Jun 02 2007
5 – Shorts
This is the fifth of the eight categories in the Story Gamut, my way of classifying story elements on a scale from micro-elements to macro-elements. It will focus on the issues that come to the fore when writing on the level of short stories. Primary among these issues is characterization: the creation of vivid protagonists that readers will find compelling. Good characters tends to be more important than other story elements at this level, such as plot and theme, because even a shaky plot can carry a story for eight pages, but uninteresting characters can rarely take a story anywhere. Not coincidentally, many modern literary fiction writers, who often are short story writers first and novelists second, focus obsessively on character.
This category also includes other writing topics, though, such as “idea stories”, those strange little pieces that don’t fit into the usual story structure, but can hold reader interest for short periods of time. This includes literary magazine oddities, but also other types of writing, such as some picture books for children.