A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format or medium tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novels and books. Short story definitions based upon length differ somewhat even among professional writers, due somewhat in part to the fragmentation of the medium into genres. Since the short story format includes a wide range of genres and styles, the actual length is mitigated somewhere between the individual authors' preference and the submission guidelines relevant to the story's actual market.
Many short story writers define their work through a combination of creative, personal expression and artistic integrity. As a result, many attempt to resist categorization by genres as well as definition by numbers. As a result, definitions of the short story based upon length splinter even more when the writing process is taken into consideration.
Overview
Short stories have their origins in oral story-telling traditions and the prose anecdote, a swiftly-sketched situation that quickly comes to its point. With the rise of the comparatively realistic novel, the short story evolved as a miniature version, with some of its first perfectly independent examples in the tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann. Some of nineteenth-century writers, well-known for their short stories, are Edgar Allan Poe, Nikolai Gogol, Anton Chekhov, etc. Short stories were a staple of early-19th-century magazines. More recently, short stories have been reprinted in anthologies, categorized by topics or critical receptions.
There are some authors who were regarded for they work; an example is Jorge Luis Borges, who won American fame with "The Garden of Forking Paths," published in the August 1948 by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. American examples include Flannery O'Connor, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver.
Authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Boleslaw Prus, F. Scott Fitzgerald, P.G. Wodehouse and Ernest Hemingway were highly accomplished writers of short stories.
Short stories have often been adapted for half-hour and hour radio dramas, as on NBC Presents: Short Story (1951-52).
The art of story telling is doubtlessly older than the record of civilization. Even the so-called modern short story, which was the latest of the major literary types to evolve, has an ancient lineage. Perhaps the oldest and most direct ancestor of the short story is the anecdote and illustrative story, straight to the point. The ancient parable and fable, starkly brief narrative used to enforce some moral or spiritual truth, anticipate the severe brevity and unity of some short stories written today.
Characteristics
Short stories tend to be less complex than novels. Usually a short story focuses on only one incident, has a single plot, a single setting, a small number of characters, and covers a short period of time.
In longer forms of fiction, stories tend to contain certain core elements of dramatic structure: exposition, complication, rising action, crisis, climax, resolution and moral. Because of their length, short stories may or may not follow this pattern. Some do not follow patterns at all. For example, modern short stories only occasionally have an exposition. As with longer stories, plots of short stories also have a climax, crisis, or turning point. However, the endings of many short stories are abrupt and open and may or may not have a moral or practical lesson. As with any art form, the exact characteristics of a short story will vary by creator.
Length
Determining what exactly separates a short story from longer fictional formats is problematic. A classic definition of a short story is that one should be able to read it in one sitting, a point most notably made in Edgar Allan Poe's essay "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846). Other definitions place the maximum word length at anywhere from 7,000 to 9,000 words. In contemporary usage, the term short story most often refers to a work of fiction no longer than 20,000 words and no shorter than 1,000. Stories less than 1,000 words are usually referred to either as "short short fiction" or "short shorts" or even "flash fiction".
Origins
Short stories date back to oral story-telling traditions which originally produced epics such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Oral narratives were often told in the form of rhyming or rhythmic verse, often including recurring sections or, in the case of Homer, Homeric epithets. Such stylistic devices often acted as mnemonics for easier recall, rendition and adaptation of the story. Short sections of verse might focus on individual narratives that could be told at one sitting. The overall arc of the tale would emerge only through the telling of multiple such sections.
The other ancient form of short story, the anecdote, was popular under the Roman Empire. Anecdotes functioned as a sort of parable, a brief realistic narrative that embodies a point. Anecdotes remained popular in Europe well into the 18th century, when the fictional anecdotal letters of Sir Roger de Coverley were published.
In Europe, the oral story-telling tradition began to develop into written stories in the early 14th century, most notably with Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. Both of these books are composed of individual short stories set within a larger narrative story, although the frame tale device was not adopted by all writers.
Modern times
Today's short stories emerged as their own genre in the early 19th century. Early examples of short stories include the Brothers Grimm's Fairy Tales (1824-1826) and Nikolai Gogol's Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (1831-1832). The first examples in the United States are Charles Brockden Brown's "Somnambulism" (1805), The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820), Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840), etc.
In the latter 19th century, the growth of print magazines and journals created a strong demand for short fiction of between 3,000 and 15,000 words. Famous short stories of this period include Bolesław Prus's "A Legend of Old Egypt" (1888) and Anton Chekhov's "Ward No. 6" (1892).
At the same time, the first literary theories about the short story appeared. A widely known one is Edgar Allan Poe's "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846). In 1901, Brander Matthews, the first American professor of dramatic literature, published "The Philosophy of the Short-Story."
In the first half of the 20th century, a number of high-profile magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, Scribner's and The Saturday Evening Post published short stories in each issue. The demand for quality short stories was so great and the money paid for such were so high that Scott Fitzgerald repeatedly turned to short-story writing to pay his numerous debts.
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_story
American short story-writers
The famous American short story -writers:
Ernest Hemingway, Lorrie Moore & Frederic Brown
Biography
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 - July 2, 1961) was an American writer and journalist. He was one of the veterans of World War I, later known as "the Lost Generation." He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.
Writing style:
Hemingway's distinctive writing style is characterized by economy and understatement, and had a significant influence on the development of twentieth-century fiction writing. His protagonists are typically stoical men who exhibit an ideal described as "grace under pressure." Many of his works are now considered classics of American literature.
Hemingway attended Oak Park and River Forest High School from 1913 until 1917. There he was involved with sports: boxing, track, water polo, and football. He showed talent in English classes and was on the debate team. Hemingway's writing style is poetic.
Novels:
The author wrote and edited the "Trapeze" and "Tabula"
Biography:
Lorrie Moore (born Marie Lorena Moore on January 13, 1957 in Glens Falls, New York) At 19, she won Seventeen magazine's fiction contest. After graduating from St. Lawrence, she moved to Manhattan and worked as a paralegal for two years.
Moore's novels are Anagrams, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? and A Gate at the Stairs (2009). Anagrams was optioned by Madonna for a film that was never made.
Writing style:
Lorrie was an American fiction writer known mainly for her humorous and poignant short stories.
Novels:
Her short story collections are Self Help, Like Life, and Birds of America, which became a New York Times bestseller. She has contributed to The Paris Review, and her first story to appear in The New Yorker, "You're Ugly, Too," was later included in The Best American Short Stories of the Century,
Biography:
Fredric Brown (October 29, 1906, Cincinnati - March 11, 1972)
He was one of the boldest early writers in genre fiction in his use of narrative experimentation. Brown's first mystery novel, The Fabulous Clip joint, won the Edgar Award for outstanding first mystery novel.
Many of his science fiction stories were shorter than 1,000 words, or even 500 words. Apart from their excellence and powerful effect, these stories were also popular among magazine editors.
Their excellence and powerful effect, these stories were also extremely popular among magazine editors: their extreme brevity made the stories useful for filling holes in a magazine's page layout.
Writing style:
Frederic Brown was an American science fiction and mystery writer.
Brown claimed that he wrote mysteries for money and science fiction for fun
The famous mystery and science novels are:
1938
The Moon for a Nickel.
1939
The Cheese on Stilts.
Blood of the Dragon.
There Are Bloodstains in the Alley.
Murder at 10:15.
1940
Bloody Murder.
The Prehistoric Clue.
A Matter of Taste.
Trouble in a Teacup (alias "Teacup Trouble").
Murder Draws a Crowd.
Footprints on the Ceiling.
Town Wanted.
The Little Green Men.
References by: www.wikipedia.com
Ernest Hamingway
One of the famous main articles of E.Hamingway is ''the old man and the sea''
It was written in 1951, and published in 1952, The Old Man and the Sea is the final work published during Hemingway's lifetime. The book was featured in Life Magazine on September 1st, 1952, and five million copies of the magazine were sold in two days.[]The Old Man and the Sea also became a Book-of-the Month selection, and made Hemingway a celebrity. The novella received the Pulitzer Prize in May, 1952, nd won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Upon receiving the latter he noted that Carl Sandburg or Isaac Dinesen were both worthy of winning; but he expressed happiness and claimed to "need the dough." The success of The Old Man and the Sea made Hemingway an international celebrity. The Old Man and the Sea is taught at schools around the world and continues to earn foreign royalties
Hemingway began The Garden of Eden in 1946 and wrote 800 pages. The novel was published posthumously in a much-abridged form in 1986.Early in 1950 he started work on a "sea trilogy", to consist of three sections: "The Sea When Young" (set in Bambini); "The Sea When Absent" (set in Havana); and "The Sea in Being". The latter was published in 1952 as The Old Man and the Sea) He also wrote an unpublished "Sea-Chase" story which his wife and editor combined with the stories about the islands, renamed Islands in the Stream and published in 1970
Frederic Brown
''Death has many doors ''
Death Has Many Doors (1951) is the fifth novel and the first in which Ed and Am are in business for themselves, as co-owners of Hunter & Hunter Detective Agency. The two are spending a lot of time reading and playing cards when they're not finding numskulls who skip town in cars that haven't been paid for. Then beautiful young Sally Doer arrives with a humdinger: she claims Martians are plotting to kill her.
Thinking he's been put on by an associate, Am declines and advises the young woman to see a shrink. Ed, however, is attracted to Sally and after conversation over drinks concludes she's pretty stable outside of delusions involving little green men. Ed agrees to spend an evening in the woman's apartment for her protection. Following a troubled night on the couch, Ed awakens to find the woman dead - victim of a weak heart. The detective suspects Sally's heart attack and her fear of being stalked by Martians are connected. Someone (probably human) scared her to death. Then Sally's sister, Dorothy, shows up at Hunter & Hunter looking for help, claiming she's had a premonition she will die that evening....
In earlier novels Ed was flawed in interesting ways. Any long-time mystery reader will guess the identity of Am's kidnapper in Compliments of a Fiend, but it is fun seeing the young operative make mistakes and work under pressure to put it all together. His behavior seemed reasonable considering age and experience.
Why, then, does Ed become a total moron in this book? Haunted by Sally's death, guilt-ridden even as Am assures him it was beyond his control, Ed allows Dorothy to place both of them in danger after taking so many precautions over the long evening to protect her. When Dorothy finally (predictably) perishes during a midnight swim, I had trouble getting behind a detective so sloppy and stupid.
