Short stories can be summed up in something poet, novelist, and short story writer Stephen Vincent Benét once said, “[short stories are] Something that can be read in an hour and remembered for a lifetime.”

Unlike a novel, a short story is usually a dramatic and intense tale that is meant to be read in one sitting. It is an art form in some ways and poetic in others and perhaps this is the reason not many people write so many short stories anymore. It might be hard to believe, but the majority of the most popular literary short story collections are by long-dead authors like Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, and Flannery O'Connor. What can we learn from these long-dead authors? First, you as a writer must understand what a short story is on the surface.

The basic answer and the most simple answer is the word count. Short stories usually go up to 7,500 words but can sometimes be higher in word count, though typically they do not exceed 10,000 words (or else you might find yourself in the territory of a novella). In order to delve deeper into the complexities of short stories and how to write them, we must think of what Edgar Allan Poe has written about short story writing in his essay The Philosophy of Composition.

1. “... every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its dénouement before anything be attempted with the pen.”

- This means that you, as a writer, must know the ending of your story before you even begin to write it out.

2. “If any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression”

- Keep your story short and contained.

3. “... the choice of an impression, or effect, to be conveyed…”

- Figure out what your purpose is in writing this story, what do you want to convey to your readers? What do you want them to feel as they read and after they read your work?

4. “...have its beginning — at the end…”

- What Poe means here is that you should also have your climax established before you write, just as you have already had your plot established before writing your story.

Seldom do short stories ever have more than one climax and never do they have plot twists or else your narrative risks becoming underdeveloped.

5. “... a close circumscription of space is absolutely necessary to the effect of insulated incident: — it has the force of a frame to a picture.”

- Poe explains that you must create a contained setting. Your setting is the frame of your short story and your short story is the picture.

You might be wondering, why should I write a short story? Why should this matter? I plan to write a novel!

Perhaps you will write a novel, but perhaps the reason your novel seems unfinished or lacking action or plot is that it wasn’t meant to be so long. Maybe you need to cut things out or quicken the pacing. People often confuse length for the word count, when in fact length, in this context, is entirely due to plot events in your story. A lot of words does not equal plot or action. But perhaps you’re the sort of writer who wants to create a short story and after reading this you realize you have a novel in you. Novels are lengthy because they have room for detail and great development. Whatever your reason is for writing, it is always good to know what a short story is in order to figure out whether you have a novel in you or just a short story, maybe even a novella. It all comes down to pacing, setting, detail, and superficially, your word count.