Defining the Short Story
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A formal, modern definition of what short stories are may be helpful as well. In A Glossary of Literary Terms, Martin Abrams defines the short story as “a brief work of prose fiction, and most of the terms for analyzing the components, the types, and the narrative techniques of the novel are applicable to the short story as well. The short story differs from the anecdote – the unelaborated narration of a single incident – in that, like the novel, it organizes the action, thought, and dialogue of its characters into the artful pattern of a plot, directed toward particular effects on an audience. And as in the novel, the plot form may be comic, tragic, romantic, or satiric; the story is presented to us from one of many available points of view; and it may be written in the mode of fantasy, realism or naturalism”. Abrams’ definition of the short story touches on what makes the genre distinct (for instance, length and focus), but it is also filled with comparisons to other categories of short fiction like parables and fairy tales and to the longer forms of fiction like the novella and the novel as well. Even though the short story is a distinct and definable form of prose, it is closely related to many other genres of writing.
In some ways, the short story occupies a middle ground between novels and poetry. Short story writers use the same key literary elements of the novel, including a focus on characters and plot, but must also contend with the economic use of description and space that is, at times, more akin to poetry. Short stories can be as short as a few paragraphs or can be 50+ pages, but most short stories are somewhere between 5 and 20 pages in length, give or take, and can usually be read in a single sitting. This is a unique strength of short stories for 21st century readers too: like poetry, they compress a high-quality literary work into a small enough space to be read while waiting for an appointment, on a bus, or anywhere else that readers have 20 minutes free. A final basic definition of the short story deals with publication. Because of their shorter length, most short stories are published alongside other literary works and not on their own. Novels are usually published and promoted as standalone works, but story stories are primarily published in collections by the author, compiled in anthologies by an editor, or published in magazines or literary journals with other works.
So far, these definitions have been generalities, but individual authors can have their own unique views on the relationship between short stories and novels too. Sometimes, this it’s a positive one. In an interview about her debut novel, Severance, novelist Ling Ma says, “I started writing this book back in 2012, when I lived in Chicago. The company I worked at was downsizing and closing the office I worked at, thus letting many of its employees go, including me. In those last few months on the job, I had this idea for an apocalyptic short story, which, the more I worked on it, the more I had to say. After the job ended, I took my severance and unemployment funds to work on the manuscript. It was a liberating but uncertain time. Definitely a dash of desperation in there too. The more I worked on the story, the more it became clear it was actually a novel, though I resisted that idea for a while.” Ma seems to approach genre differences with some fluidity, letting the scope of story at least partially dictate its final form. On the other hand, novelist Cormac McCarthy views this distinction between short and lengthy works of fiction from a much more skeptical angle. “People apparently only read mystery stories of any length. With mysteries, the longer the better and people will read any damn thing. But the indulgent, 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore and people need to get used to that. If you think you’re going to write something like “The Brothers Karamazov” or “Moby-Dick,” go ahead. Nobody will read it. I don’t care how good it is, or how smart the readers are. Their intentions, their brains are different.” Later in the interview, McCarthy removes all doubt about his feelings on short stories: “I’m not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn’t take years off your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.”
For a classic definition, few critics have been able to rival Edgar Allan Poe’s famous equation of what makes a literary work successful, which he outlined in his essay, “The Philosophy of Composition.” In his essay, he argues for a unity of effect, suggesting that all elements of a narrative must work together to accomplish a single literary goal. He writes, “I prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect. Keeping originality always in view — for he is false to himself who ventures to dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a source of interest — I say to myself, in the first place, ‘Of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select?’ Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid effect, I consider whether it can best be wrought by incident or tone — whether by ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity both of incident and tone — afterward looking about me (or rather within) for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the construction of the effect.” While novelists might take umbrage at Poe’s following claim that all great literature should be able to be read in a single sitting, his argument for what makes a successful short story has withstood the test of time.