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THE SHORT STORY Everyone loves a good story. You have been reading, hearing, and telling stories all you life, just as people have done for thousands of years. Story-telling is an age-old art and we must not forget this fact. Some people are far better story tellers than others because somehow they know or have learned the craft of story-telling, of putting characters and events together into a setting in a way that will catch and hold our interest. What qualities are needed to make us say, "That was a really good story" when we have read or heard or viewed one?
A good story must be entertaining. It must capture our attention so completely that we shut out the world around us and "lose ourselves" in the world created for us by the storyteller. A story, therefore, requires the imaginative participation of the reader or listener, who reads or listens with the mind as well as the heart and reacts thoughtfully.
The short story must be constructed with the greatest care since it has only a few characters and severely limited action and details. However, every short story combines the basic structural elements of setting (the location and time of the events), plot (the sequence of events or incidents leading to some kind of high point), and characters (the participants in the events). It is the writer's skill with these basic elements that makes the story memorable or not. For example, the writer cannot just put down the events in a haphazard way, nor can the characters say anything at all. The writer must construct the story with great care because everything in it must be significant.
The plot is the sequence of events in a story: the plan of what happens. Of course, these events always happen to characters in a setting, but let us focus for a moment on plot itself to help us reach a better understanding of how stories are constructed. Almost all stories follow the common pattern of INTRODUCTION, COMPLICATION, CRISES/ RISING ACTION, MAJOR CRISIS, CLIMAX and RESOLUTION/DENOUEMENT. PLOT
The basic idea for a story may or may not come from an incident or event in a writer's life. Once a writer has an idea for a story, how to approach the material, or how to tell it, must be decided. This is called selecting the point of view. • The writer must decide whether the story will be told subjectively from the point of view of one of the characters, or whether it will be told objectively, switching from the various points of view of the different characters. Characterization
subjective: using the first person pronoun "I" "I had been there for at least an hour.“ • Obviously the story is going to be told by the "I" mentioned in the sentence, and we will see all events through that person's eyes. The limited, subjective point of view that uses "I" allows for identification with the character, which can create suspense as the reader becomes as limited in seeing what is going on as the character who is telling the story. Point of View
objective: using the third person pronoun "he" or "she" or even "they“ "She was one of the hardest working people in the group.“ • The objective voice of the author can be heard in this sentence, describing one of the characters in the story. • The all-seeing objective point of view, on the other hand, allows for a variety of perspectives or viewpoints.
Whether the subjective or objective point of view is used depends on what the writer is trying to accomplish or wants the reader to see and "experience" in the story that is being told.
Although in daily life you rarely have an opportunity to examine the inner thoughts and motives of the people around you, in a short story you are usually given a close analysis of another human being or human beings. Authors accomplish this depiction of character in a number of ways: • 1) direct narrator comment (on personality, or indirectly through description of clothing, appearances), • 2) dialogue (what she/he says or what others say, • 3) what the character says about herself/himself, • 4) the actions and reactions of the character. CHARACTER
If the author has chosen to use the first person "I" limited viewpoint, then our examination of the character is certainly going to be one-sided - from that character's view only. Modern short story writers don't tell their readers much about their characters; instead they expect the reader to infer the motives and drives of their characters by showing the character's behaviour in selected situations. The characters actions rather than the author’s explanation helps us to understand what the characters are experiencing and feeling. • You should know that the main character in a short story is known as the protagonist; the character who opposes the protagonist is the antagonist.
All good stories involve the reader intellectually and get the reader thinking about what the story might mean. Granted, some people look to a story for no more than simple enjoyment, and that's fine. But good stories often "get under our skin" , make us think, sometimes even upset us and make us come to some conclusion or concept about life. Theme is the controlling idea. • The writer's theme, the idea that is at the heart of the meaning of the short story, underlies and unifies all the story's elements. As we have said, a good writer's intentions go beyond mere entertainment. They involve attempting to give the reader an insight into the nature of human relationships. For most impact, the theme is rarely if ever stated precisely by the writer. Instead, a good story leads the reader to realize the theme through the story itself, through the total effect. THEME
One way to identify theme is to consider what changes in a story.
The plot is the underlying structure or design of the story. It allows the author to achieve the desired single effect. Sometimes a writer chooses not to tell the story in a straight-forward manner in normal time sequence but will use a technique called flashback to move backward in time. You might even get a flash forward to a future time, but that is more rare. More common is the device called foreshadowing, in which the writer hints at events to come, often for the purpose of increasing tension.
Once the point of view is decided upon, the writer begins manipulating the three basic elements of the story: setting, plot and character. Each of these needs to be discussed separately, but remember, the good writer effectively combines all three.
The setting includes time and place of the story. In the best stories, setting helps to reinforce the single effect which the writer is trying to achieve, and obviously at the beginning of a story, setting is used to create an atmosphere or mood; atmosphere being the effect of the physical aspects of the setting and mood being the emotional state created in the reader by those effects. • For example, if the setting is a cold, dark night, the mood created might be one of suspense. SETTING
When an author chooses the setting, he or she often has it relate to the character’s mood and emotions at that particular time and place. • Ex. About midnight, while we still sat up, the storm came rattling over the Heights in full fury. There was a violent wind, as well as thunder, and either one or the other split a tree off at the corner of the building: a huge bough fell across the roof, and knocked down a portion of the east chimney-stack, sending a clatter of stones and soot into the kitchen-fire. We thought a bolt had fallen in the middle of us. • Consider Harry Potter and the Dementors. Pathetic Fallacy
