Define Short Story.

Define Short Story.

Short Story: A short story is a work of fiction usually written in a narrative prose. A short story is not a novel in an abridged form. A short story is complete in itself. Therefore, a short story writer must have great skill to achieve an impression of completeness in a few pages. The characters and incidents are sketched in a few effective strokes. A short story thus has intensity and a singleness of purpose. There is no single acceptable definition of a short story. All that we can say is that it is short, has a plot and character(s) and has a beginning, middle and an end. According to one definition, a short story is a relatively short narrative which is designed to produce a single dominant effect and which contains the elements of drama. Although the short story is expressly defined by its length, the precise length of stories that can be considered 'short varies between critics and writers, especially when taking account of the diversity of the form across genres. The aim of a good short story is to make the reader feel, to make him/her enter into the experience of the characters. Short stories can be read in magazines as well as in anthologies. Short stories date back to oral story-telling traditions, which originally produced epics such as Homer's iliad and odyssey.