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Description:
Oh ye of small attention spans: if novels don't float your boat, short stories just might. Even if that boat is less of an oil tanker and more of a kayak.
Transcript
- 00:04
Short Stories, a la Shmoop. Let’s say you’ve got about 200 hours to
- 00:09
kill.
- 00:10
A novel might be a nice way to pass the time.
- 00:13
At least until someone comes to rescue you from that desert island.
- 00:17
But what if you’ve got some big plans this evening…
Full Transcript
- 00:19
…and you just need a smaller dose of fiction to while away the minutes?
- 00:23
Short stories are little nuggets of literature…
- 00:26
…chewable tablets of plot, character, theme and setting…
- 00:29
…that take all the best parts of novels and shrink them down into pocket-sized morsels.
- 00:34
You know how the smaller versions of candy bars are called fun-size?
- 00:36
Yeah, it’s like that. However, short stories aren’t merely…
- 00:38
shorter.
- 00:38
Writers haven’t zapped full-length novels with a shrink ray and miniaturized the darn
- 00:43
things.
- 00:44
Short stories are their own animal. Rather than taking chapters and chapters to
- 00:48
flesh out characters and develop plot…
- 00:50
…short stories don’t have that luxury…
- 00:52
…so they generally have a very different purpose than novels do.
- 00:56
They usually center on a single incident or event…
- 01:00
…and are intended to reveal something significant about human nature…
- 01:04
…or at least get us thinking about it.
- 01:07
Many short stories revolve around an epiphany…
- 01:11
…an ah-ha! moment that occurs when a character realizes some essential truth about the situation,
- 01:17
or just about life itself.
- 01:22
Maybe they just discovered the meaning of life…
- 01:25
…or maybe they realized that they look better with the red lipstick than the pink one.
- 01:33
Either way, the physical, emotional or spiritual journey the character has been on finds some
- 01:38
sort of resolution.
- 01:40
And you can always be sure that there’s something pretty deep going on below the surface.
- 01:44
In other words… it’s not about the lipstick. Even those stories without a recognizable
- 01:49
epiphany follow a common plot arc.
- 01:52
Our protagonist starts out upholding the status quo…
- 01:56
…until something or someone upsets the balance.
- 01:59
You’ll find that conflict is much more entertaining in fiction than in real life.
- 02:04
Once that conflict has been introduced…
- 02:06
…the character must deal with it, sometimes successfully and sometimes… not so much.
- 02:11
In the aftermath of their actions, there is usually a bit of denouement, or resolution.
- 02:16
It’s sort of like the cool down after an exhausting workout.
- 02:18
The greatest or most successful short stories are often anthologized…
- 02:22
…in other words, they appear in anthologies, or collections, that either highlight the
- 02:26
best stories of that year…
- 02:28
…or of a particular genre…
- 02:30
…or of all time.
- 02:32
Better make sure your bookshelf has been reinforced if you purchase that one.
- 02:37
Novels are great for the beach… or for your desert island…
- 02:40
…but short stories are a great way of mixing things up and satisfying your short attention
- 02:44
span.
- 02:44
Which, incidentally, is why we’re going to wrap this video up now…
- 02:48
…before you get bored and start looking up cat pictures.
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