Short Stories

Short stories are a genre of fiction with an 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. 
(Definition courtesy of Merriam-Webster Dictionary).

Here are some literary terms you will need to know: Conflict, Exposition, setting, characters, inciting moment, rising action, climax, reversal, resolution, Denouement, Epiphany.

Freytag's Pyramid

Freytag was a 19th century novelist who noticed patterns in stories and developed the pyramid below to help diagram them.

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The famous author Kurt Vonnegut has his own ideas about the shapes of stories as seen below:

Here is Vonnegut discussing how to write an effective short story.


 Here is Stephen King on the art of writing a short story