Short Stories

     Short stories writers make an effort to teach a moral lesson throughout their story and write according to their own experiences or their life.  I think the driving force for writers is to send a message to readers based on their life and give a valuable impact for readers. In the Introduction, Tobias Wolff emphasizes the importance of reality by writing “What these writers do have between them is an exuberant, unembarrassed faith in the power of stories to clarify our sense of reality” (xvi). In addition, she said, “The dominant impulse of American fiction has been realistic” (xiii). Tobias said that the best writers were people who wrote about their true experiences instead of false encounters. One impetus to read short stories is that there should be a “sense of kinship” when reading, and that readers should have emotional feelings while reading a shorty story. According to Tobias Wolff, “we need to feel ourselves acted upon by a story, outrages, exposed, in dangers of heartbreak and change.” Stories that give readers different feelings of emotions are “the stories that endure in our memoires, to the point where they take on the nature of memory itself” (xiii). When reading a short story, the reader should be able to create images through their memory and give a view of the author. Tobias Wolff says that such passages that give imagination “inscribe themselves forever on the reader’s moral being, and bring the world into sharper focus” (xiv). She mentions that the best stories aim to give readers influence in their lives. Short stories are based on different subjects including “violence, sickness, alcoholism, sexual exploitation, marital breakup” (xiv). Instead of “upbeat stories that flog you with transcendence” (xv), stories should be real and make the readers observant during difficult situations. The authors of short stories write about their own experiences, and the readers feel a sense of commonality that lets them know that they are not the only ones overcoming obstacles in their life.