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The Writing of Fiction
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Telling a Short Story: Situation & the Economy of Form

The Writing of Fiction Edith Wharton
short-story situation economy-of-horror foreshortening the-attack

Key Principle

The short story is the art of situation; the novel is the art of character. "Situation is the main concern of the short story, character of the novel." This single distinction generates everything else: unfolding personality "requires space, and therefore belongs ... to a larger, a symphonic plan." So short-story characters "may be a little less than individual" (types, like Molière's), and because the writer cannot elaborate character he "is the more bound to make real the adventure in itself."

Because the form is so short, its effect depends almost wholly on disciplined form: the reader's sense of security, economy of horror, a vivid "attack," the two unities, and true foreshortening.

Why This Matters

In a tale "the trajectory is so short that flash and sound nearly coincide" — there is no room to recover from a misstep. Every economy is therefore a survival skill, not a refinement. Get the opening, the point of view, or the scale wrong and the whole tale collapses, because there are no later pages to repair it.

Good Examples

  • The reader's sense of security. "Every phrase should be a sign-post, and never (unless intentionally) a misleading one." Once confidence is won "he may be lured on to the most incredible adventures." The mechanism: "Improbability in itself is never a danger, but the appearance of improbability is" — "it is never the genii who are unreal, but only their unconvinced historian's description of them."
  • Economy of horror. "Quiet iteration is far more racking than diversified assaults; the expected is more frightful than the unforeseen." Multiplied horrors should be "cumulative and not dispersed ... the fewer the better." (The Turn of the Screw harps on a single dread.)
  • The two unities. Unity of time — no interval "long enough to suggest modification in the personages." Unity of vision (James's contribution) — "any rapidly enacted episode shall be seen through only one pair of eyes."
  • Foreshortening. The signature skill: "to suggest illimitable air within a narrow space" — true economy is "the drawing out of one's subject of every drop of significance."

Counterpoints

  • The empty attack. A striking opening with nothing behind it is mere trick. The vivid stroke must carry "fundamental significance" — Cellini's salamander: "It is useless to box your reader's ear unless you have a salamander to show him." ("'Hell,' said the Duchess as she lit her cigar" dazzles and means nothing.)
  • The sketch mistaken for economy. Kleist's "Marquise d'O." practices economy only "in leaving out all that would have enriched the subject." The beginner who bolts a runaway-horse rescue onto a lovers' quarrel shows how "the reluctance to look deeply enough into a subject leads to the indolent habit of decorating its surface."
  • The mis-sized subject. "If it appears to be adapted to both [forms] the chances are that it is inadequate to either."

Key Quotes

"Situation is the main concern of the short story, character of the novel." — Edith Wharton, Chapter II: Telling a Short Story

"It is useless to box your reader's ear unless you have a salamander to show him." — Edith Wharton, Chapter II: Telling a Short Story

"The real achievement ... is to suggest illimitable air within a narrow space." — Edith Wharton, Chapter II: Telling a Short Story

Rules of Thumb

  • Make the opening situate the whole tale — but only if a real significance ("a salamander") stands behind it.
  • Concentrate dread on a single nerve; iteration terrifies, dispersion dilutes.
  • Keep one pair of eyes per rapidly enacted episode; choose the reflecting mind "as one would choose a building-site."
  • Treat rules as "a lamp in a mine, or a hand-rail down a black stairway" — guidance, not awe.

Related References