What Makes a Good Short Story
What Makes a Good Short Story and How Successful is R.K. Narayan in Portraying the Character of Swami in the Short Story ‘A Hero’?
Nadine Gordimer – ‘Short story writers see by the light of the flash; theirs is the art of the only thing we can be sure of – the present moment.’ This is a quote from short story writer Nadine Gordimer; referring to how the art of short story writing is to get straight to the point and write everything as it is. This is an art and those who cannot perfect it should admire it instead.
Edgar Allan Poe – ‘In the whole composition there should be no word written of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the pre-established design; and by such means, with such skill and care, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it… a sense of the fullest satisfaction.’ Edgar Allan Poe is saying that no time should be wasted at the start of the short story and that the reader should be taken directly into the action, wasting no time in describing the layout, but leaving that to be unrevealed later on in the story.
A short story doesn’t necessarily have to be a short read. A short story is a snippet of a person’s life that goes into great depth of detail and grasps the reader’s attention and imagination from the very first word. A great example of earning the reader’s attention in the first sentence come from R.K. Narayan’s ‘A Hero’, where the first sentence is ‘For Swami events took an unexpected turn.’ Because of this you know there is going to be a twist in the story, but you don’t know when and this sets up the whole story as throughout it the reader is thinking about what is going to happen next and they can’t be sure how the story is going to end. This is a great way to keep the reader interested throughout the story and makes a change to those predictable stories, where you can guess the ending before you’re even in the last paragraph.
Unlike a novel writer the writer of a
Nadine Gordimer – ‘Short story writers see by the light of the flash; theirs is the art of the only thing we can be sure of – the present moment.’ This is a quote from short story writer Nadine Gordimer; referring to how the art of short story writing is to get straight to the point and write everything as it is. This is an art and those who cannot perfect it should admire it instead.
Edgar Allan Poe – ‘In the whole composition there should be no word written of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the pre-established design; and by such means, with such skill and care, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it… a sense of the fullest satisfaction.’ Edgar Allan Poe is saying that no time should be wasted at the start of the short story and that the reader should be taken directly into the action, wasting no time in describing the layout, but leaving that to be unrevealed later on in the story.
A short story doesn’t necessarily have to be a short read. A short story is a snippet of a person’s life that goes into great depth of detail and grasps the reader’s attention and imagination from the very first word. A great example of earning the reader’s attention in the first sentence come from R.K. Narayan’s ‘A Hero’, where the first sentence is ‘For Swami events took an unexpected turn.’ Because of this you know there is going to be a twist in the story, but you don’t know when and this sets up the whole story as throughout it the reader is thinking about what is going to happen next and they can’t be sure how the story is going to end. This is a great way to keep the reader interested throughout the story and makes a change to those predictable stories, where you can guess the ending before you’re even in the last paragraph.
Unlike a novel writer the writer of a