Thursday, December 3, 2009

Short Stories and Their Use in Fictional Novels

Short stories are cool because their structure is easier to comprehend in a short amount of time. After reading numerous stories a favorite genre, one begins to understand what separates the spellbinding journey from the boring narrative. There are uses of these shorter forms.

A novel is composed of short stories. Once you understand this it becomes easier to follow the most complex of books. You learn to take it bit by bit and connect it with the authors main idea. It should be that every chapter has some kind of meaning. It will probably have a major event, a struggle, a climax, something was learned by the characters. Not all the problems will be resolved till later though.

Clive Barker once said in an article that there is no "mental breakdown in Poe." You are simply thrown into the mayhem. In many modern horror writers' books, there is an intro to the world and then weird things start to happen. It is possible to create different effects on the reader's mind by structuring things differently. And it all comes down to the short form.

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