A short story is a short work of fiction. Fiction, as you know, is prose writing about imagined events and characters. Prose writing differs from poetry in that it does not depend on verses, meters or rhymes for its organization and presentation.
Novels are another example of fictional prose and are much longer than short stories. Some short stories, however, can be quite long. If a a short story is a long one, say fifty to one hundred pages, we call it a novella.
American literature contains some of the world's best examples of the short story. Readers around the world enjoy the finely crafted stories of American writers such as O. Henry, Stephen Crane, Jack London, Mark Twain and Edgar Allen Poe.
What makes these authors such remarkable short story writers? They are true masters at combining the five key elements that go into every great short story: character, setting, conflict, plot and theme.
The ELLSA web-site uses one of these five key elements as the focus of each of the five on-line lessons in the Classics of American Literature section. In each lesson, you will explore a single American short story from the USIA Ladder Series and discover how the author uses a certain element.
The definitions on the right are repeated on the first page of each short story lesson.
