by the INK of my PEN

⦙ Short Fiction ⦙

Short story, brief fictional prose narrative that is shorter than a novel and that usually deals with only a few characters.

The short story is usually concerned with a single effect conveyed in only one or a few significant episodes or scenes. The form encourages economy of setting, concise narrative, and the omission of a complex plot; character is disclosed in action and dramatic encounter but is seldom fully developed. Despite its relatively limited scope, though, a short story is often judged by its ability to provide a "complete" or satisfying treatment of its characters and subject.

Before the 19th century the short story was not generally regarded as a distinct literary form. But although in this sense it may seem to be a uniquely modern genre, the fact is that short prose fiction is nearly as old as language itself. Throughout history humankind has enjoyed various types of brief narratives: jests, anecdotes, studied digressions, short allegorical romances, moralizing fairy tales, short myths, and abbreviated historical legends. None of these constitutes a short story as it has been defined since the 19th century, but they do make up a large part of the milieu from which the modern short story emerged.

Analysis Of The Genre

As a genre, the short story received relatively little critical attention through the middle of the 20th century, and the most valuable studies of the form were often limited by region or era. In his The Lonely Voice (1963), the Irish short story writer Frank O'Connor attempted to account for the genre by suggesting that stories are a means for "submerged population groups" to address a dominating community. Most other theoretical discussions, however, were predicated in one way or another on Edgar Allan Poe's thesis that stories must have a compact unified effect.

The prevalence in the 19th century of two words, "sketch" and "tale," affords one way of looking at the genre. The primary mode of the sketch is written; that of the tale, spoken. This difference alone accounts for their strikingly different effects. The modern short story, then, ranges between the highly imaginative tale and the photographic sketch and in some ways draws on both. Whether or not one sees the modern short story as a fusion of sketch and tale, it is hardly disputable that today the short story is a distinct and autonomous, though still developing, genre.

~Source: Britannica.com (a link to the full article is given in the external link below)

In terms of length, word count is typically anywhere from 1,000 to 4,000 for short stories, however some have 20,000 words and are still classed as short stories. Stories of fewer than 1,000 words are sometimes referred to as "short short stories", or "flash fiction".

I have divided my books based on the lengths, upto 500 words, 501 to 1500 words and more than 1500 words. There are other books written for a specific challenge (I felt a challenge that requires a series of stories should be made into a separate book).

✦ Bits and Pieces - Flash fiction and microbytes (all less than or equal to 500 words)

✦ Odds and Ends - Stories that range between 501 to 1500 words

✦ Long and Short - Tales upto 2500 words and Stories upto 5000 (or 6000 words in the rare case)

✦ Fall Tales - Spooky writings for the 2019 Halloween Challenge

✦ Reading List Marathon - set of 8 stories for the contest run by Wattpad Shortstory profile

✦ Trials of Love - stories written for the contest conducted by Romance and 27 other profiles