fference between it and the novel is that the novel is more
discursive. Much of the novel's interest, quite permissibly, may inhere
in persons, episodes, and matter generally without relation to the main
thread of the story. But a short story's interest may not inhere in
matter foreign to the thread of the story. That is the case not because
of any arbitrary requirement that it be a "unity," but simply because a
short story cannot be told adequately as to the story without exceeding
the word-limit if unessential matter be incorporated with it.

The fallacy, whether on the part of commentator on technique or writer
of fiction, in approaching the short story as some sort of artificial
fictional unity lies in the implicit disregard of the necessity to
interest. The first necessity is that a story interest, and to meet it
the writer must devise some complication of persons, motives, and
events, and usually that will involve some diversity of setting, or
change of place. The second necessity is that the story be told so as to
create the illusion of reality, and to meet it the writer will be forced
to exhaust his few thousand words. The necessity that the story interest
can be met only rarely without violating the unities of the drama;
therefore they are not a convention of the art of the short story. Apart
from the matter of unity of tone and style, the short story is a unity
only in that it is one single story, nothing more, nothing less. That
is, each word is essential to the fiction as such. But that does not
mean that the story or plot is a unity in itself. It may involve much
diversity in the three fictional elements of personality, event, and
setting, the last of which includes time.

I emphasize the matter because the beginning writer is apt to devise
stories too simple to present a real problem to awaken a reader's
interest. There is also the converse fault, of course, that of devising
a story too complicated to be given adequate expression in few words,
but this fault will tend to correct itself through the difficulties the
writer will meet in execution. The other will not tend to correct
itself. The more simple the story, the easier it will be to write with
some approach to adequacy. The writer who fancies that a short story
must involve as little as possible diversity of people, events, and
places may very well continue to devise stories too simple to awaken
interest, however effectively they may be told. He will