e. The result is that all its processes, particularly
the process of characterization, must be conducted in a fashion more
swift and summary than in a long story, and the difference is the whole
of the difference in the technique of the two forms.

Unfortunately, a discussion of the peculiar technique of the short story
cannot confine itself to this difference without failing to clear away
the many misconceptions that becloud the subject. A good deal has been
written on the short story, and, since there is really not very much to
say, a good many writers have been led into nonsense. With so much
misconception in the air, I have felt that it would be useful to state a
tenable theory of the short story, and have attempted to do so in the
chapter on the form. The matter will be found there and cannot be
reproduced here, but brief statement of the argument will complete the
foretaste of the book.

Since the short story is a story, at least, it may be divided and
classified, like all stories, into stories of character, stories of
complication of incident, and stories of atmosphere, that is, into
stories which emphasize or stress the element of personality, the
element of incident, or the element of setting. But the truly
significant division of the short story into types, the division which
it will be most directly profitable for the writer of fiction to
realize, is twofold, not triplicate, and is the division into the
dramatic short story and the short story of atmosphere or unity of
emotional effect on a reader.

These two types are as different as black and white, and the
misconception noted above consists in confusing them. The short story of
atmosphere is Poe's sort of story; he said something definite and true
about his peculiar art; but later writers, critics rather, have padded
and distorted his words to cover the whole field of the short story. The
general result is much printed folly, and the specific result for the
short story writer is that he is continually urged, commanded,
entreated, and advised to invest his work with some mysterious "unity."
The advice is sound if the short story of atmosphere, the short story
of unity or totality of emotional effect, is meant; the short story of
atmosphere is a mysterious and subtle unity in that its people and
happenings are curiously of a piece with its setting, serving to deepen
or intensify the emotional effect of the setting on a reader. But,
applied to the dramatic