Short story

In form, the genre known as short story is prose fiction. It is a work usually presented in literary and popular magazines. In length it may run from three to thirty pages or more, and in its longer variety it is difficult to distinguish from the novelette. Due to its usual brevity the short story is frequently focussed on a short interval of time or a principal event and able to sustain interest even when there is, as sometimes, happens, only a single character. The short story can epitomize the art of the literary plot with the plot evolution taking space from development of the characters; or it can do an in-depth characterization or two at the expense of plot convolutions. Complex patterns and numerous characters are out of its range and the circumstance of brevity is sometimes considered an excuse for deficiencies in characterizations, plotting and other elements of composition.