The Different Kinds of Short Stories

As you might have figured out from the blogging circle topic for the month, we're focusing on short stories.  Now, you might think you know what a short story is.  It's shorter than a novella or a novel, it's usually in a collection with other short stories, it's nothing that's stand alone, and so on.  However, short stories is a big blanket term that a lot of different types of stories fall under.  We'll be going over the big ones in the coming weeks - the drabble, the flash fiction and so on - but let's talk about the somewhat lesser known short stories.  Most of these you'll be like "oh, yeah, that's a short story" but let's talk about them anyways.

First up, the fable.  The first that comes to mind, for most people, would be the Aesop's fables.  Another well known fable is George Orwell's Animal Farm, even though it's a novel, it is a well known and famous example of a fable.  Per the definition of fable, you have animals, plants, mythical creatures, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are given human characteristics that teaches a moral lesson.  The most common one that is given is the ability to speak and connect to the reader via dialogue to other characters in the story.  Now, while you can have a novel fable, I still think they come across best in short story format.  Also, when you have it in short story format, it has more of a punch and you don't know you're reading one at the same time.  If you want to read some fables, of course there's the two I mentioned, but here's some more:

• Dr Seuss
• Hans Christian Anderson
• Watership Down by Richard Adams
• Fables, a comic written by Arnold Lobel

So, now let's talk about the parable, which is different from the fable in not having animals or other objects tell the story.  A parable is an analogy and you can find a lot of them in the New Testament.  The Prodigal Son is the first one that pops into mind when I'm thinking about parables but another one is the Good Samaritan.  I wish I could talk more about them but I don't know them as well as I know fables.  Parables weren't pushed into my life because my family isn't all that religious and that seems to be where most of them are.  Now, that's not true, but you don't have a Dr Seuss for parables.  You don't have something that's been made popular by Disney.  Now, could that change?  Sure but you don't have someone pushing for it to be done.  Okay, here's some more reading if you want to dive into the world of parables:

• The Pearl by John Steinbeck
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• A ton of books explaining the parables in the Gospel of Jesus that are easy to find on Amazon

The last we're going to talk about is the vignette.  For those who don't know what this is, it's not really a short story on it's own.  It's a scene within a novel that is more about showing meaning through imagery than the plot.  You might be wondering why I'm touching on them while talking about short stories.  It's the same reason I would be talking about play within a play if I was talking about different types of plays.  It's something you can use, within your own writing, especially if you're using your setting as a plot point.  A scary house can have a vignette to set the stage for what is to come in a horror story.  A ship can have a vignette to explain how precarious the open seas or space is.  You can use it and you should use it.  The two big examples is the book The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros where it's a collection of them and the webseries High Maintenance where there's the focus on one character and the world around them.

So those are the three different type of short stories that usually get shuffled under the rug.  I hope that in telling you about them, you can go see what they're about and if they work for you to tell a story you think the world should read.  What are some of the short story types you think aren't showcased enough?  Feel free to leave it below in the comments or on Facebook or Twitter and, until next time, keep on writing.