of the ruling “narrative” or epistemological/experiential framework of their society."^[30]

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