A short story is a short, fictional, prose narrative that usually focuses on a single character in crisis. Contrast the novel, a long, fictional, prose narrative that may focus on several characters or on a character undergoing either a series of crises or a single complex crisis.

How short is short? Edgar Allan Poe said a "tale" could be read in a single sitting, probably an hour or two. Poe also emphasized the unity of stories, in which all elements are interrelated. One of the pleasures of re-reading a story is recognizing these interrelations and the foreshadowing details that suggest the eventual outcome.

What is fictional? Made up. Imaginary. Faulkner was not a woman who poisoned her lover. Welty was not a traveling salesman. Marquez had no discernable wings. And although Mishima did commit suicide and Bambara did visit F.A.O. Schwarz, Mishima is not Shinji Teakeyama and Bambara is not Sylvia. The worlds in the stories are imaginary worlds that we enter as if they were real for an hour or two. And no matter how unusual, the people, places, and events must have verisimilitude, or the appearance of reality. They must seem believable within the context of that imaginary world in which houses think, foxes talk, and people fly without machines.

Prose is the language of everyday speech and writing. It is differentiated from the careful rhythms and line patterns of poetry.

The main character, or protagonist, typically confronts one antagonist, an opposing person or force or value, in a conflict. Sometimes a story has more than one conflict and more than one antagonist, perhaps an external opponent such as a person or natural force as well as an internal conflict such as a moral or spiritual dilemma. The arrangement of the events in the conflict--usually leading to a resolution of some kind—is the story's plot.

We come to know and understand the characters through characterization, the writer's method of revealing a person through what the person says and does (and thinks) as well as what other characters say about them.

Related to characterization is the narrative point of view the lens or perspective through which a story is told or the identity and voice of the storyteller. Follow the narrative point of view link for details.

The setting, or time and place of the story, is sometimes significant, sometimes incidental. Setting includes the full historical, cultural, and spiritual context, not just the day and year and city.

Crucial to readers' understanding of a story and of particular help for understanding tone (author's attitude toward the subject) and theme (underlying meanings) is theme. Consider carefully the concept of theme as explained in our textbook. A literary work's theme is not so precise or predictable as a "moral" or "lesson." Additionally, a literary work can have more than one theme.

Usually, we can express each theme in complete sentences that identify both a concept and an attitude:

• concept (such as love or fear or ambition) plus
• attitude toward or approach to that concept (such as "Family love can undermine individual integrity" or "Fear of the unknown can be a barrier to happiness" or "Ambition may bring glory to a person but be destructive of friends and family").

Interpretations of theme can be illustrated by details from the work along with thoughtfully connected explanations of ways those details support the theme you have identified.

After reading many stories and other literary works (indeed after attending to a variety of works of art), we become aware of motifs aspects of a particular work that recur and have special significance because they are not isolated and because they reinforce our understanding and appreciation of the work. A motif may recur

• within a single work and thus become a symbol as well, for example, the rug in "Barn Burning" or the play of darkness and light in "Young Goodman Brown"
• among works by an author, for example, the New England countryside in the poetry of Robert Frost or the people of Jefferson in the fiction of William Faulkner or the character Bech in the fiction of John Updike
• among works by various authors, for example, the seeking of justice in Sophocles' Antigone, Glaspell's Trifles, and Faulkner's "Barn Burning" or the initiation motif in "Barn Burning," "The Lesson," "Young Goodman Brown," and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Symbols are elements of a literary work--usually literal, concrete elements like objects, characters, and events--that develop abstract often non-literal meanings according to the way they are presented. These elements have literal meanings and are what they seem; at the same time, they develop special significance according to the context. The literal element becomes inseparably associated with its figurative, abstract meaning. Look for ways the literary work emphasizes the importance of an element to help you determine whether or not it is a symbol.

• Traditional symbols include the rose, national or organizational flags, handshakes, and religious items like the cross or Star of David.
• Special symbols emerge from the special significance presented in the individual work: the rug in "Barn Burning," the bottle trees in "Livvie," the albatross in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," the  unicorn in The Glass Menagerie, and the river in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
• Allegory is a form of symbolism in which literal elements, usually characters and places, become closely connected with abstract concepts such as love, death, peace, war. Usually there is a direct equivalent and clear moral purpose, including clearly symbolic names like "Young Goodman Brown" in Hawthorne's story of the same name. Usually the entire work can be construed as allegorical rather than a part of it.

A good starting point for online literary research is my Literary Research and Resources Website, which has links to my annotated Literary Resources Online, including Voice of the Shuttle with its extensive online resources for research in all the humanities. Selected early and recent literary criticism is listed there.