The Traditional Short Story

The traditional short story is the form most people mean by the words: roughly a thousand to seven thousand words following one character through one situation that changes them. It has room for a scene to be built, for a conversation to be heard, and for time to pass, but it has no room for a second storyline, and it ends soon after its turn. Edgar Allan Poe argued that a short story should aim at a single effect, and that every sentence should serve it. That is still the clearest working description of the form. A novel may digress, because a reader stays for days; a short story has one sitting, so a digression costs it a reader. Characteristic techniques - One character, one situation, one arc; whatever is not needed is left out of the story rather than explained. - Scene and summary used deliberately: the important moments shown, the years between them told in a sentence. - A turn, late but not at the very end, and a short falling away after it. - Economy in the supporting cast: each minor character has one job. An original illustrative example, written for this platform This is the opening of a story rather than the whole of one, because the form's length is the point. Miss Adair kept the shop because the shop had kept her. She knew the price of everything in it, including the two items not for sale: the brass scales on the counter, which her father had used, and the photograph above them of a man in a hat, which she had never explained to anyone. On the morning the notice came about the new road, she was weighing out half a pound of tea for a customer who wanted the whole story of the town, and she gave her the tea and said nothing at all. The story that follows would carry her through one refusal, one conversation with the customer, and one change of mind about the photograph: a single arc, with the road as the situation and the scales as the thing at stake. How the example works Everything the story needs is in the first paragraph: a woman, a shop, two withheld objects and a threat to the town. The detail does two jobs at once, since the scales are both merchandise and memory. Notice what is not there: no description of her appearance, no history of the town, no explanation of the man in the hat. Practical guidance Write the situation down in one sentence, and the change in another, before you write any scene; if you cannot, the story is not ready to be drafted. Draft the scenes that matter and summarize everything else, then check that the turn happens late enough to be earned and early enough to leave room after it. Exercise to try Take a situation you already have and write its opening paragraph, then write the sentence that states what will change. Keep both to one page, and cut every detail that does not serve the situation or the change. Revision tips Read for the single effect: any paragraph that does not serve it can usually go. Check that the change is caused by something inside the story rather than by luck. Make sure the ending arrives soon after the turn. If a character other than the protagonist has more than one job, that is a novel trying to get into a story.