Quote of the Day for Thursday, 3/6

"I know that my original idea for a story is going to be only the point of departure for something that will push me in an unexpected way." --Mario Vargas Llosa

Edgar Allen Poe wrote of the short story... "A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents--he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect...In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one preestablished design."

Also, Poe asserts that if a writer's "very initial sentence tends not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step."

"When we finish reading a well-made short story, we an infer a message about life, the theme. Theme is the main idea of a literary work, its general statement about life. You can state the theme outright in the work, or make readers infer it from details in the plot, characters, and setting"

The elements of a short story are: plot, conflict, point of view, characters, dialogue, setting, and mood.