What are the essential features of a short story?

We must have noticed that most discussions  of literature  concentrate on the novel, drama and poetry. The  short story  is  often  regarded  as  a sort  of poor relation, not worth consideration. Katherine Mansfield a famous short story writer was once asked:

‘What do you do  in  life’?

‘I am a writer’.

‘Do you write dramas?’

‘No’. it sounded as if she were sorry she did not.

‘Do you write tragedies, novels, romance?’ I persisted, because she looked as if she could write these. ‘No’, she said, and with still deeper distress; ‘only short stories; just short stories’.

Later on she told me she felt so wretched at that moment she would have given anything if she could have answered at least one ‘yes’ to the ‘big’ things. (Quoted in Anthony Alpers, The Life of Katherine Mansfield (1980, p. 381).

It is clear that Mansfield is apologetic about writing short stories. On the other hand, there is another practitioner of the art, Edgar Alan Poe, who believes that the short  story  is  superior to  the novel.  It  is  not necessary  to agree with either of these opinions. Let us  begin  with  the notion  that  the short story is equal to any  other  literary  genre be it  poetry, drama or  the novel.

A short story has an unlimited range of possible themes just like any other literary genre. A short story may be about a particular scene, a series of connected incidents, a moral issue, an  aspect  of life, a  phase  of character or an  interesting experience. In  sum, a short  story  can  be  about anything.

The modern short story may not even have a story, but it is certainly  fictional. A short story illuminates some aspects of life or characters. A wellwritten  short  story  must convey  the  impression  of completeness.  In some stories there is no clear cut  ending  or resolution  of  the crisis;  yet  the effect is one  of organic  unity.  What  do  we mean  by  organic  unity?  It is  not just a unity  of a beginning, a middle and  an  end. The  unity  lies  in the way the  writer  has  given  shape to  a mass  of  details. As  we know, a writer is faced with a range of possible ways in which to write the story. S/he must select the relevant details as it is not possible to  narrate everything. The writer then works these selected details into a complete organic whole. What do we mean by ‘organic whole’? for example, if  we cut an arm off a body, the body is no longer an organic whole but is mutilated. Just as it is not possible to remove a single limb without mutilating the body, similarly in a well-constructed short story,  it  should  not be possible to remove a single detail.

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