Southerners love a good tale. They are born reciters, great memory retainers, diary keepers, letter exchangers . . . great talkers.
Eudora WeltyRead
A short story is confined to one mood, to which everything in the story pertains. Characters, setting, time, events, are all subject to the mood. And you can try more ephemeral, more fleeting things in a story - you can work more by suggestion - than in a novel. Less is resolved, more is suggested, perhaps.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A short story should maintain a singular emotional tone throughout, where all elements contribute to that mood.
Eudora Welty emphasizes that in short stories, the mood is paramount and encompasses all aspects of the narrative, such as characters, setting, and events. The brevity of the form allows for a more suggestive and open-ended exploration of themes, giving writers the freedom to evoke emotion with less resolution and more implication compared to longer forms like novels.
Themes
Short StoryMoodEmotionArtNarrative
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote during a workshop on short story writing to emphasize the importance of mood.
More from Eudora Welty
All quotes →Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life.
Eudora WeltyRead
A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.
Eudora WeltyRead
For the source of the short story is usually lyrical. And all writers speak from, and speak to, emotions eternally the same in all of us: love, pity, terror do not show favorites or leave any of us out.
Eudora WeltyRead
The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation.
Eudora WeltyRead
The first act of insight is throw away the labels. In fiction, while we do not necessarily write about ourselves, we write out of ourselves, using ourselves; what we learn from, what we are sensitive to, what we feel strongly about--these become our characters and go to make our plots. Characters in fiction are conceived from within, and they have, accordingly, their own interior life; they are individuals every time.
Eudora WeltyRead
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