Maybe you’ve considered two types of stories: a parable and modern realistic short stories. But short fiction comes in more than these two varieties. Other popular forms we might know include fairy tales and mystery stories, science fiction stories, and popular romance. While we need not rehearse all of short fiction’s various guises, it will nonetheless be useful to describe its more common and enduring types.
Parables, Fables, and Tales
You may be familiar with The Prodigal Son, a parable. A parable is a brief story that teaches a lesson, often of a religious or spiritual nature. Another early story form is the fable, a relative of the parable.
Like parables, fables are brief stories that point to a moral. The difference is that the moral of the fable is stated explicitly. The two forms also differ in subject and tone. Fables often highlight human failings. They frequently include animals as characters, and their tone is satirical. As we have stated, parables are stories through which a religious or spiritual point is made. The purpose is instructive, their tone serious.
Another early form of fiction is the tale. A tale is a story that narrates strange or fabulous happenings. A tale does not necessarily point to a moral as a fable or parable does, but it is almost as generalized in its depiction of character and setting. While we may read fables and parables to understand their meaning, our interest in tales will generally incline more toward what happens and possibly the emotions we experience.
The short story became popular in the nineteenth century. During this period, fiction tended toward a detailed representation of everyday life, typically the lives and experiences familiar to middle class individuals. Besides its realistic impulse, the modern short story differs from the ancient forms of short fiction in the ratio between summary and scene. Parables, fables, and tales tend to tell what happens in a general overview of the action. Short stories, on the other hand, typically reveal character in dramatic scenes, in moments of action, and in exchanges of dialogue. In addition, the short story has traditionally been more concerned with the revelation of character through flashes of insight and shocks of recognition than the early fictional forms.
Typical features of the modern realistic short story include the following:
1. Its plot illustrates a sequence of causally related incidents.
2. Its characters are recognizably human, and they are motivated by identifiable social and psychological forces.
3. Its time and place are clearly established, with realistic rather than fantastic settings.
4. Its elements – plot, character, setting, style, point of view, irony, symbol and theme – work toward a single effect, unifying the story.
Non-realistic Story
In an effort to break away from the prevailing conventions of the realistic short story, some modern storytellers have mixed features of the early story forms – elements of the supernatural, for example – with realistic conventions. I.B. Singer includes supernatural elements. Such writers as Leslie Marmon Silko and Gabriel Garcia Marquez employ legendary materials in their stories. Shifting back and forth between the realistic and fantastic worlds, these modern storytellers have discovered new ways to represent human experience powerfully and incisively.
Occasionally modern writers of short fiction employ non-realistic detail so heavily that readers are disoriented and unsettled. Our confusion derives from our expectations: We expect in part the conventions of realism to operate, and when they do not we need to readjust our sense of what we are reading.
The important thing, however, about non-realistic stories is to accept them on their own terms. In accepting their break from realistic conventions we increase our chances of responding fully to the pleasures they offer. We also enlarge our understanding of what a short story can be.
Short Novel
The short novel, sometimes called the novella, shares characteristics with both the novel and short story. Unlike the short story, which must make its mark quickly, the short novel can allow a slower unfolding of character, incident, idea. The short story’s brevity demands a single snapshot of time rather than the collage or mosaic that can be created in a novel, long or short. Yet like the short story, the short novel relies on glimpses of understanding, flashes of insight, quick turns of action to solidify theme or reveal character.
What distinguishes the short novel from its longer counterpart is its greater efficiency and sharper focus. Lacking time and space to accumulate incident, develop character, and amplify theme, the short novel cannot achieve the novel’s panoramic compression of effect that are the hallmarks of the short novel form.
What is a Parable?” Jesus Christ.
“Fable.” Wikipedia.
“What is a tale?” WikiAnswers.
Marion Zimmer Bradley, “What is a short story?” MZB.
