CBSE Class 12 Learning How to Write the Short Story

One of the best ways for amateur writers to create a story is to base it upon real life occurrences. Mark Twain worked on a riverboat. Jack London explored Alaska. Hemingway was an avid fisherman and loved to travel. Their experiences allowed them to create settings and characters that seem real. Trying to become a short story writer and endeavouring to develop this 'Creative Writing Form' involves two important steps.

1. Becoming aware of the following four basic elements of the story: 

2. Practising the craft, the how of combining these elements can be a lifelong process. As a form of fictional prose, the short story is basically a narrative that is about imaginary events which happen to imaginary people or characters of the story. In most stories, the events lead to a crisis that usually gets resolved at the end. The resolution may or may not be a happy one.

Noted story writer Edgar Allan Poe has explained in very simple terms that a short story has three parts. The Characters usually meet in the beginning. : In the middle, the characters encounter a crisis that seems to overtake them. The crisis gets resolved in the end.

Together, these three parts constitute the Plot of the story. By taking the readers through these three parts with the characters, the writer as it were conveys his message. This message may safely be called the theme of the story. In spite of the frenetic building activity in most hill stations, there are still a few ruins to be found on the outskirts -neglected old bungalows that have fallen or been pulled down, and which now provide shelter for bats, owl, stray goats, itinerant passers by and sometimes the restless spirits of those who once dwelt in them. 

One such ruin is Fox-Burn, but I won't tell you exactly where it can be found, because I visit the place for purposes of meditation (or just plain contemplation) and I would hate to arrive there one morning to find about fifty people picnicking on the grass. And yet it did witness a picnic of sorts the other day, when the children accompanied me to the ruin. They had heard it was haunted and they wanted to see the ghost... a. Which of the basic four elements of the short story does the above extract ex

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