Do you know the difference between a short story and a novel? Besides the obvious neither did I until today. In the words of Brander Matthews a short story “shows one action, in one place, on one day.” in comparison to a novel where there can be multiple stories, characters, settings and it can go over an extended amount of time. I found this quite intersting as I have never approached it in this way. From a background of writing for film, it is sometimes useful to write you story plot in a short and concise way. I had always had a problem with this as I found it so hard to condense so many storylines, character and timeframes into one short page or two. Now I understand why because you can’t write a good short-story if it is in fact not intended to be a short-story.

Although his views were at times racist and extreme there was one other thing Matthews brought up that really resinated with me and that was his comments on what makes a good short-story.

“If to compression, originality and ingenuity he add also a touch of fantasy, so much the better”              -Brander Matthews 

This emphasises the difference between a novel and a short-story and really gives the short-story its own stand alone identity. In particular, the “touch of fantasy”, obviously not meaning it in the literal sense that there needs to be magic and fire breathing dragons in every short-story but in a wider sense that the readership walk away with from the story a sense of something different that stays with them and allows them to remember the story as a stand out experience.

Reference:

Brander Matthews, The Philosophy of the Short-story, 1901, New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.