Elements of short story

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 literature, including
a lyric poem.
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 manysided 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 adequacy as a person in
real life, and like real persons, is capable of
surprising us.
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 unexpected,
followed by the feeling, oh, thats all
right is a sign that all is well with the plot.
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 right
is introduced into the play; when skillfully
invented and managed, the subplot serves
to broaden our perspective on the main
plot and to enhance rather than diffuse the
overall effect.
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 of
prose fiction as well as drama.

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 the conflict be
resolved or not?
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, the mystery is solved, or the
misunderstanding cleared away.
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 or to her.
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
himself/herself; with his/her own soul,
ideas of right or wrong, physical
limitations, choices, etc.
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
Second Person
Third 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
central character in the story.
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, role-playing 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.