ELEMENTS OF SHORT STORY

2013

Setting
Character
Plot
Conflict
Point of view
Theme

SETTING
The time and location in which a story
takes place is called the setting. For some
stories
the setting is very important, while for
others it is not. There are several aspects
of a story's setting to consider when
examining how setting contributes to a
story (some, or all, may be present in a
story):

 place - geographical location.

time - (historical period, time of day,
year, etc)
weather conditions - rainy, sunny,
stormy, etc?
social conditions - the daily life of the
character, local color
mood or atmosphere - What feeling is
created at the beginning of the story?
Is it bright and cheerful or dark and
frightening?

setting: The overall setting of a

narrative or dramatic work is the
general locale, historical time, and
social circumstances in which its
action occurs; the setting of a single
episode or scene within the work is the
particular physical location in which it
takes place.
The Greek term opsis (scene, or
spectacle) is now occasionally used
to denote a particular visible or
picturable setting in any work of

CHARACTER
There are two meanings for the word
character:
The person in a work of fiction.
The characteristics of a person.

Characters are the persons

represented in a dramatic or narrative
work, who are interpreted by the
reader as possessing particular moral,
intellectual, and emotional qualities by
inferences from what the persons say
and their distinctive
ways of saying itthe dialogueand
from what they dothe action.

The grounds in the characters

temperament, desires, and moral
nature for their speech and actions are
called their motivation.

The chief character in a plot, on whom our

interest centers, is called the protagonist
(or alternatively, the hero or heroine), and
if the plot is such that he or she is pitted
against an important opponent, that
character is called the antagonist.
If the antagonist is evil, or capable of
cruel and criminal actions, he or she is
called the villain.

Short stories use few characters. One

character is clearly central to the
story with all major events having
some importance to this character he/she is the PROTAGONIST. The
person (or force) that opposes the
main character is called the
ANTAGONIST.
A character in a work who, by sharp
contrast, serves to stress and
highlight the distinctive temperament
of the protagonist is termed a foil.

The Characteristics of a Person

In order for a story to seem real to
the reader its characters must seem
real.
Characterization is the information
the author gives the reader about the
characters themselves. The author
may reveal a character in several
ways:

 Through direct statements by the

author/narrator (Direct Characterization)
His/her physical appearance
What he/she says, thinks, feels and dreams
What he/she does or does not do
What others say about him/her and how
others react to him/her
Characters are convincing if they are:
consistent, motivated, and life-like
(resemble real people)the

Types of Characters
1. Rounded Characters many-sided
and complex personalities that you
would expect of actual human beings.
E. M. Forster, in Aspects of the Novel
(1927), introduced new terms for an
old distinction by discriminating
between flat and round characters. A
round character is complex in
temperament and motivation and is
represented with subtle particularity;
such a character therefore is as
difficult to describe with any

2. Flat Characters personalities that

are presented only briefly and not in
depth. A flat character (also called a
type, or two-dimensional), Forster
says, is built around a single idea or
quality and is presented without much
individualizing detail, and therefore
can be described adequately in a single
phrase or sentence.

3. Dynamic many-sided personalities

that change, for better or worse, by the
end of the story.
4. Static These characters are often
stereotypes, have one or two
characteristics that never change that
are emphasized e.g. brilliant detective,
drunk, scrooge, cruel stepmother, etc.

PLOT
The plot is how the author arranges
events to develop his or her basic
idea. It is the sequence of events in a
story or play. The plot is a planned,
logical series of events having a
beginning, middle, and end. The
short story usually has one plot so it
can be read in one sitting. There are
five essential parts of plot:

The plot (which Aristotle termed the

mythos) in a dramatic or narrative work is
constituted by its events and actions, as
these are rendered and ordered toward
achieving particular artistic and emotional
effects.
This description is deceptively simple,
because the actions (including verbal
discourse as well as physical actions) are
performed by particular characters in a
work, and are the means by which they
exhibit their moral and dispositional
qualities.

Plot and character are therefore interdependent

critical conceptsas Henry James has said, What
is character but the determination of incident?
What is incident but the illustration of
character?
Notice also that a plot is distinguishable from the
storythat is, a bare synopsis of the temporal
order of what happens.
If a character initiates a scheme which depends
for its success on the ignorance or gullibility of
the person or persons against whom it is directed,
it is called an intrigue.

As a plot evolves it arouses

expectations in the audience or reader
about the future course of events and
actions and how characters will
respond to them.
A lack of certainty on the part of a
concerned reader about what is going
to happen, especially to characters
with whom the reader has established
a bond of sympathy, is known as
suspense.

If what in fact happens violates the

expectations we have formed, it is
known as surprise. The interplay of
suspense and surprise is a prime
source of vitality in a traditional plot.
The most effective surprise, especially
in realistic narratives, is one which
turns out, in retrospect, to have been
grounded in what has gone before,
even though we have hitherto made the
wrong inference from the given facts of
circumstance and character. As E. M.
Forster put it, the shock of the

A surprise ending, in the pejorative

sense, is one
in which the author resolves the plot
without adequate earlier grounds in
characterization
or events, often by the use of highly
unlikely coincidence; there are numerous
examples in the short stories of O. Henry.

A plot is commonly said to have unity

of action (or to be an artistic whole)
if it is apprehended by the reader or
auditor as a complete and ordered
structure of actions, directed toward
the intended effect, in which none of
the prominent component parts, or
incidents, is nonfunctional; as Aristotle
put this concept, all the parts are so
closely connected that the transposal
or withdrawal of any one of them will
disjoint and dislocate the whole.

A successful later development which

Aristotle did not foresee is the type of
structural unity that can be achieved
with double plots, familiar in
Elizabethan drama.
In this form, a subplota second story
that is complete and interesting in its
own rightis introduced into the play;
when skillfully invented and managed,
the subplot serves to broaden our
perspective on the main plot and to
enhance

The German critic Gustav Freytag, in

Technique of the Drama (1863),
introduced an analysis of plot that is
known as Freytags Pyramid. He
described the typical plot of a five-act
play as a pyramidal shape, consisting
of a rising action, climax, and falling
action. Although the total pattern that
Freytag described applies only to a
limited number of plays, various of his
terms are frequently echoed by critics

Introduction
Rising Action
Climax / Turning Point
Falling action
Resolution / Denouement

Introduction - The beginning of the

story where the characters and the
setting is revealed.
Rising Action - This is where the
events in the story become
complicated and the conflict in the
story is revealed (events between the
introduction and climax).
Climax / Turning Point - This is the
highest point of interest and the
turning point of the story. The reader
wonders what will happen next; will

Falling action - The events and

complications begin to resolve
themselves. The reader knows what
has happened next and if the conflict
was resolved or not (events between
climax and denouement).
Resolution / Denouement - This is the
final outcome or untangling of events
in the story. (French for
unknotting): the action or intrigue
ends in success or failure for the
protagonist, the conflicts are settled,

In many plots the denouement involves

a reversal, or in Aristotles Greek term,
peripety, in the protagonists fortunes,
whether to the protagonists failure or
destruction, as in tragedy, or success,
as in comic plots.
The reversal frequently depends on a
discovery (in Aristotles term,
anagnorisis). This is the recognition by
the protagonist of something of great
importance hitherto unknown to him

It is helpful to consider climax as a

three-fold phenomenon:
1) The main character receives new
information
2) Accepts this information (realizes it
but does not necessarily agree with it)
3) Acts on this information (makes a
choice that will determine whether or
not he/she gains his objective).

CONFLICT
Conflict is essential to plot. Without conflict
there is no plot. It is the opposition of forces
which ties one incident to another and makes
the plot move.
Conflict is not merely limited to open
arguments, rather it is any form of opposition
that faces the main character.
Within a short story there may be only one
central struggle, or there may be one
dominant struggle with many minor ones.

There are two types of conflict:

External - A struggle with a force
outside one's self.
Internal - A struggle within one's self;
a person must make some decision,
overcome pain, quiet their temper,
resist an urge, etc.

There are four kinds of conflict:

Human vs. Human (physical) - The
leading character struggles with his
physical strength against other men.
Human vs. Nature - The leading
character struggles the forces of
nature.
Human vs. Society (social) - The
leading character struggles against
ideas, practices, or customs of other
people.
Human vs. Self (psychological) - The
leading character struggles with

POINT OF VIEW
Point of view, or P.O.V., is defined as
the angle or perspective from which
the story is told.
point of view: Point of view signifies
the way a story gets toldthe mode (or
modes) established by an author by
means of which the reader is presented
with the characters, dialogue, actions,
setting, and events which constitute
the narrative
in a work of fiction.
First Person

First Person: The story is told by the

protagonist or another character that
interacts closely with the protagonist
or other characters (using first person
pronouns I, me, we, etc). The
reader sees the story through this
person's eyes as he/she experiences it
and only knows what he/she knows or
feels.

This mode, insofar as it is consistently

carried out, limits the matter of the
narrative to what the first-person
narrator knows, experiences, infers, or
finds out by talking to other
characters. We distinguish between the
narrative I who is only a fortuitous
witness and auditor of the matters he
relates; or who is a participant, but
only a minor or peripheral one, in the
story; or who is himself or herself the

The self-conscious narrator shatters

any illusion that he or she is telling
something that has actually happened
by revealing to the reader that the
narration is a work of fictional art, or
by flaunting the discrepancies between
its patent fictionality
and the reality it seems to represent.

Innocent Eye: The story is told through

the eyes of a child (his/her judgment
being different from that of an adult).
Stream of Consciousness: The story is
told so that the reader feels as if they
are inside the head of one character
and knows all their thoughts and
reactions.

Second Person: (not used very often)

The main character in the story is
referred to using the second person
pronoun you. Second Person is most
often used in training manuals, roleplaying games and Choose Your Own
Adventure novels.

Third Person: The story is told using a

narrator who is located outside of the
action of the story and uses third
person pronouns such as he, she,
his, her, they etc.
The third person point of view can be
broken up into three different types:
Omniscient
Limited Omniscient
Objective

Omniscient Omniscient literally

means, all knowing. Using the third
person omniscient point of view the
narrator can move from character to
character, event to event, having free
access to the thoughts, feelings and
motivations of any character and can
introduce information where and
when he or she chooses.

Within this mode, the intrusive

narrator is one who not only reports,
but also comments on and evaluates
the actions and motives of the
characters,
and sometimes expresses personal
views about human life.

Limited Omniscient The story is told

by a third person narrator but from
the viewpoint of a character in the
story, usually the main character or
protagonist. The reader has access to
the thoughts and feelings of only one
character.

Objective (alternative terms are impersonal

or unintrusive). The author tells the story in
the third person. It appears as though a
camera is following the characters, going
anywhere, and recording only what is seen
and heard.
There is no comment on the characters or
their thoughts. No interpretations are
offered. The reader is placed in the position
of spectator without the author there to
explain. The reader has to interpret events
on his or her own.

THEME
The theme in a piece of fiction is its
controlling idea or its central insight. It is
the author's underlying meaning or main
idea that he is trying to convey.
The theme may be the author's thoughts
about a topic or view of human nature.
The title of the short story usually points
to what the writer is saying and he may
use various figures of speech to emphasize
his theme, such as: symbol, allusion,
simile, metaphor, hyperbole, or irony.

Theme is sometimes used

interchangeably with motif, but the
term is more usefully applied to a
general concept or doctrine, whether
implicit or asserted, which an
imaginative work is designed to involve
and make persuasive to the reader.