short story is a brief work of prose fiction. It has a plot which may be comic, tragic, romantic or satiric; the story is presented to us from one of the many available points of view, and it may be written in the mode of fantasy, realism or naturalism. In the ‘story of incident’ the focus of interest is on the course and outcome of events, as in the Sherlock Holmes story. The ‘story of character’ focuses on the state of mind and motivation, or on the psychological and moral qualities of the protagonist, as in Glory at Twilight. Chekov’s The Lament focuses on form—nothing happens, or seems to happen, except an encounter and conversations, but the story becomes a revelation of deep sorrow. The short story differs from the novel in magnitude. The limitation of length imposes economy of management and in literary effects. However, a short story can also attain a fairly long and complex form, where it approaches the expansiveness of the novel, which you may find in The Third and Final Continent in this unit.