The Short Story - Garner
The Short Story
Definition: The short story is a narrative, artistically presenting characters in a
struggle or complication, which has a definite outcome.
Characteristics:
1.) It deals with a single event, emotion, or a series of emotions caused by a
single situation. It centers on one incident, situation, or character
(usually).
2.) It can usually be read in one sitting, from 15 to 30 minutes in length, but
this is not a necessary trait. The average short story is 3000 to 4000
words.
3.) It concerns itself with one impression or effect.
4.) It has few characters and a single main character.
5.) It has no unnecessary details. The author must select only the incidents,
people, and character traits that are necessary to the logical development
of his plot, or to the creation of the dominant idea, impression, or
emotional effect that the story is to convey.
6.) It has a conflict.
7.) The climax evolves from the basic situation.
8.) Complication and struggle lead to suspense, and the short story appeals
to the reader’s emotions.
9.) It has a definite outcome which is believable to the reader. It must be
credible or real in some way to the reader.
The Four Basic Types:
1.) Character: The author concentrates on presenting character; the
character’s speech and actions dominate the story.
2.) Plot: The reader is most interested in what is happening or what is going
to happen. A character meets a test, which results in a struggle; the
emphasis in this type of story is upon complication. The plot is involved,
original, or surprising.
3.) Setting: The reader’s interest centers on the surroundings or the place in
which the story occurs; this is true of the mystery or ghost story. Another
type is the local colour story, in which the reader becomes interested in
the story of a particular region. The setting dominates this type of story; it
makes the plot possible; it determines the kind of characters; and it
dictates the actions and personalities of the characters.
4.) Theme: This strikingly illustrates an idea of a truth of human life. The idea
behind the story is more important than the characters, setting, or plot;
The Short Story - Garner
these three elements are only the media through which the theme is
developed.
A typical short story has:
1.) Setting: “Where?” “When?”
-includes time, place, occupations, and conditions
-Mood/atmosphere are part of the setting.
-The amount of space given to describing the setting will vary, depending
on its importance.
-Sometimes, several paragraphs of description are given in the early part
of the story, but more often, the setting is brought in incidentally here and
there, whenever it is necessary to advance the events of the plot.
2.) Character: “Who?”
The main character (the protagonist) will usually be a person or an animal,
or both. Occasionally, an inanimate object will be a character.
-Usually, there is one main character, who is an unusual, striking, or
fascinating person with a dominant individual trait, characteristic, desire,
weakness, power, ambition, or ideal upon which the plot is built.
Sometimes a minor or humourous weakness or striking contradiction is
associated with a desirable dominant trait.
A reader may learn about a character through two ways of character
presentation:
A.) Direct Presentation: the author tells the reader what the character is
like.
B.) Indirect Presentation: The author shows the character in action, and
the reader must draw his own conclusions regarding the character’s
personality. There are five ways the author does this:
i. Through what the character says;
ii. Through what the character does;
iii. Through what other characters say about the character;
iv. Through other characters’ reactions to the character; and
v. Through the character’s reactions to other characters.
Types of Characters:
A.) Flat: they can be summed up using one or two traits.
B.) Round: they are complex and many-sided.
The Short Story - Garner
C.) Stock: they are flat characters who have reoccurred so often that they
have become stereotyped – the reader knows his traits and
subsequent actions immediately.
Characters can also be divided into types according to their changes:
A.) Static: one that remains the same from beginning to end.
B.) Dynamic (Developing): undergoes some sort of permanent change in
some aspect of his character.
Minor characters function in the short story in several ways:
a.) They serve as instruments in the plot;
b.) They provide humour;
c.) They fill the scene;
d.) They add colour to the story; and/or
e.) They act as foils to the main character.
3.) Plot: “What?”
The action is more than a sequence of events. If the writer simply has a
series of events, told in the order they took place, he has a narrative, not a
short story. Plot is a sequence which has a logical development through
cause and effect, through complication and conflict, leading to a climax
and rearrangement, where a new, and final, condition is accepted.
Plausibility: the plot seems to be true, even though it is fictional.
Seven elements are commonly spoken of in connection with the plot of the story:
A.) Motivation: this makes the action possible, the idea that creates an
unstable situation. It might be simply expressed as the problem, goal,
or desire which the principal character has.
B.) Conflict: this is the very essence of the short story. There are only four
types of conflict. These are:
i.) Man vs. Man
ii.) Man vs. Himself
iii.) Man vs. Nature
iv.) Man vs. Supernatural
C.) Rising Action: the series of events which interfere with the plans of
the main character. This involves the series of events which are
related by cause and effect (motivation).
The Short Story - Garner
D.) Suspense: conflict and complication naturally lead to suspense,
which is really questions about the outcome.
E.) Climax: the highest point of suspense or action. The series of events
heightens the suspense until the climax is reached. It is here that the
main character encounters crisis, and the climax will determine his
success or failure.
F.) Denouement: this is the disentanglement. It is the part in which
information is given, or events occur, which clarify the outcome.
G.) Outcome: the way the story ends. Either the leading force or
character obtains what he wants, or the ending is unhappy. Herein
lies one of the differences between a comedy and a tragedy.
4.) Theme: “Why?”
This is the author’s intended message to the reader. It is a general
statement, and the author’s opinion, on humankind, society, or the world. It
is never a cliché or moral. Because theme is a general statement, it is never
specific to the story; rather, the story is the tool used by the author to get
across his message.
Other factors in connection with the short story:
1.) Exposition: the giving of facts at the beginning so that the story is
understandable. The who, what, when, where may be brought into the story
directly by a statement from the author or by one of the characters who tells
the story, or the details may be given indirectly in the speech and action of
the characters.
2.) Often a short story fulfills three unities: it shows one action, in one place, on
one day.
3.) Single dominant effect: Readers may be consoled, amused, saddened,
sympathetic, horrified, moved to tears, made to think. The good short story
will produce a single effect.
4.) Point of view: First person – the story is told by one of the characters in the
story, usually the protagonist. It is told using “I”. The reader knows all the
thoughts and feelings of this character.
Third person omniscient – the characters in the story are talked about by the
author. It is told using “he”, “she”, and “they”. The reader knows all the
thoughts and feelings of all the characters.
Third person limited omniscient – the characters in the story are talked about
by the author. It is told using “he”, “she”, and “they”. The reader knows all
The Short Story - Garner
the thoughts and feelings of one or some characters, but not all.
Objective narrator – the characters in the story are talked about by the
author, but very little information is given in thought form. The reader does
not know any of the thoughts and feelings of any of the characters, unless
that character expresses them out loud. The play is a common form of
objective narrator.
5.) Dialogue: has two main purposes:
a.) to reveal character of the person speaking, the one spoken of, and the
one spoken to.
b.) to forward action of the story by:
i.) explaining the events that have happened before the story begins;
ii.) advancing the business of the present; and
iii.) preparing for the future. The dialogue gives suggestions.
Characteristics of a good dialogue:
a.) naturalness: the dialogue is appropriate to the characters’
personalities.
b.) convincing: if the characters speaks “in character”, their speeches
are convincing.
c.) interesting: if dialogue helps to advance the action of an interesting
plot, the dialogue itself will be interesting.
6.) Short stories usually begin “in media res”, in the middle of things, or just
before the end.
7.) Satisfactory endings:
a.) immediately after the climax, for once the highest point of the story is
reached, there is little left to say.
b.) logical and well-motivated.