The "Ingenuity" Short Story
on Nov 9, 2009 in Types of Short Story The "Ingenuity" story is one of the most modern forms of the short story, and, if I may be pardoned the prolixity, one of the most ingenious. It might be called the "fairy tale of the grown-up," for its interest depends entirely upon its appeal to th...

The Length of a Short Story
on Sep 7, 2009 in Basic Elements The question of length is but relative; in general a short story should not exceed 10,000 words, and it could hardly contain less than 1,000; while from 3,000 to 5,000 is the most usual length. Yet Hawthorne's "The Gentle Boy" contains 12,000 words;...

The Offbeat Short Story
on Jul 27, 2009 in Types of Short Story This type of short story owes its interest to the innate love of the supernatural or unexplainable which is a part of our complex human nature—the same feeling which prompts a group of children to beg for "just one more" ghost story, while they are...

The "Moral" Story
on Jun 24, 2009 in Types of Short Story The Moral Story, in spite of the beautiful examples left us by Hawthorne, is usually too baldly didactic to attain or hold a high place in literature. Its avowed purpose is to preach, and, as ordinarily written, preach it does in the most determined...

Short Story Writing: The Subjective and Objective
on Mar 25, 2009 in Point of View Writers, in their methods of presentation, may be broadly divided into two classes, those who write subjectively and those who write objectively. A subjective writer is one whose own personality, point of view, feeling, is insistent in what he writes...

The Subjective and Objective
on Mar 25, 2009 in Point of View Writers, in their methods of presentation, may be broadly divided into two classes, those who write subjectively and those who write objectively. A subjective writer is one whose own personality, point of view, feeling, is insistent in what he writes...

Methods of Characterization
on Feb 21, 2009 in Characters In our everyday life we are continually drawing inferences in regard to the characters of those about us, and we do the same thing in a story. Some writers tell us as clearly as they can the natures of the men and women they are revealing to us, whil...

The Two Things Requisite in Writing
on Feb 10, 2009 in Basic Elements Gardiner in his "Forms of Prose Literature" says very truly that the "essential elements, not only of literature, but of all the fine arts, are: first, an organic unity of conception; and second, the pervasive personality of the artist.&quo

Studying Short Stories
on Feb 9, 2009 in Basic Elements The following is an outline that can be used for studying short stories:1. a. Upon what is the interest of the story especially dependent? b. Are the incidents presented rapidly and coherently, or slowly and disconnectedly? c. Is there a clearly defi...

The "Tale" Short Story
on Feb 5, 2009 in Types of Short Story The "Tale" is the relation, in an interesting and literary form, of some simple incident or stirring fact. It has no plot in the sense that there is any problem to unravel, or any change in the relation of the characters; it usually contains act