e is less opportunity than in the novel to
manage secondary events to build up character or personality. The whole
process must be swifter, and the writer must depend largely on direct
statement and description.

This matter is of some importance. As to setting, the technique of the
short story and of the novel are identical; there is merely less setting
in the short story--speaking quantitatively--because the type involves
fewer shifts of place, even if the action does not happen in one place.
And the technique of the short story and of the novel are identical as
to action; the short story merely involves fewer episodes. But as to the
people, the technique of the short story and of the novel differ. It is
true that the short story involves few persons, relatively to the novel,
just as it involves relatively few shifts of setting and relatively few
events, but the difference is more than quantitative, and so affects the
technique of the type. It affects the technique of the short story
because characterization is a matter achieved by showing the person in
action, by describing him, by transcribing his speech, and by stating
his qualities directly. That is to say, characterization goes on in
every part of the story, except where setting is being touched in. And
it will go on there, to a slight extent, if the environment is given in
terms of the impressions received by the character affected. On the
other hand, narration, or verbal treatment of the event, and the
description of setting, or verbal treatment of the environment, are more
or less distinct and separate elements of a story. The matter is
delicate, and I run some risk of being obscure here, but the net result
of the simplicity and separateness of both the narrative and the
descriptive process is that the narrative and descriptive technique of
the short story is the narrative and descriptive technique of fiction
generally. Writer of novel and writer of short story can narrate a
murder in much the same way, or touch in a countryside with identical
technique, but they cannot handle their people similarly.

Perhaps the point can be made clearer. The writer of a novel and the
writer of a short story alike must invest their people with the
vivacity, distinction, and concreteness of real men and women, but where
the one has five hundred pages, let us say, the other has only five
thousand words. It is a task difficult enough at best to precipitate a
man in a few drops