A short story is a literary genre, the art of a short story.  Short story and short story: common features and differences

A story is a large literary form of written information in literary and artistic design. When recording oral retellings, the story became isolated as an independent genre in written literature.

The story as an epic genre

The distinctive features of the story are the small number characters, small content, one story line. The story does not have intertwining events and cannot contain diversity artistic paints.

Thus, a story is a narrative work, which is characterized by a small volume, a small number of characters and the short duration of the events depicted. This type of epic genre goes back to the folklore genres of oral retelling, to allegories and parables.

In the 18th century, the difference between essays and stories was not yet defined, but over time, a story began to be distinguished from an essay by the conflict of the plot. There is a difference between the story of "large forms" and the story of "small forms", but often this distinction is arbitrary.

There are stories that trace character traits novel, and there are also small works with one plot line, which are still called a novel, not a story, despite the fact that all the signs point to this type of genre.

Novella as an epic genre

Many people believe that a short story is a certain type of story. But still, the definition of a short story sounds like a kind of small prose work. The short story differs from the short story in its plot, which is often sharp and centripetal, in the rigor of its composition and volume.

A novella most often reveals a pressing problem or issue through one event. As an example of a literary genre, the short story arose during the Renaissance - the most famous example is "The Decameron" by Boccaccio. Over time, the novella began to depict paradoxical and unusual incidents.

The heyday of the short story as a genre is considered to be the period of romanticism. Famous writers P. Merimee, E.T.A. Hoffman and Gogol wrote short stories, the central line of which was to destroy the impression of familiar everyday life.

Novels that depicted fateful events and the play of fate with man appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. Writers such as O. Henry, S. Zweig, A. Chekhov, I. Bunin paid considerable attention to the short story genre in their work.

The story as an epic genre

Such prose genre, as a story, is an intermediate place between a short story and a novel. Initially, the story was a source of narration about any real, historical events(“The Tale of Bygone Years”, “The Tale of the Battle of Kalka”), but later it became a separate genre for reproducing the natural course of life.

The peculiarity of the story is that in the center of its plot there is always main character and his life is the revelation of his personality and the path of his destiny. The story is characterized by a sequence of events in which harsh reality is revealed.

And such a topic is extremely relevant for such an epic genre. Famous stories are "The Station Agent" by A. Pushkin, " Poor Lisa"N. Karamzin, "The Life of Arsenyev" by I. Bunin, "The Steppe" by A. Chekhov.

The importance of artistic detail in storytelling

For a full disclosure of the writer’s intention and for a complete understanding of the meaning literary work artistic detail is very important. This could be a detail of an interior, a landscape or a portrait; the key point here is that the writer emphasizes this detail, thereby drawing the attention of readers to it.

This serves as a way to highlight some psychological trait of the main character or mood that is characteristic of the work. It is noteworthy that important role The artistic detail lies in the fact that it alone can replace many narrative details. In this way, the author of the work emphasizes his attitude towards the situation or person.

Need help with your studies?

Prose- oral or written speech without division into commensurate segments - poetry; in contrast to poetry, its rhythm is based on the approximate correlation of syntactic structures (periods, sentences, columns). Sometimes the term is used as a contrast fiction in general, scientific or journalistic literature, that is, not related to art.

Literary genres in prose

Despite the fact that the concept of genre determines the content of a work, and not its form, most genres gravitate towards either poetic writing (poems, plays) or prose (novels, stories). Such a division, however, cannot be taken literally, since there are many examples when works of various genres were written in forms unusual for them. Examples of this are novels and short stories by Russian poets, written in poetic form: “Count Nulin”, “House in Kolomna”, “Eugene Onegin” by Pushkin, “Treasurer”, “Sashka” by Lermontov. In addition, there are genres that are equally often written both in prose and in poetry (fairy tale).

In number literary genres, traditionally classified as prose, include:

Novel- a large narrative work with a complex and developed plot. The novel involves a detailed narrative about the life and personality development of the main character (heroes) during a crisis, non-standard period of life.

Epic- an epic work of monumental form, distinguished by national issues. Epic is a generic designation for large epic and similar works:

1) An extensive narrative in poetry or prose about outstanding national historical events.
2) A complex, long history of something, including a number of major events.

The emergence of the epic was preceded by the circulation of epic songs of a semi-lyrical, semi-narrative nature, caused by the military exploits of the clan, tribe and dedicated to the heroes around whom they were grouped. These songs formed into large poetic units - epics - captured by the integrity of personal design and construction, but only nominally associated with one or another author.

Tale- genus epic work, close to a novel, depicts some episode from life; It differs from the novel in less completeness and breadth of pictures of everyday life and morals. This genre does not have a stable volume and occupies an intermediate place between the novel, on the one hand, and the short story or novella, on the other, gravitating towards a chronicle plot that reproduces the natural course of life. In foreign literary criticism, the specifically Russian concept of “story” is correlated with the “short novel” (English: short novel or novella).

In Russia in the first third of the 19th century, the term “story” corresponded to what is now called “story”. The concept of a story or novella was not known at that time, and the term “story” meant everything that did not reach the volume of a novel. A story was also called a short story about an incident, sometimes anecdotal (“The Stroller” by Gogol, “The Shot” by Pushkin).

The plot of a classic story (as it developed in the second half of the 19th century) usually centers around a protagonist, whose identity and fate are revealed within a few events. Side plot lines in a story (unlike a novel), as a rule, are absent; the narrative chronotope is concentrated on a narrow period of time and space.

Sometimes the author himself characterizes the same work in different genre categories. Thus, Turgenev first called “Rudin” a story, and then a novel. The titles of the stories are often associated with the image of the main character (“Poor Liza” by N. M. Karamzin, “René” by R. Chateaubriand, “Netochka Nezvanova” by F. M. Dostoevsky) or with key element plot (“The Hound of the Baskervilles” by A. Conan Doyle, “The Steppe” by A. P. Chekhov, “County” by E. I. Zamyatin, etc.).

Novella(Italian novella - “news”) is a literary short narrative genre, comparable in volume to a story (which sometimes gives reason for their identification), but differing from it in genesis, history and structure. The author of the stories is usually called a short story writer, and the collection of stories is called a short story.

Novella - more short form fiction rather than a story or novel. Goes back to the folklore genres of oral retelling in the form of legends or instructive allegories and parables. Compared to more developed narrative forms, stories have few characters and one plot line (rarely several) with the characteristic presence of a single problem.

The relationship between the terms “story” and “short story” has not received an unambiguous interpretation in Russian and earlier Soviet literary criticism. Most languages ​​do not know the difference between these concepts at all. B.V. Tomashevsky calls the story a specifically Russian synonym for the international term “short story.” Another representative of the school of formalism, B. M. Eikhenbaum, proposed to separate these concepts on the basis that the short story is plot-based, and the story is more psychological and reflexive, closer to a plotless essay. The action-packed nature of the novella was also pointed out by Goethe, who considered it to be the subject of “an unheard-of event that has happened.” With this interpretation, the short story and the essay are two opposite aspects of the story.
Using the example of the work of O. Henry, Eikhenbaum identified the following features of the short story in its purest, “unclouded” form: brevity, sharp plot, neutral style of presentation, lack of psychologism, unexpected denouement. A story, in Eikhenbaum’s understanding, does not differ from a short story in volume, but differs in structure: characters or events are given detailed psychological characteristics, and visual and verbal texture comes to the fore.

The distinction between a short story and a short story, proposed by Eikhenbaum, received certain, although not universal, support in Soviet literary criticism. Authors of short stories are still called short story writers, and “a set of small-scale epic genres” are called short stories. The distinction between terms, unknown to foreign literary studies, also loses its meaning when applied to experimental prose of the 20th century (for example, the short prose of Gertrude Stein or Samuel Beckett).
The typical structure of a classic short story: beginning, climax, denouement. The exhibition is optional. More romance early XIX centuries, the unexpected “falcon” turn (the so-called pointe) in the novella was appreciated, which corresponds in Aristotle’s poetics to the moment of recognition, or peripeteia. In this regard, Viktor Shklovsky noted that the description of happy mutual love does not create a short story; a short story requires love with obstacles: “A loves B, B does not love A; when B fell in love with A, then A no longer loves B.”

Story- a small epic genre form of fiction - small in terms of the volume of life phenomena depicted, and hence in terms of the volume of its text.

The stories of one author are characterized by cyclization. In the traditional writer-reader relationship model, the story is typically published in a periodical; The works accumulated over a certain period are then published as a separate book as a collection of short stories.

Short story/short story and novella/novel

Before mid-19th centuries, the concepts of story and story in Russia were not really distinguished. Any small narrative form was called a story, any large form was called a novel. Later, the idea prevailed that a story differs from a short story in that the plot in it focuses not on one central event, but on a whole series of events covering a significant part of the life of the hero, and often several heroes. The story is calmer and more leisurely than a short story or short story.

It is generally accepted that a single short story as a whole is not characterized by a wealth of artistic colors, an abundance of intrigue and interweaving in events - unlike a story or novel, which can describe many conflicts and wide circle various problems and actions. At the same time, H. L. Borges pointed out that after the novelistic revolution turn of the XIX century and 20th centuries a story is able to convey everything that a novel does, without requiring excessive amounts of time and attention from the reader.

For Edgar Poe, a novella is a fictional story that can be read in one sitting; for H.G. Wells - in less than an hour. Nevertheless, the distinction between a short story and other “small forms” from a novel based on the criterion of volume is largely arbitrary. So, for example, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is usually defined as a story (a day in the life of one character), although in length this text is closer to a novel. On the contrary, small works by René Chateaubriand or Paolo Coelho with love entanglements and intrigues are considered novels.

Some of Chekhov's stories, although short in length, are a kind of mini-novels. For example, in the textbook story “Ionych,” the author “managed to condense, without loss, the grandiose volume of the entire human life, in all its tragicomic completeness, into 18 pages of text.” In terms of compressing material, Leo Tolstoy advanced almost further than all the classics: in the short story “Alyosha the Pot” there is a whole human life told in just a few pages.

Essay- a prose composition of small volume and free composition, expressing individual impressions and considerations on a specific occasion or issue and obviously not claiming to be a definitive or exhaustive interpretation of the subject.

In terms of volume and function, it borders, on the one hand, with a scientific article and a literary essay (with which an essay is often confused), and on the other, with a philosophical treatise. The essayistic style is characterized by imagery, fluidity of associations, aphoristic, often antithetical thinking, an emphasis on intimate frankness and conversational intonation. Some theorists consider it as the fourth, along with epic, lyricism and drama, type of fiction.

The essay genre was not typical for Russian literature. Examples of the essayistic style are found in A. N. Radishchev (“Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”), A. I. Herzen (“From the Other Shore”), F. M. Dostoevsky (“A Writer’s Diary”). At the beginning of the 20th century, V. I. Ivanov, D. S. Merezhkovsky, Andrei Bely, Lev Shestov, V. V. Rozanov turned to the essay genre, and later - Ilya Erenburg, Yuri Olesha, Viktor Shklovsky, Konstantin Paustovsky, Joseph Brodsky. Literary critical assessments of modern critics, as a rule, are embodied in a variation of the essay genre.

Biography- an essay that sets out the history of the life and activities of a person. a description of a person's life, made by other people or by himself (autobiography). Biography is a source of primary sociological information that allows us to identify psychological type personality in its historical, national and social conditioning.

A biography recreates a person’s history in connection with the social reality, culture and way of life of his era. A biography can be scientific, artistic, popular, etc.

Report 7th grade.

Story - narrative epic genre with a focus on small volume and unity of the artistic event.

The genre has two historically established varieties: the story (in a narrower sense) and the short story. “The difference between a short story and a short story does not seem fundamental to me,” wrote the researcher of the European short story E. Melitinsky. B. Tomashevsky believed that story is the Russian term for short story. The majority (though not all) of other literary scholars share the same opinion. The small epic form in European literature, at least until the 19th century, is usually called a short story. What is a novella? There is no theoretical definition of a short story, most likely because... the short story appears in reality in the form of a rather variety of options, due to cultural and historical differences... It is quite obvious that brevity itself is an essential feature of the novella. Brevity separates the short story from large epic genres, in particular from the novel and story, but unites it with a fairy tale, epic, fable, anecdote” (E. Meletinsky).

The genetic origins of the novella are precisely in a fairy tale, fable, anecdote. What distinguishes it from an anecdote is the possibility of a tragic or sentimental plot rather than a comic one. From the fable - the absence of allegories and edification. From a fairy tale - the absence of a magical element. If magic does take place (mainly in an oriental novel), it is perceived as something amazing.

The classic novella originated during the Renaissance. It was then that such her specific features, as an acute, dramatic conflict, unusual incidents and turns of events, and in the life of the hero - unexpected turns of fate. Goethe wrote: “A short story is nothing more than an “unheard of incident” that happened.” These are Boccaccio’s short stories from the collection “Decameron.” Here, for example, is the plot of the fourth short story of the second day: “Landolfo Ruffolo, impoverished, becomes a corsair; taken by the Genoese, wrecked in sea, escapes on a box full of jewelry, finds shelter with a woman from Corfu and returns home a rich man." Each literary era left its mark on the short story genre. Thus, in the era of romanticism, the content of the short story often becomes mystical, the line between real events and their refraction in the consciousness of the hero (“The Sandman” by Hoffmann).

Until the establishment of realism in literature, the short story avoided psychologism and philosophy, inner world the hero was conveyed through his actions and deeds. Any kind of descriptiveness was alien to her; the author did not intrude into the narrative, did not express his assessments. With the development of realism, the short story, as it was in its classic designs, almost disappears. Realism of the 19th century is unthinkable without descriptiveness and psychologism. The short story is being replaced by other types of short narrative, among which the first place, especially in Russia, comes to the story, which for a long time existed as a type of short story (by A. Marlinsky, Odoevsky, Pushkin, Gogol, etc.). In the prospectus " Educational book literature for Russian youth" Gogol gave a definition of the story, which includes the story as a special variety (“a masterfully and vividly told picture incident”). What is meant is an ordinary “case” that can happen to any person.

Since the late 1940s in Russian literature, the story has been understood as special genre both in relation to a short story, and in comparison with a “physiological sketch”. The essay is dominated by direct description and research, it is always journalistic. The story, as a rule, is dedicated to a specific fate, talks about a separate event in a person’s life, and is grouped around a specific episode. This is its difference from the story, which is a more detailed form, which usually describes several episodes, a segment of the hero’s life. Chekhov's story “I Want to Sleep” talks about a girl who, on sleepless nights, is driven to the point of committing a crime: she strangles someone who is preventing her from falling asleep. infant. The reader learns about what happened to this girl before only from her dream; what will happen to her after the crime is committed is generally unknown. All the characters, except for the girl Varka, are outlined very briefly. All the events described prepare the central one - the murder of a baby. The story is short in length. But the point is not in the number of pages (there are short stories and relatively long stories) and not even in the number of plot events, but in the author’s focus on extreme brevity. Thus, Chekhov’s story “Ionych” is close in content not even to a story, but to a novel (almost the entire life of the hero is traced). But all the episodes are presented very briefly; the author’s goal is the same - to show the spiritual degradation of Doctor Startsev. According to Jack London, "a story is... a unity of mood, situation, action."

The extreme brevity of the narrative requires special attention to detail. Sometimes one or two skillfully found details replace a lengthy characterization of the hero. Thus, in Turgenev’s story “Khor and Kapynich,” Khor’s boots, seemingly made of marble leather, or a bunch of strawberries presented by Kalinich to his friend, reveal the essence of both peasants - Khor’s thriftiness and Kapinich’s poetry.

“But the selection of details is not the whole difficulty,” wrote the master of the story Nagibin. - The story, by its genre nature, must be absorbed immediately and entirely, as if “in one gulp”; as well as all the “private” figurative material of the story. This places special demands on the details in the story. They must be arranged so that instantly, “with the speed of reading,” they form an image, giving the reader a living, picturesque idea...” Thus, in Bunin’s story “Antonov Apples” practically nothing happens, but skillfully selected details give the reader a “living, picturesque idea” of the passing past.

The small volume of the story also determines its stylistic unity. The narration is usually told from one person. This can be the author, the narrator, or the hero. But in the story, much more often than in “large” genres, the pen is, as it were, passed to the hero, who himself tells his story. Often before us is a tale: the story of a certain fictitious person who has his own, clearly expressed speech style (stories by Leskov, in the 20th century - by Remizov, Zoshchenko, Bazhov, etc.).

The story, like the short story, bears the features of the literary era in which it was created. Thus, Maupassant’s stories incorporated the experience of psychological prose, and therefore, even if they can be called short stories (in literary studies it is sometimes customary to call them that), then short stories that are fundamentally different from the classical short story. Chekhov's stories are characterized by a subtext that was practically unknown in the literature of the mid-19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, modern trends also captured the story (stories by Sologub, Bely, Remizov, partly by L. Andreev, etc.)

IN European literature In the 20th century, the story was enriched by the artistic discoveries of all prose (“stream of consciousness”, strengthening of elements of psychoanalysis, temporary “interruptions”, etc.). These are the stories of Kafka, Camus, F. Mauriac, A. Moravia and others.

In the 1920-1930s in Russia, heroic-romantic (V. Ivanov, Babel, Pilnyak, Sholokhov, etc.) and satirical stories(Bulgakov, Zoshchenko, Ilf and Petrov, etc.). The short story remains a productive genre today. All its varieties are successfully developing: everyday stories, psychological, philosophical, satirical, fantastic ( Science fiction and fantasy), close to a novella and practically plotless.

Questions about the report:

1) What is a story?

2) What is a short story?

3) How did the short story genre develop in literature?

4) How did the short story genre develop in world literature?

5) How does a short story differ from a short story?

To denote a story created on some newly processed traditional material, the word appears nova. Hence - Italian novella(in the most popular collection of the late 13th century, Novellino, also known as One Hundred Ancient Novels), which, starting in the 15th century, spread throughout Europe.

The genre was established after the appearance of Giovanni Boccaccio’s book “The Decameron” (c.), the plot of which was that several people, fleeing the plague outside the city, tell each other short stories. Boccaccio in his book created the classic type of Italian short story, which was developed by his many followers in Italy itself and in other countries. In France, under the influence of the translation of the Decameron, the collection “One Hundred New Novels” appeared around 1462 (however, the material owed more to the facets of Poggio Bracciolini), and Margarita Navarskaya, based on the model of the Decameron, wrote the book “Heptameron” ().

Characteristics of the novella

The novella is characterized by several important features: extreme brevity, a sharp, even paradoxical plot, a neutral style of presentation, lack of psychologism and descriptiveness, and an unexpected denouement. The plot structure of a novella is similar to a dramatic one, but usually simpler.

Goethe spoke about the action-packed nature of the novella, giving it the following definition: “an unheard-of event that has happened.”

The short story emphasizes the significance of the denouement, which contains an unexpected turn (pointe, “falcon turn”). According to the French researcher, “ultimately, one can even say that the entire novel is conceived as a denouement.” Viktor Shklovsky wrote that a description of happy mutual love does not create a novella; a novella requires love with obstacles: “A loves B, B does not love A; when B fell in love with A, then A no longer loves B.” He identified a special type of ending, which he called a “false ending”: usually it is made from a description of nature or weather.

Among Boccaccio's predecessors, the novella had a moralizing attitude. Boccaccio retained this motif, but for him the morality flowed from the story not logically, but psychologically, and was often only a pretext and device. The later novella convinces the reader of the relativity of moral criteria.

Novella, short story, tale

Often a short story is identified with a story and even a story. In the 19th century, these genres were difficult to distinguish: for example, “Belkin’s Tales” by A. S. Pushkin are, rather, five short stories.

The story is similar to the short story in volume, but differs in structure: highlighting the visual and verbal texture of the narrative and gravitating towards detailed psychological characteristics.

The story is different in that its plot focuses not on one central event, but on a whole series of events covering a significant part of the hero’s life, and often several heroes. The story is calmer and more leisurely.

Novella and novel

The collection of short stories was the predecessor of the novel.

Novella in Chinese literature

China is a classical country of the short story, which developed here on the basis of constant interaction between literature and folklore from the 3rd to the 19th centuries: in the 3rd-6th centuries. Mythological tales were widespread, mixed with excerpts from historical prose and partly designed according to its canons (later, in the 16th century, they were called the term “zhiguai xiaoshuo,” i.e., stories about miracles). They were the most important source of classical fiction novel the Tang and Song eras (VIII-XIII centuries), the so-called “Chuanqi”, written in the classical literary language. Since the Song era, information has appeared about the folk tale “huaben” (literally “the basis of the story”), which widely used both the heritage of the classical Tang chuanqi and the folklore sources, which democratized the short story genre both in language and theme. Huaben gradually moved completely from folklore to literature and reached their highest development in written form (“imitative huaben”) at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries.

Thomas Hardy is considered to be the oldest of English novelists (although he was neither the first nor the oldest). Hardy was closely associated with the realistic traditions of the Dickensian school. Another great English short story writer, Oscar Wilde, was more of an aesthete and rejected realism. Problems of sociology, politics, social struggle, etc. were alien to his short stories. A special place in English short stories is occupied by such a movement as naturalism. Characteristic direction naturalism became the so-called “slum literature” (collection of short stories by Arthur Morrison “Slum Tales”, 1894; George Moore’s short story “Theater in the Wilderness”, etc.). Another trend in English literature that contrasted itself with aesthetes and naturalists is considered “neo-romanticism.” English novelists from among the “last romantics” were Robert Stevenson, and later Joseph Conrad and Conan Doyle. At the beginning of the 20th century, the English short story became more “psychological”. It is worth noting here Katherine Mansfield, whose short stories were often practically “plotless.” All attention in them was focused on the person’s inner experiences, his feelings, thoughts, and mood. In the first half of the 20th century, the English short story was characterized by psychologism, aestheticism and “stream of consciousness”. The most prominent representatives English literature eras of modernism were Virginia Woolf, Thomas Eliot, James Joyce, Aldous Huxley.

Among English writers, V different time who created works in the short story genre, such wonderful authors as Jerome K. Jerome, John Galsworthy, Somerset Maugham, Dylan Thomas, John Sommerfield, Doris Lessing, James Aldridge and others.

Links

Definitions and characteristics

• ““Solid” and “free” forms in the epic: short story, story, story.” In the book: “Theoretical poetics. Concepts and definitions. Reader." Author-compiler N. D. Tamarchenko
• M. Yunovich. “Novella” - article from “ Literary Encyclopedia"(1929-1939)
• Lyudmila Polikovskaya. “Story” - an article from the Krugosvet encyclopedia
• M. Petrovsky. “Tale” - article from the “Literary Encyclopedia” (1925)
• B. A. Maksimov. “Features of the plot structure in the author’s fairy tale and fantasy novella of the Romantic era”
• O. Yu. Antsiferova. "Detective genre and romantic art system"

Individual authors and works

• V. I. Tyupa. “Aesthetic analysis of a literary text (Part one: The plot of M. Lermontov’s “Fatalist”)”
• Yu. V. Kovalev. “Edgar Poe” - article from “History of World Literature”

Notes

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

See what “Short story (literature)” is in other dictionaries:

- (Italian novella, Spanish novela, French nouvelle, German Novelle) a term denoting in the history and theory of literature one of the forms of narrative artistic creativity. Along with the name N., which became international, ... ... Literary encyclopedia

1. NOVELLA, s; and. [ital. novella] A short story characterized by a clear composition, intense action and a dramatic plot that gravitates toward the unusual. ◁ Novelistic, oh, oh. Naya literature. N. genre. No composition. 2. NOVELLA,… … encyclopedic Dictionary

- (in Bologna, date unknown, died 1333) Italian jurist and professor of law at the University of Bologna. As the daughter of Giovanni di Andrea, she received a good education at home and often lectured in her father's place. According to Christina... Wikipedia

Taking into account all the features short story, sometimes it can be very difficult to determine the difference between a novella, a story and a sketch (a short sketch, sketch). Everyone knows what at least a story is exactly: either narrative prose, defined as “shorter than a short story” or, in the words of the first deep researcher small form Edgar Allan Poe - "no longer than can be read at one sitting."

Apart from this definition, according to Western educators, only two things can be distinguished that characterize a short story. First, the story is about something that happened to someone. Secondly, a well-composed story demonstrates the harmony of all principles more fully than any other literary form, with the possible exception of poetry, that is, it is comprehensive and “ideal.” “And this is already quite enough,” says Canadian educator Rust Hills, “the first statement distinguishes a short story from a sketch, and the second from a novella.”

So, a story differs from a sketch in that it is about something that happened to someone. A sketch is just a short and static description human character, place, time, etc. In sketches describing a person, his life path, - the hero, so to speak, is constant. That is, for example, if it contains a description of any period of time, and we are shown the sequence of the hero’s actions - from morning to evening - it is assumed that this hero remains unchanged every morning, every day and every evening. And in in this case, if there is any action in such a sketch, then it is intended only to determine the character of the hero, and not to develop it: the hero does not receive anything new, does not learn from the situations that are sent to him, nor doesn't change one iota. Any incident described in the sketch is regarded only as an example of the hero’s behavior, and not as something that changed his life and prompted him to take any decisive actions and actions, as happens in the story. It is assumed that after some time, the hero, placed within the same circumstances, will react and behave in exactly the same way, regardless of how many times this is repeated. The story is dynamic, not static: the same things simply cannot happen again. The character of the hero must change and does change, even if not radically.

A short story differs from a short story not only in length, but also in many other ways, although both genres involve changes in the character of the heroes with one difference, that the short story has such space and time that contribute to a larger set of events and various effects. Edgar Allan Poe viewed the story as a kind of conductor of one “strong and unique effect”: “If the author’s desire is not expressed in the search and creation of this effect on the audience, then it has already failed. This intention, explicit or hidden, must be evident throughout the structure of the story.” This famous saying of Poe must, of course, be taken into account, but on the other hand, we cannot say with complete confidence that in any well-developed story this degree of total unity of everything must necessarily be present - what we have defined as “the harmony of all principles.” ”, - but in any case, this is not required at all in a good short story.

A good storyteller should not constantly develop and expand the list of minor characters and be clever with extra-plot lines, while a good novelist is inclined to change the point of view, describe the same events from different angles, constantly pushing the reader to important details. The narrator tries to adhere to one single point of view in order to focus entirely on the problems of his story.

A good storyteller will never omit any of the technical devices of storytelling (plot, point of view, main theme, style of language, expression, symbolism) that a novelist can do. In the story, everything is interconnected extremely closely. main topic in a successful story is inseparably linked to the actions of the characters, but it cannot be guessed in all other aspects of the story, even in the language used. In terms of the importance of language and the relationship between sound and meaning, a story is comparable to poetry. For example, the poetic metaphor of light and death in Hemingway’s story “A Clean, Well-Light Place” echoes Shakespeare’s sonnets in the richness of their language and symbolism of the conflict between good and evil. In general, it should be noted that language in a story is of paramount importance. Language creates the style of writing, is responsible for the author's tone, is used to create a certain atmosphere and mood, foreshadows certain plot twists, and, of course, depends on the point of view from which the story is written.

A good story must contain a harmonious transition from the general to the particular, imperceptible at first glance, as well as an integral connection of all parts, each sentence with the previous one, which is rarely seen in a short story.

“Everything must work and interact. The previous must exaggerate the subsequent and be inseparable from it. - Emphasizes Rust Hills. “All this saves the reader time and brings out the essence.” javascript:void(1);

Based on materials from the literary workshop of Anastasia Ponomareva