Short Story

A short story is a piece of fiction that can usually be read in one sitting. Most short stories run between 1,000 and 10,000 words. That is short enough to finish in an hour or less, but long enough to build real characters and a real plot. Short stories are one of the oldest forms of writing in the world.

People have been telling short stories since long before writing existed. Ancient cultures passed them down by speaking them aloud around fires. Aesop's fables, told in ancient Greece about 2,500 years ago, are some of the oldest short stories we still read today. Stories from the Middle East, like those in One Thousand and One Nights, are also more than a thousand years old.

The modern short story took shape in the 1800s. Writers like Edgar Allan Poe in the United States and Anton Chekhov in Russia helped invent the form as we know it now. Poe wrote spooky tales like "The Tell-Tale Heart." Chekhov wrote quiet stories about ordinary Russian people and their feelings. Both writers showed that a short story could be just as powerful as a long novel.

A short story is different from a novel in more than just length. A novel has room for many characters, many places, and many years. A short story usually focuses on one main character, one main problem, and a short stretch of time. Some great short stories take place in a single afternoon. Others happen in just a few minutes.

Short stories often turn on a single moment of change. A character learns something, makes a hard choice, or sees the world in a new way. Writers call this the "turn." Because there is no room to waste, every sentence in a short story has to do work. A small detail in the second paragraph might matter a lot by the end.

Some short stories are very short indeed. A "flash fiction" story can be under 1,000 words. Some writers have written stories of fewer than 100 words. There is a famous six-word story sometimes credited to Ernest Hemingway: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." Whether Hemingway really wrote it is debated, but the story still hits hard. In just six words, a reader feels a whole sad life.

You can find short stories in books, magazines, and online. Many novelists started out by writing short stories first. It is a form built for the curious reader who wants a complete world in a small space.