Short Stories

About this topic

A short story is a brief work of fiction that can be read in one sitting and focuses on a single incident, with few characters, a limited setting and a unified effect. Because of the compact form, every detail counts: it starts quickly (often in medias res), builds to a climax and ends sharply, sometimes with a twist. This makes the form ideal for studying how fiction works.

Authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Anton Chekhov, Katherine Mansfield and Ernest Hemingway are known for them. Poe argued that a story should aim at a single effect, with every word contributing to it. Hemingway's iceberg theory suggests that the most important parts lie beneath the surface, leaving readers to infer feelings from small actions and dialogue. Many stories use a turning point, a moment when a character realises something.

Worked example: in Roald Dahl's Lamb to the Slaughter, a calm housewife kills her husband and cleverly feeds the police the evidence, in a few pages. The irony of the detectives eating the weapon is the twist, and it works because earlier details were planted.

Read for conflict, characterisation, imagery and the single effect. Writers practise economy of language. Common mistakes are trying to fit a whole novel into a few pages, ending with a pointless surprise, and ignoring the title, which often hints at meaning. Reread the first and last sentences to see how they frame the whole.