Merging of the Short-Story Genres

Irum Abbasi, Laila Al-Sharqi Laila Al-Sharqi

Abstract


Story writing craft evolved through the centuries before rising as a separate genre. Unity is an essential element of short story through which it exhibits singularity of effect, unity of impression, and the totality of interest. After the success of the short story, writers further shortened their narratives and eventually short fiction arose as a sub-category of short story. Short fiction further differentiated into a sub-category called the “sudden fiction” that referred to all shortened forms of short fiction. Having mastered artistic brevity, writers began writing even more condensed narratives, and the sudden fiction differentiated into two types: the new sudden fiction and the flash fiction. The new sudden fiction was akin to the traditional story comprising of up to 1500 words; whereas, the flash fiction was similar to the Hemingway’s classic The Very Short Story consisting of up to 750 words. However, the flash fiction later reconfigured to include all short-short stories comprising of 50-1500 words. This paper briefly overviews the evolution of the short story genre and reviews the delicate merger of the short story with the contemporary short-short story.


Keywords


Brevity; Short-story; Flash fiction; Matthew; Poe

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/7962

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