What Is a Short Story

    What can be classified as a short story? By definition a short story is "an in invented prose narrative shorter than a novel usually dealing with a few characters and aiming at unity of effect and often concentrating on the creation of mood rather than plot". This basically states that is it a written tale that happens to be shorter than a novel. I can't truly argue with this but i feel that a short story goes deeper then. A real short story will leave you thinking at the end about what you just read. Hemingway once wrote a short story that was only 6 lines long. "For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn." This indeed does fit the description of being shorter then a novel but as I mentioned, it makes you wonder what you just read. It isn't 100% complete but that is what makes it a good short story. It is open for interpretation. Did the baby die? Was there an abortion? Were they girl shoes and it was a baby boy? No one will ever know, but it makes you sit there and think about it. 

     Short stories take an idea and craft something around it. For example we had read the story deep in the heart which was about a child around the age of 10 who was dying of a severe illness. The boy was granted a wish by the make a wish foundation and his wish was to go hunting. They didn't advise it but he still wanted to do it anyway. One night his father saw a deer in the yard and grabbed his gun, and his son to take him to shoot the deer. The son shot the deer, but then proceeded to take a second shot and kill his own father. This leaves you speechless at the end of everything. Simply wondering what just happened. There was an idea placed within this story, what the story was based completely around. It was about how this 10 year old boy who was dying, did not want to die alone. He was afraid to be alone so he took his father with him. The author took the idea of not wanting to die alone, and turned it into a short story. This is what I feel a short story is about. Taking an idea and letting the reader figure out what the meaning is to them. 

    Short stories tend to be like novels because they have the basic elements of a story such as things like a plot, setting, and characterization; though they do not need to have those elements. Some short stories can succeed without a few elements. The story we read earlier this year with the fish tank is proof of this. That story did not have a plot and merely just talked about perspective of the fish against the human being. Short stories can be almost anything that in some ways captivates a reader and makes them think about an idea. Whether that idea is something simple as how a fish feels before being taken out of the tank, or as deep as not wanting to die alone. A short story is a narrative that conveys a indirect message to the reader.