Elements of Short Stories: A Short story

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Elements of Short Stories: A Short story

A short story is a short work of prose fiction which usually depicts one character’s inner conflict or conflict with others. It is a work of fiction in prose writing about imagined events and characters. A short story, unlike a poem, does not depend on verses, meters or rhymes for its organization and presentation. A short story is often contrasted with a novel on the grounds of length, magnitude and complexity Complicity As the name suggests, a short story is shorter than a novel.

American literature contains some of the world’s best examples of the short story. Short stories have the following five key elements:

1. Plot
2. Characters
3. Setting
4. Style
5. Theme

The systematic chain of events in a story is called plot. The short story can have a wide range of plot forms and structures. Plot has .three major parts: beginning, middle an end.

Characters are the persons represented in a dramatic or narrative work who are interpreted by the reader possessing with particular moral, intellectual and emotional qualities by inferences from what the persons say and their distinctive ways of saying it the dialogue and from what they do – the action”.

Characters can be protagonist and antagonist.

Setting refers to the location and the time in which a story takes-place.

Style, generally refers to the way in which a story is written. Style, in other words, refers to how a particular writer says things.

The theme of a fable is its moral. The theme of a parable is its teaching. The theme of a piece of fiction is its view about of life and how people behave. Readers have to extract it from the characters, action, and setting that make up the story. The theme is a controlling idea or central insight of the story.

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