short stories versus essays

The Difference between an Essay and a Story

There are several types of essays, and only a narrative essay resembles a story. The traditional length of a narrative essay would be comparable only to a short story in length.

A narrative essay is, in essence, a short version of a personal story from a writer's experience. In some ways, a narrative essay and a short story can feel similar to one another. Both require a certain amount of imaginative narrative from the writer and use descriptive words to convey emotions, lay out the scene, and place the reader inside the events.

However, there are quite a few differences, which is why you won't find a narrative essay in a compilation book of short stories.

Like all other forms of essays, a narrative essay needs a clear outline of ideas that organize the writer's thoughts. Essays will always include an introduction, a body of writing, and a conclusion that sums up the writer's points or describe what the writer learned from the experience they write about.

Short stories need no such structure. While there is technically a beginning, a middle, and an end, the linear structure of a narrative essay is often not followed in a short story. Some jump around in time and play with the reader's imagination to determine the sequence of events and how one event affects or leads to another.

Tell the Truth

One of the most notable differences between a narrative essay and a short story is that a short story does not always have to be true. A story can be fiction or non-fiction, as both fit the definition of a short story. A narrative essay, on the other hand, is expected by the reader to be an actual experience from the writer's life.

The intent of an essay is always to inform, so readers have an expectation that they will learn something by reading an essay regardless of its form. When reading a narrative essay, a reader expects to learn more on the topic being discussed through first-hand knowledge due to the lived experience of the writer.

The intent of a story is to entertain. Some short stories are fables, which include a moral that teaches a lesson. However, even the best lessons in short stories will not come across or even be remembered if the story itself isn't engaging and entertaining.

Distinguishing Between an Essay & a Short Story

Essay vs Short Story

Is there a distinction between an essay and a short story? In educational institutions, we often engage in writing essays and sometimes short stories. Essays can be considered as pieces of writing, while short stories are seen as artistic compositions containing a plot that unfolds a story. This highlights the primary difference between an essay and a short story. This article will explore the differences between essays and short stories.

What is an Essay?

An essay is a piece of writing that focuses on a specific subject. It provides a methodical account of the topic, with the writer examining various dimensions and presenting an analysis. Each essay has a straightforward structure, including an introduction, body, and conclusion. Through an essay, readers can gain a comprehensive understanding of the subject. The writer often presents factual information, different perspectives, attitudes, and even their own opinion.

In schools, teachers encourage students to write essays on various topics. The complexity and standard of the topic depend on the student’s maturity. For younger students, teachers may assign topics such as environmental pollution or the first day of school. For more advanced students, teachers may provide more challenging topics, such as capital punishment or the modern teenager versus technology. Essays allow students to articulate and present their ideas with clarity.

What is a Short Story?

A short story is a narrative that is shorter in length compared to a novel. It comprises a single plot, which forms the basis of the story or incident, and has fewer characters. A short story does not consist of multiple plots and a large scope but is limited. For example, a short story may revolve around a single day in the life of a main character. There can be other minor characters with whom the main character interacts, but the focus remains primarily on the main character. The thoughts, feelings, and ideas of the character allow the reader to understand their nature. Although a short story is brief in length, the writer can still create a powerful impact on the reader.

In a short story, the writer can use a variety of literary devices, such as irony and satire, to create specific effects. Another feature of a story, which highlights a significant difference between a story and an essay, is that a story contains action. This feature is not observed in an essay.

Key Takeaways

• Definition: An essay is a piece of writing on a particular subject, while a short story is a narrative, shorter in length compared to a novel.
• Experience and exploration: An essay provides a lengthy account of a specific subject, while a short story focuses more on an individual’s experience.
• Plot and action: An essay does not have a plot or action, while a short story has a plot and characters engaging in various behaviors that contribute to the development of the plot.

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Difference between power & authority, distinguishing could of & could have, distinguishing pixie & bob haircuts, distinguishing between debate & discussion, distinguishing between dialogue & conversation, distinguishing between a present & a gift, distinguishing between will & can, distinguishing between up & upon.

Guilherme Mazui

• What is the Difference Between Essay and Short Story?

The main difference between an essay and a short story lies in their purpose, structure, and content. Here are the key differences:

• Purpose : Essays are generally argumentative, informative, or narrative, aiming to provide an account of a specific subject or topic. Short stories, on the other hand, are pieces of fiction that tell a story with a narrative structure, including exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.
• Structure : Essays typically follow a formal structure, including an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Short stories, while they may have some elements of structure in common with essays, do not require the same level of organization or formal structure.
• Content : Essays focus on a topic or academic issue and usually provide an analysis or exploration of the subject. Short stories, in contrast, are artistic compositions that unfold a story with a plot and characters. They often include action and can use various literary devices such as irony and satire.
• Language : Essays generally use more formal language and adhere to academic norms, avoiding contractions, phrasal verbs, and personal pronouns. Short stories can use more creative and descriptive language to engage the reader and develop the characters and plot.
• Genre : Essays belong to the non-fiction genre, while short stories can be either fiction or non-fiction. However, a narrative essay, a type of essay, can resemble a short story in that it tells a personal experience from the writer's life.

Comparative Table: Essay vs Short Story

Here is a table comparing the differences between an essay and a short story:

The main difference between essays and short stories is that essays are nonfiction and based on real-life experiences, facts, or arguments, while short stories are fiction and focus on imaginative and entertaining narratives. However, both essays and short stories share some similarities, such as being comparable in length and often including characters, settings, plots, and themes.

• Novel vs Short Story
• Article vs Essay
• Report vs Essay
• Narrative vs Story
• Essay vs Research Paper
• Essay vs Composition
• Narrative vs Descriptive Essay
• Plot vs Story
• History vs Story
• Literature vs Fiction
• Novel vs Fiction
• Argumentative vs Expository Essay
• Story vs Script
• Fiction vs Nonfiction
• Article Writing vs Report Writing
• Showing vs Telling in Writing
• Novel vs Novella
• Journalism vs Creative Writing
• Expository vs Narrative

9 Key Elements of a Short Story: What They Are and How to Apply Them

by Sarah Gribble | 1 comment

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If you're new to short story writing, it can be intimidating to think of fitting everything you need in a story into a small word count. Are there certain elements of a short story you'll need to know in order for your story to be great?

Writers struggle with this all the time.

You might want to develop deep character backgrounds with a huge cast of characters, amazing settings, and at least two subplots. And that's great. But that wouldn't be writing a short story.

You might try to cut some of these things, and then all the sudden you don't have a character arc or a climax or an ending.

Every story has basic elements; a short story's basic elements are just more focused than a novel's. But all those elements must be there, and yes, they need to fit into a short word count.

In this article, you'll learn what you need to make sure your short story is a  complete  story—with three famous short story examples. These story elements are what you should focus on when writing a short piece of fiction.

The Key to Compelling Stories: It's NOT Dun, Dun, DUUN!

When I first started writing, I mainly worked on horror short stories. I wanted to create that dun, dun, DUUUN! moment at the end of all of them. You know the one. In the movies it's where the screen goes to black and you’re left feeling goosebumps.

I remember the first writing contest I entered (right here at The Write Practice!), I submitted a story that I thought was pretty decent, but didn’t really think would win.

I was right; it did not win.

But mainly I wanted the upgrade I’d purchased: feedback from the judge. She was great and told me my writing was good and tight, but there was one major issue with my story.

The dun, dun, DUUN!

I’d tried to cultivate actually meant my story just . . . cut off. There was no ending. There wasn’t even a complete climax. I got it ramped up and then just . . . stopped.

That feedback changed me as a short story writer. It made me really pay attention to what needed to be in a story versus what was unnecessary.

I studied short stories. I made note of what an author did and where. I basically taught myself story structure.

This may seem obvious, but a short story, even though it’s short, still needs to be a story.

So let’s start with the basics.

P.S. If you want to learn more about the five major steps you need to complete to write a short story, read this article .

What Is a Story?

I know a man who consistently tells stories during parties. (Sort of like this guy !)

He starts out well but then goes off on tangent after tangent, ultimately not really getting to any sort of point.

New people (re: characters ) are introduced, then dropped. New events are mentioned, but not resolved. By the time he gets to the end of his “stories,” eyes have glazed over and the “punchline,” as it were, falls flat.

What this man is telling is a short story, and he’s doing it terribly.

A story, no matter the length, can be boiled down to a character wanting something, having a hard time getting it, and finally either getting it or not.

Stories are actually simple when you look at the basics. This is why writing short stories will make you a better writer.

Short stories force a writer to practice nailing structure and pace. If you nail those things, you’ll be able to write stories of any length (and not bore people at parties).

And like novel-length stories, short stories contain certain elements in order to hold up the structure and pace.

For each story element below, I'll use three classic stories as examples:

• Shirley Jackson's “The Lottery”
• Edgar Allen Poe's “The Cask of Amontillado”
• O. Henry's “The Gift of the Magi”

Take a few minutes to refresh your memory by clicking on the links of each, if you wish.

9 Key Elements of a Short Story

When it comes down to the elements of a short story, focus on nine key elements that determine if the short story is a complete  story or a half-baked one.

1. Character

Characters in books are well-drawn. There's a lot of time spent on character development and backstory. That's not needed for short stories.

Short stories need one central character and one or two other major characters. That’s about it. There isn't enough room to have a ton of characters and a story will veer away from the central plotline if a large cast is present.

The reader doesn't need to know everything about this character . They don't even need to know their physical appearance if it's not vital to the story. Your character traits in short stories can be so minimal, they don't even need a name.

This doesn't mean the protagonist is a static character who is basically a zombie on a couch. They still have to be a dynamic character, one that changes throughout the story.

When you're thinking of character creation for short stories, you don't need to dive into too much detail. Two to three character details are normally enough.

See how the three short story examples used in this article develop characters:

The Lottery

The main character is Tessie Hutchinson.

We don't know much about Tessie, other than she's unkempt and arrives late with a slew of jokes. You'll no doubt note here that this story has a lot of characters, not just two or three.

But notice only a few of the other characters are fleshed out much at all. The other characters of note here are:

• Mr. Hutchinson
• Mr. Summers
• Old Man Warner.

The Cask of Amontillado

This short story has significantly fewer characters:

• The main character

The Gift of the Magi

There are only two named characters:

• Della, the main character
• Jim, Della's husband

2. Want/Goal

The central character needs to want something—even if it’s a glass of water, as Kurt Vonnegut famously said. (They can also not want something. But they have to have an opinion either way.) The story is their quest to get said something.

Obviously, in real life people want multiple things, often at once and often in contrast to each other. But in a short story, the goal needs to be focused and relatively simple.

This want/goal is important to the story plot. This is what drives the character's decisions as they move throughout the space of your story. The goals in the short story examples are:

Tessie, as with every other person who shows up at the lottery, doesn't want to get chosen.

Montresor wants revenge for an insult Fortunato threw his way while drunk.

Della wants to give her husband a Christmas gift.

3. Conflict

Obstacles and complications need to make the protagonist's journey hard, and these types of conflicts should raise the stakes as the protagonist tries to achieve their want/goal.

In books, multiple things need to get in the way of the character completing the goal, but in short stories, there can be as little as one central conflict .

Conflict stems from the antagonist, whether that’s an external baddie (character conflicts with each other), an internal issue, forces of nature, or society being against them. Here's how conflict works in our three examples:

The Lottery 

Tessie conflicts with the other townsfolk, her husband (who is more rule-abiding than she is), and the overall way of life the lottery is forcing.

The main conflict is this supposed insult Fortunato made to Montresor. Interestingly, even though this story is a rather brutal revenge story, there isn't much surface conflict happening.

Fortunato essentially walks to his own death without much protest. Montresor also goes through an internal conflict toward the end when he hesitates, only for a moment, over what he is doing.

The Gift of the Magic

Della has a more straightforward conflict with poverty: she's only got a dollar or two and wants to buy a nice gift for her husband.

4. Decisions

If characters sit around watching the world go by, there's no story plot. A character needs to make decisions at every turn to drive the story forward.

Your want/goal is the reason behind these decisions, but the conflict is what's driving the need to even make them.

Let's go back to Vonnegut's idea of a character wanting a glass of water (goal).

Say that character was lost in the desert (conflict). They'd do anything to get a glass of water, wouldn't they? That glass of water is the primary source of them living right at that moment, and everything revolves around that.

They're not going to make a move without it being in service of that ultimate goal.

In short stories, the protagonist's main goal is the driving force behind their decisions for the few thousand words we spend with them.

Among the decisions made in the three example stories are these:

Tessie decides to protest the results of the lottery in the hopes of not getting stoned to death.

Montresor decides to keep walling up Fortunato after his slight hesitation over whether this was really a good idea to get his revenge.

TheGift of the Magic

Della decides to cut her hair off and sell it in order to afford a gift.

This is the element of most stories that’s missing when someone tells a boring story at a party. This is the exciting part, the punchline, the ultimate point of the entire story.

This is where the character goes up against the baddie in a final showdown and either wins or loses. This is the ultimate answer to the What If Question we talked about before.

The climax for each of our examples is:

Tessie “wins” the lottery and fights the results (to no avail).

Montresor chains Fortunato in the wall and he realizes what's happening to him.

Della and Jim give each other the gifts and realize those gifts are currently “pointless” because each of them sold what they would use the gift for.

The ending is short, often only a couple of sentences in a short story. This is where everything is wrapped up.

It follows the climactic fight and winds down the remaining character and plot points, letting readers breathe and showing them what comes next for the character. (This is not the time to dun, dun, DUUN !)

This is often missing in short stories.

Ambiguous endings are fine, but the writer  must  give a glimpse of what happens to the main character.

Tessie is stoned to death so the townsfolk can go back to their normal lives.

Montresor decides to keep on sealing Fortunato behind the wall, despite the feeble protests from the man.

Della and Jim realize they really gave each other the gift of love and go about their Christmas.

When you encounter conflict in real life, you make decisions, which lead to change . It’s the same for the characters.

They change throughout this little adventure they’re on, and so do their circumstances.

If they’re in the same place at the end of the story they were at the beginning, did anything even happen?

Tessie's change is pretty obvious: she's dead. Before that, though, she changes from joking and disregarding this weird tradition to getting very scared and angry very quickly.

Montresor is freed from his irksome frenemy, and also knows a little bit more about himself and what he's capable of.

Della and Jim realize the true gift wasn't anything that could be bought and are happy with the love they've shared rather than worrying about material things.

8. Point of view (POV)

Choose one point of view and stick to it.

This is essential in a short story. You do not have enough room to go head-hopping or switching points of view with each paragraph.

You want your reader to be with your character the whole time, otherwise they will lose interest.

If you need a point of view refresher, read this article .

Here's the point of view in each of the short story examples:

Third-person omniscient

First person

Third-person limited

Even short stories should have a decently drawn setting .

This is tricky because, again, you don’t have room to be describing every little thing.

You’ll need to weave in the setting as you tell the story and stick to the essentials.

Notice the three example stories have something in common: a rather ambiguous setting.

We know Tessie lives in what seems to be an agrarian small town. We don't know where, what time period, or why the lottery exists.

Our wine lovers in “The Cask of Amontillado” are mostly in the family crypt.

We know Della and Jim live in a small, run-down apartment. We don't know where or when.

The reader doesn't know much about the setting in any of these stories, but they don't need  to know much. The plot hums along just fine without all those details.

What a Short Story is Not

It's often the case that the writer lets the muse take over when story writing.

In this case, what ends up on the page is often flowy sentences that sound profound and a “story” that sounds more like the ramblings of poor Fortunato.

It's fine to let a story writing get loose and to play with language. Innovation is experiementation.

But when a writer does this, it's often not truly a short story, or a story at all. It might be profound. It might be quote-worthy.

But it also might not be a story.

A short story is not:

• Short stories are not poems . Poetry doesn’t have the burden of having to tell a story (though it can, I know that, so don’t come at me). Short stories are stories with story structure. You can write them with poetic language, but there must be a story in there.
• Short stories are not plotless . Stream of consciousness is a great way to write morning pages, to get in the mood to write, to journal, etc. It’s not a great way to write a short story. Again, short stories are stories. They have to have a plot.
• Short stories do not have subplots . Remember that guy I talked about at the beginning of this article? When he went off on tangents, he was getting into subplot territory. There is no room in a short story for subplots.

Stick with one major event that’s happening to one main character.

A Note on “Rules”

I’ve been working with writers long enough to know that some of you reading this article are telling me off, especially with the last section.

I get it. You want to be creative. You want to follow your muse.

You want to do what I’ve just told you not to do.

Here’s the thing: rules are meant to be broken. I will give you that.

If you want to experiment and find a way to insert a new subplot and resolve it in every paragraph, do it. But in order to break the rules, you need to master them first.

Start by including each of these story elements in your  short story.

When you can ensure you have each story element consistently, then you can get crazy.

Which element do you need the most practice on? Tell us in the comments .

Revisit a short story you've written. Take fifteen minutes to analyze the story.

Look for each of these nine elements. Choose one missing element and add it. (If one isn't missing, then choose one element to beef up.)

When you’re finished, share your work in the Pro Practice Workshop .  Not a member yet? Join us here !

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Sarah Gribble

Sarah Gribble is the author of dozens of short stories that explore uncomfortable situations, basic fears, and the general awe and fascination of the unknown. She just released Surviving Death , her first novel, and is currently working on her next book.

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How to Write a Short Story

From idea generation to publication, learn every step of the short story writing process

Writing a short story may seem like an easy or simple task, but crafting an engaging and compelling piece of short fiction takes skill and practice. In this guide, we will explore the key elements that go into writing an effective short story, including developing characters, crafting a plot, using narrative techniques, and revising and polishing your work. By the end, you’ll have a solid understanding of the short story writing process and be ready to draft your own tales.

What is a Short Story?

Before diving into the how-tos of writing short fiction, it’s important to understand exactly what constitutes a short story. At its most basic, a short story is a brief work of prose fiction that is shorter in length than a novel. But there are some key distinguishing characteristics of short stories versus longer works of fiction:

• Length  – Most short stories range from 1,000 to 7,500 words, though some can be shorter or a bit longer. Anything over 15,000 words is generally considered a novella or novel.
• Single focused plot  – Short stories focus on one core conflict or storythread, without subplots. The narrative is more tightly-woven than a novel.
• Few main characters  – There are usually only a handful of major characters rather than dozens or more. Background on characters is limited.
• Swift pacing  – Events move at a brisker clip since there is less time/space. Exposition and backstory are kept to a minimum.
• Condensed context  – Less emphasis is placed on extensive descriptions of setting or character backgrounds. Context is revealed through events.

Remember that these are guidelines rather than hard rules. Experimental or creative stories may play with conventions. The key point is that short stories aim to packs a narrative punch within a tighter, more focused scope than a novel.

Developing Ideas and Premises

When drafting a short story, one of the first steps is coming up with a core idea or premise to build the narrative around. Here are some effective techniques for generating initial story concepts:

Brainstorming Prompts  – Use writing prompts, either from online lists or ones you generate yourself, as a springboard. Things like “A woman finds $5,000 that isn’t hers” can spark ideas.

Personal Anecdotes  – Draw on interesting real-life experiences , people you know, odd things that happen to you and turn them into fictional tales.

Research Topics  – Browse news stories, history facts, current events for intriguing details or social issues to explore.

Reader Challenges  – Propose a narrative challenge, like “A story told through instant messages” to ignite creativity.

Mindmaps/Freewriting – Jot down any concepts, images, or questions without filtering, as these nonlinear methods stimulate new connections.

The premise should present a central conflict or character decision that neatly sets up the story’s focus and stakes. Keep tweaking ideas until you land on one with potential layers to unpack.

Creating Characters

Short stories hinge upon vibrant, multilayered characters. Take time to craft appealing protagonists and supporting cast through character profiles addressing:

• Basic Details – Describe appearance, mannerisms, and background details.
• Motivations and Goals  – What drives this character? What do they want deep down?
• Flaws and Contradictions  – No one is one-dimensional. Give characters nuanced weaknesses or inconsistencies.
• Perspective and Voice  – How do they view themselves and others? What is their tone/speech patterns like?

Round out profiles by exploring each character’s dynamic with others, life experiences shaping them, and how they change through the story. Even side characters should feel authentic to avoid flat stock figures.

Plotting the Story

Short stories require tight, elevated storylining with a beginning, middle, and end. Develop the narrative arc by:

Identifying the Central Conflict  – What dramatic question or problem fuels the narrative drive?

Outlining Key Scenes  – Map the rising action, pivotal climax/turning point, and resolution of the central conflict.

Scheduling Reveals  – Parcel out contextual details and backstory judiciously, saving mysteries for climactic moments.

Foreshadowing Effectively  – Drop subtle hints that heighten foreboding, tie into later beats, and optimize surprises without logical leaps.

Crafting Satisfying Closures  – Resolve critical narrative strands while leaving room for interpretation or further questions. Avoid pat or simplistic endings.

Use this scheme to stay grounded, yet leave room for organic discoveries in the first draft. Continually assess if scenes refine character or propel plotting forward efficiently.

Structuring Your Story

While short story structure is adaptable, many classics follow reliable models that help maintain pace and audience engagement. Consider opening with:

• In Medias Res  – Throw readers directly into the action/conflict without extensive setup.
• Character in Dilemma  – Pose a thought-provoking choice, want, or obstacle for protagonists up front.

Additional effective structural techniques include:

• flashbacks  – Punctuate scenes with limited retrospectives that add nuance, not confusion.
• dual timelines  – Layer two storylines, with climaxes aligning fruitfully versus disjointedly.
• Frame narratives  – Bookend the central tale with another sequence setting context or posing implications.

The structure should unfold purposefully yet economically, without dragging or wasted space. Maintain suspense and curiosity right up through a resonant closure. Functional plots serve characters and themes over arbitrary story beats.

Refining Your Revision Process

The initial draft gets the raw content on paper, but the real crafting happens in rewriting and refinement. Hone the story by:

• Reading aloud  – Hear where language/pacing/tone feels awkward versus fluid and absorbing.
• Getting feedback  – Consult critique partners to flag ambiguities, weak areas, emotional impacts, and logical gaps
• Self-editing  – Cut excess flab while tightening prose, trimming redundant lines, sharpening dialogue/action, and finessing flow.
• Replotting  – Restructure scenes, timelines, reveals, and conclusion as needed based on editorial insights and storytelling impact.
• Polishing prose  – refine phrasing, vocabulary, sentence variation, vivid descriptions, evocative metaphor upon subsequent drafts.

Leave revisions to simmer, then revisit with fresh eyes later. The goal is a dynamic, cohesive end product where every element elevates the narrative and reader experience.

Publishing and Promoting Your Story

After polishing your story to a fine sheen, explore options for featuring your work:

• Submit to literary journals – Research submission guidelines for print and online publications.
• Self-publish eBooks /paperbacks – Easy-to-use platforms host and distribute your work digitally and in print.
• Create a blog/website – Post stories and build an audience through promotion on social networking platforms.
• Enter writing contests – Competitions offer exposure, potential awards, and craft feedback opportunities.
• Pitch to anthologies/magazines – Inquire about one-off story reprint/syndication opportunities in specific publications or annual collections.

Always maintain professionalism with editors and respect revision/acceptance policies. View initial publications as a learning experience and resume builder toward higher impact placements. Networking widens your supporter base as well.

Examples of Classic Short Stories

To help understand the range, depth and mastery possible within the short form, explore acclaimed works like:

• “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson – A chilling glimpse into blind social conformity and ritual with an unforgettably jarring climax.
• “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman – A feminist examination of postpartum depression and oppressive gender roles through a haunting first-person narrative.
• “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates – A psychological thriller following the manipulation and downfall of a naive teenage girl.
• “The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs – A cautionary tale imbued with Gothic suspense sparked by a family’s fateful wishes upon a mystical talisman.
• “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin – A poignant exploration of familial bonds, the ravages of addiction, and the universal language of jazz seen through two troubled brothers.

Studying classics like these spotlights concise yet immersive storytelling , economic character development, mastery of voice , and the heights short fiction can reach when approached with vision and skill.

That covers the essentials for crafting compelling short stories that entertain audiences and advance your writing practice. Keep experimenting and learning with each new story drafted. Above all, believe in your ability to meaningfully distill life’s complexities into vivid glimpses of truth through short fiction.

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Difference Between a Short Story and Narrative Essay

The art of writing information in a specific structure is what the essay is all about. The essay has a straightforward format and is written with a certain topic in mind. The essay’s three main parts are the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. Along with the factual data, the author also provides their opinion. What distinguishes writing essays from writing short stories, in more detail? Our team of thesis writers from the write my college essay service would love to help you figure it out.

• 1 Essay writing
• 2 Short stories
• 3 Essay and short story comparison
• 4 The short stories’ outlines
• 5 Arrangement of the Essay

Essay writing

Essay writing is a skill that students master as part of their academic courses. Essay topics vary from class to class based on the student’s maturity. Some of the topics for middle school include dangerous animals, risky activities, and sporting records that can never be broken. Essay ideas for college include whether or not gun regulation is the greatest way to reduce crime rates worldwide, the ideal age to be eligible to vote, and the documents that must be submitted to the court.

Short stories

The short story centers around various character types and is written with an incident. The reader is intrigued to read the story because of the story’s impact. There will be a character, actions, or events in a short story.

Essay and short story comparison

The length of an essay is longer than that of a short story. The essay writing is descriptive, but the short story is narrative. Some of the differences between an essay and a short story are in the storyline, the action, and the characters. While a short story has a plot, an essay does not. Although there is an intelligent flow of information in the essay, the short story character’s various behaviors show that there is also action. There aren’t any characters in the essay, but there are in a short story, and they all revolve around the main character.

The short stories’ outlines

The story’s point of view is crucial because it allows the reader to enter the author’s head. Short stories typically require flashbacks or flash forwards to keep readers interested. The initial line and the last line are crucial for grabbing the readers’ attention. Exposure, conflict, mounting action, climax, and denouement are the major plot elements. The readers might infer meaning from the expressions and feelings.

Arrangement of the Essay

A topic-related combination of ideas and arguments makes up an essay’s structure. The essay is divided into three sections: the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. The introduction paragraph contains an eye-catching concept, a statement that is applicable, and a sample of the topics you will cover in the body paragraphs. The body paragraph introduces the topic, provides context for the facts, and provides an explanation with examples from real life. Rephrase the core theme, provide a reverse hook and restatement, and provide a call to action or concluding comment when you reach your conclusion. If you still have questions, then remember that you can always turn to an essay writing service for help, where experienced essay writers will write quality work for you and help with homework of any complexity (even python assignments). Good luck with your studies!

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2.2: Short Stories versus the Novel

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Short Story

Like the novel, the length of the narrative is a common characteristic; however, some short stories can be quite long – even longer than a short novel. Hence there are other characteristics that are more adequate to define a short story. Firstly, the plot usually stretches over a relatively short time span, and will involve fewer characters than a novel. Secondly, a short story will have a certain structure with a turning point or climax which brings the plot in an unexpected direction. In most short stories there will also be a twist in the ending, which is supposed to sum up the theme and make the reader reflect.

Video 4.2.1 : Short Story

A novel is a work of fiction. This means that it is made up and not factual. Unlike the short story, it is NOT short; it usually focuses on many events and places as well as more characters than the short story. Also, the time aspect is usually longer.

In literary history, the novel is a fairly new form; scholars count Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes (1605) as the first narrative that fits modern criteria of a novel. Usually a novel is defined by its length, or, more precisely, the extension of its plot, which can span over longer time than, for example, a short story. But that is not always the case; there are many famous (and long) novels where the narrative evolves over a very short span of time, for example a couple of hours or a day. In addition, a novel often has an extensive cast of characters, and the plot may take place in many different settings. There are a number of subcategories that will identify a novel more specifically.

Video 4.2.2 : Introduction to the Novel

Contributors and Attributions

• Adapted from Literary Genres, Authored by : Jan-Louis Nagel Provided by : NDLA. License : CC BY-NC-SA
• Adapted from What is a Novel, Authored by : Eli M. Huseby Provided by : NDLA. License : CC BY-NC-SA

Novel vs. Short Story

What's the difference.

Novels and short stories are both forms of fiction writing, but they differ in terms of length and complexity. Novels are typically longer and more intricate, allowing for in-depth character development and complex plotlines. They provide a more immersive reading experience, allowing readers to delve into the world created by the author. On the other hand, short stories are concise and focused, often exploring a single theme or idea. They require the author to be economical with their words, delivering a powerful impact in a limited space. While novels offer a more extensive exploration of a story, short stories excel at capturing a moment or a specific emotion. Ultimately, both forms of storytelling have their own unique strengths and can provide readers with different reading experiences.

Further Detail

Introduction.

When it comes to storytelling, two popular forms of literature that often come to mind are novels and short stories. Both offer unique experiences for readers, but they differ in various aspects, including length, structure, character development, and narrative scope. In this article, we will explore the attributes of novels and short stories, highlighting their similarities and differences, and ultimately helping readers understand the distinct qualities of each form.

Length and Structure

One of the most apparent differences between novels and short stories lies in their length and structure. Novels are typically much longer, spanning hundreds of pages, while short stories are concise and can be read in one sitting. This difference in length allows novels to delve into intricate plotlines, multiple subplots, and extensive character development. On the other hand, short stories focus on brevity, often honing in on a single event or theme, resulting in a more concentrated narrative structure.

Character Development

Character development is another aspect where novels and short stories diverge. Due to their extended length, novels have the advantage of providing in-depth character exploration. Authors have the space to introduce complex characters, develop their personalities, and showcase their growth throughout the story. Readers can form deep connections with these characters, witnessing their transformation over time. In contrast, short stories have limited space to develop characters extensively. Authors must employ concise yet impactful techniques to convey the essence of their characters, often relying on vivid descriptions, dialogue, and actions to create memorable individuals within a shorter narrative.

Narrative Scope

The narrative scope of novels and short stories also differs significantly. Novels have the luxury of a broader narrative scope, allowing authors to explore various subplots, multiple settings, and intricate storylines. This expansive canvas enables authors to create complex worlds and interweave different threads, resulting in a more immersive reading experience. Conversely, short stories have a narrower narrative scope, focusing on a single event, moment, or theme. This concentrated approach allows authors to deliver a powerful impact within a limited space, often leaving readers with a lingering impression or thought-provoking message.

Plot Complexity

Plot complexity is another area where novels and short stories diverge. Novels, with their extended length, can accommodate intricate and multi-layered plots. Authors have the freedom to introduce numerous plot twists, subplots, and intricate story arcs, keeping readers engaged over a more extended period. The complexity of novel plots often allows for a gradual buildup of tension and suspense, leading to satisfying resolutions. In contrast, short stories tend to have simpler plots due to their limited length. Authors must craft concise yet impactful narratives, often focusing on a single conflict or event. This brevity requires authors to deliver a powerful punch within a shorter space, relying on concise storytelling techniques to captivate readers.

Reader Engagement

Reader engagement is an essential aspect of both novels and short stories, albeit in different ways. Novels, with their extended length, offer readers a more immersive experience. The depth of character development, intricate plots, and expansive narrative scope allows readers to become fully invested in the story. They have the opportunity to spend more time with the characters, exploring their motivations, and experiencing their journey in greater detail. On the other hand, short stories demand immediate engagement. With limited space, authors must quickly captivate readers, often relying on concise yet powerful storytelling techniques to create an impact within a shorter timeframe. The brevity of short stories can be appealing to readers seeking a quick yet impactful literary experience.

In conclusion, novels and short stories offer distinct attributes that cater to different reading preferences. Novels provide readers with an immersive experience through their extended length, intricate plots, and in-depth character development. On the other hand, short stories captivate readers through their brevity, concentrated narratives, and powerful impact within a limited space. Both forms of literature have their merits, and the choice between them ultimately depends on the reader's preferences and the type of literary experience they seek. Whether it's diving into a lengthy epic or savoring a concise tale, both novels and short stories have the power to transport readers to captivating worlds and leave a lasting impression.

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Short Stories vs. Novels: Strengths and Weaknesses

by kingdompen | Articles , Short Stories | 6 comments

By R.M. Archer

Short stories and novels are two different beasts. In practicing both you can learn things about writing short stories that apply to novel-writing, and vice versa, but you’ll also find that they have different strengths and weaknesses.

Today I want to talk about some of the strengths and weaknesses inherent in short stories.

Small Casts vs. Large Casts

I don’t know about you, but when I’m writing a novel I tend to end up with large casts of characters. Novels allow space for many different characters to shine and influence the plot.

Not so with short stories.

Short stories thrive on small casts. One reason for this is that there simply isn’t space for very many characters to be uniquely important. But another reason is that short stories have to make an emotional impact in much fewer words, and smaller casts lend themselves to a sharper emotional impact.

I recently finished reading Phantastes by George MacDonald, and as I discussed it with a friend afterward I realized how much of its emotional and thematic impact was due to an intimate focus on the single main character—Anados—and the fact that he only interacted with one or two specific side characters at a time.

Phantastes is a novel, not a short story, but I think this same principle is an inherent strength of short stories.

When you’re limited to a small cast by nature of your medium, you have a wide open opportunity to use that to your advantage.

By focusing on just a few characters, you can devote more attention to building authentic character voices and bringing out traits for your readers to relate to than you might otherwise have time and energy for.

On the opposite side of the coin, short stories prevent the use of sizable and varied casts. Novels have the advantage of giving you multiple perspectives to work with when providing information, exploring a theme, or influencing your main character’s arc. But, as I think you’ll see in my further points also, this is a functional trade-off.

Short Story Strengths:

• Allows you to dive deep into one or two characters and their arcs
• Hones your theme through the use of a single perspective

Short Story Weaknesses:

• Limits the size and variety of your cast
• Limits the angles from which to show your theme

Intimate vs. Epic Stories

Novels require extended, often large-scale conflicts to support their length. Short stories are often better-suited to more intimate, personal conflicts .

These conflicts might be internal, with the character simply wrestling against themselves.

They might be external, but seen only through the character’s eyes. Maybe their society has fallen apart and they’re the only one who sees a way to rebuild, so they’re reflecting on that and looking for a way to move forward.

They might be interpersonal, but with only one or two other characters. Maybe your main character is trying to build a relationship with someone who’s a mystery to them, or maybe she’s having a conflict with her mom, or maybe with her best friend.

These intimate, relatable conflicts are perfectly suited to short stories. As you hone the emotional impact of your character, the focused snapshot that your story provides of “real life”—even if your story is set in a different world or follows a character of a different species—will resonate more closely with your reader.

When planning a short story, you might find it helpful to ask “Who will this plot impact?” Will your plot impact a whole slew of characters, or just one or two? If the impact is narrow, you’re golden. If not, you might ask yourself how you can place your theme into a more intimate context.

If it helps, think of short stories and novels in terms of camera angles or number of sets.

While a novel has a lot of broad shots and numerous sets that give you a full picture of the story’s context, a short story might have just one set and operate with a lot of close shots. A short story focuses on what’s most crucially important and largely keeps extraneous context out-of-frame.

Either balance of information can be beneficial, but you need to know if your story is one that will benefit from a broader view or one that is better-suited to only a frame focused on what your POV character experiences for a brief period of time.

• Determine the limits of your story’s frame. What is the time-span? What characters are involved? Where does it take place?
• How can you keep the story within your main character’s POV? What needs to be eliminated from the story because it doesn’t suit the context of that POV?
• Inherently cuts out any details that aren’t crucial to the present story
• Focuses on specific character experiences
• Limits the setting and time-frame of your story
• Prevents exploration of ideas outside the present story

Short-Term Themes

Vs. extended arcs.

Everything in a short story is more focused than it would be in a novel. A novel should be just as purposeful as a short story, but simply by nature of its compressed length a short story must be more to-the-point; every last word must serve a purpose.

Theme is no exception.

While the theme of a novel will necessarily be applied to a number of situations and approached from a number of angles and perspectives, the theme of a short story will necessarily be briefly explored in a narrow context.

This does not mean that the theme is therefore any less effective in short story form. The effect will simply be different, and resolved in different timing.

A character arc in a novel is much like the majority of real-life character growth; slow and drawn-out. It takes multiple lessons, multiple experiences, multiple attempts and failures to finally take a noticeable step forward.

In a short story, the theme often comes across as primarily hopeful. You see the first small step, and you’re left with hope for the arc to continue; or you see the final step, and you’re left with hope that the end is attainable.

Instead of carrying the reader through a journey, inviting them to grow with the character, you invite them deep into an individual struggle that they can relate to as part of the journey that they know is required for character growth. You show them a snapshot of what it’s like to be challenged by your theme topic and to take a step forward, even if that step is small.

Sometimes, this more focused approach to theme is exactly what a reader needs. Sometimes seeing the hope inherent in a well-executed short story theme will prompt a reader to action more effectively than the drawn-out journey of a novel. (And sometimes the opposite is true.)

Themes in short stories and novels might also complement each other, with the full arc of a novel providing a framework and the precise theme of a short story representing a step in that arc.

As you build the theme of your short story, you might ask

What does this theme look like on a small scale?

• If I were building a character arc based around this theme, what steps would there be along the way? Which of these steps would be the most encouraging?
• What hope do I want to leave the reader with?
• Focuses on small, relatable thematic moments
• Emphasizes hope for growth
• Doesn’t show a full growth journey
• Doesn’t reveal large-scale impacts of a thematic issue

Short stories have a unique sense of focus that gives them distinct strengths. Focus on few characters, small-scale conflicts, and narrow applications of theme can lead to short stories that hone their purpose to a point and make a deeper impact on readers than novels are sometimes able to.

Have you ever read a short story that made a deep impact on you?

As a writer, have you ever found it easier to focus a theme through a short story than a novel?

R.M. Archer

R.M. Archer has been an avid reader since the time she could first make out words, and has always been a lover of story. That interest developed into a love of writing when she was seven (though those first attempts have long-since been incinerated), and she's been pursuing a career as an author ever since. Archer believes that art can change the culture and aims to write YA speculative fiction that thoughtfully explores a variety of worldviews through the lens of her own Christian perspective.

In addition to writing fiction, Archer keeps up a non-fiction blog of writing tips and book reviews, and worldbuilding is her favorite topic to blog about.

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This is a great post, and it helped me lot. Thank you!

You’re welcome.

Great job! I’ve written one short story that I’m pretty proud of, but I’m pretty sure I’ve written more that have been forgotten…..

It definitely takes practice. I have plenty of junk short stories, too. XD But each of them is a learning experience that contributes to the stories that come after.

When I first started writing short stories earlier this year, I had such a hard time figuring how to write an actual short story that wasn’t just a chapter to a novel. I wish I had this article then! This article makes it so much easier to grasp the difference in writing a short story versus a novel. Thank you so much for sharing this article! I really enjoyed reading it.

To be honest, a lot of my short stories end up introducing larger stories, whether intentionally or by accident. XD But remembering these points does help with creating self-contained, smaller stories!

You’re welcome! I’m glad it was helpful. 🙂

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Short Story vs Novel

A widespread conviction exists among fiction writers in English that sooner or later one moves on from the short story to the novel. When John Cheever described himself as the world’s oldest living short story writer, we all knew what he meant. But with most writers, the move is more a market decision than an artistic one, because the demands and satisfactions of the two forms are in so many ways utterly different. A short story is far less like a novel than it is like a poem. The primary difference between a short story and a poem is line breaks. Think of Anne Carson’s  Autobiography of Red , and you think, Odd metrics, is it poetry? Of course. Even if she broke it up only after she finished writing it, it’s poetry.

The primary difference between the short story and the novel is not word length. A novel is not a short story that kept going, though every short story writer dreams of writing such a story. Neither is a novel a string of stories with discursive and other connective tissue and padding. One of the first things the writer learns is how amazingly little room there is in a good novel for extraneousness, or noise. The primary difference between the short story and the novel is not length but the larger, more conceptual weight of meaning that the longer narrative must carry on its back from page to page, scene to scene. It’s not baggy wordage that causes the diffusiveness of the novel, it’s this long-distance haul of meaning. In a good short story the meaning is not so abstractable, so portable, as it must be in a novel, but is rather more tightly and ineffably embodied in the formal details of the text. A scene in a short story–and there may be only one–operates with a centripetal force of concentration. But a scene in a novel spins off a good deal of its energy looking not only backward and forward in the text but also sideways, outside the text, toward the material world, to that set of common assumptions considered ordinary life. That energy is centrifugal, opening out, not constantly seeking to revolve upon its own still centre.

Consider the difference in terms of time. Dr. Johnson said, “No man is ever happy in the present unless he is drunk.” The seeking of happiness in the present is a spiritual impulse, and also an artistic one (the other kind of happiness), and nowhere in literature is it so purely expressed as in lyric poetry and the short story. In a good short story the crisis exists in present time, it is a point of perfect, drunken poise between past and future, and every word of the text, every nuance of rhythm, every piece of shading and point of light, has been brought to bear upon it. As Frank O’Connor said, in a short story the crisis  is  the story. In a novel, by contrast, the crisis is only our destination, it occurs as a point in an unfolding of time; it is the logical result of what has come before it, which is as good as to say, of the moral qualities of the hero’s choices to date, and it indicates what the future has in store for one who, by having acted this way, has come to this. So while the short story, like poetry, seeks to focus time, the novel, being more like history, being the most secular of forms, seeks to survey it.

This is why when other than market forces are allowed to prevail, the novel is a form best suited to older writers. The minds of older writers have slowed down and stopped jumping around so uncontrollably, they have grown familiar if not necessarily easy with their own contents, their spiritual hunger has been dulled by time and its accommodations, and they are now interested more in the inexorable laws of moral implication than in perfect artistic moments of drunken poise. Also, of course, having more personal history to survey, they have more to work with. They have the material. Young writers are rarely able to maintain the perspective necessary to write good novels, but they do often write good short stories, and they do often write good strange hybrid longer fictions that poeticize the modes of the novel and novelize poetry. Unfortunately, by the time they’re writing good novels, they are often no longer writing with the spiritual force of poets. But every once in a while, to the salvation of literary fiction, there appears a mature writer of short stories–someone like Chekhov, or Munro–whose handling of the form at its best is so undulled, so poised, so capacious, so intelligent, that the  short  in  short story  is once again revealed as the silly adjective it is, for suddenly here are simply stories, spiritual histories, narratives amazingly porous yet concentrated and undiffused, grave without weight, ordinary but strange, and the unhappy bifurcation of poetry and history is once again revealed as the pernicious cultural illusion it is.

“Short Story vs Novel,”  University of Toronto Quarterly , 68 No. 4 (Fall 1999). Pp. 878-79.

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Alice Munro, Nobel Laureate and Master of the Short Story, Dies at 92

Her stories were widely considered to be without equal, a mixture of ordinary people and extraordinary themes.

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By Anthony DePalma

Alice Munro, the revered Canadian author who started writing short stories because she did not think she had the time or the talent to master novels, then stubbornly dedicated her long career to churning out psychologically dense stories that dazzled the literary world and earned her the Nobel Prize in Literature, died on Monday night in Port Hope, Ontario, east of Toronto. She was 92.

A spokesman for her publisher, Penguin Random House Canada, confirmed the death, at a nursing home. Ms. Munro’s health had declined since at least 2009, when she said she’d had heart bypass surgery and had been treated for cancer, though she continued to write.

Ms. Munro was a member of the rare breed of writer, like Katherine Anne Porter and Raymond Carver, who made their reputations in the notoriously difficult literary arena of the short story, and did so with great success. Her tales — many of them focused on women at different stages of their lives coping with complex desires — were so eagerly received and gratefully read that she attracted a whole new generation of readers.

Ms. Munro’s stories were widely considered to be without equal, a mixture of ordinary people and extraordinary themes. She portrayed small-town folks, often in rural southwestern Ontario, facing situations that made the fantastic seem an everyday occurrence. Some of her characters were fleshed out so completely through generations and across continents that readers reached a level of intimacy with them that usually comes only with a full-length novel.

She achieved such compactness through exquisite craftsmanship and a degree of precision that did not waste words. Other writers declared some of her stories to be near-perfect — a heavy burden for a writer of modest personal character who had struggled to overcome a lack of self-confidence at the beginning of her career, when she left the protective embrace of her quiet hometown and ventured into the competitive literary scene.

Her insecurity, however powerfully she felt it, was never noticed by her fellow writers, who celebrated her craftsmanship and freely lent her their highest praise.

The Irish novelist Edna O’Brien ranked Ms. Munro with William Faulkner and James Joyce as writers who had influenced her work. Joyce Carol Oates said Munro stories “have the density — moral, emotional, sometimes historical — of other writers’ novels.” And the novelist Richard Ford once made it clear that questioning Ms. Munro’s mastery over the short story would be akin to doubting the hardness of a diamond or the bouquet of a ripened peach.

“With Alice it’s like a shorthand,” Mr. Ford said. “You’ll just mention her, and everybody just kind of generally nods that she’s just sort of as good as it gets.”

In awarding her the Nobel in 2013 , when she was 82, the Swedish Academy cited her 14 collections of stories and referred to her as “a master of the contemporary short story,” praising her ability to “accommodate the entire epic complexity of the novel in just a few short pages.”

As famous for the refined exuberance of her prose as for the modesty of her personal life, Ms. Munro declined to travel to Sweden to accept her Nobel, saying she was too frail. In place of the formal lecture that winners traditionally give, she taped a long interview in Victoria, British Columbia, where she had been visiting when her award was announced. When asked if the process of writing her stories had consumed her entirely, she responded that it did, then added, “But you know, I always got lunch for my children.”

During the presentation of the taped interview at the Swedish Academy, the Swedish actress Pernilla August read an excerpt from Ms. Munro’s story “Carried Away,” a multi-decade tale of dashed expectations that typified the complicated, often disappointing, world of her stories.

“She had a picture taken. She knew how she wanted it to be,” the excerpt read. “She would have liked to wear a simple white blouse, a peasant girl’s smock with the string open at the neck. She did not own a blouse of that description and in fact had only seen them in pictures. And she would have liked to let her hair down. Or if it had to be up, she would have liked it piled very loosely and bound with strings of pearls.

“Instead she wore her blue silk shirtwaist and bound her hair as usual. She thought the picture made her look rather pale, hollow-eyed. Her expression was sterner and more foreboding than she had intended. She sent it anyway.”

‘Our Chekhov’

Ms. Munro’s early success in Canada, where her first collection of stories, “Dance of the Happy Shades” (1968), won the Governor General’s Literary Award, the equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, spread to the United States after her stories began to be published in The New Yorker in 1977. She was an important member of a generation of Canadian writers, along with Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje, whose celebrity reached far beyond the country’s borders.

Ms. Munro went on to win the Governor General’s award twice more, along with two Giller Prizes, another important national award in Canada, and many other honors. In 2009, she withdrew her collection “Too Much Happiness” from consideration for yet another Giller because she believed that a younger writer should have a chance to win it.

That same year she was awarded the Man Booker International Prize for her lifelong body of work, which the judges claimed was “practically perfect.” The awards committee commented that although she was known mostly as a short-story writer, “she brings as much depth, wisdom and precision to every story as most novelists bring to a lifetime of novels.”

“To read Alice Munro is to learn something every time that you never thought of before,” the judges said.

As her many-layered style developed, her short stories came to be neither short nor simply stories — she included 15 stories in her first book, but only eight or nine longer ones in some of her most recent collections. The greater length of each story gave her room to explore the psychological profiles of her characters more fully, and the resulting works are tightly woven tapestries of great tension, lasting resonance and stunning breadth that combine the emotional thrust of a novel with the pinpoint power of a masterful poem.

Over the years, her stories seemed to grow darker and more paradoxical, even though she often described her own life as ordinary and generally upbeat. Often her characters were simple people confronting unusual circumstances. But those situations could be odd, even bizarre, such as an accident in which a soldier who returned from war is decapitated after his sleeve is caught in a factory machine, or the actions of an unattractive girl who steals so much money from her parents’ store to pay boys for sex that her parents are forced to declare bankruptcy. The women in her stories tended to be emotionally pierced — divorced women, adulteresses and noble victims of life’s vicissitudes.

Like Faulkner, Eudora Welty and the other Southern writers she admired, Ms. Munro was capable of breathing life into an entire world — for her, the importunate countryside of southwestern Ontario and the placid, occasionally threatening presence of Lake Huron.

Cynthia Ozick called her “our Chekhov,” and the description stuck.

In a 2009 review of “Too Much Happiness,” Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times described the collection’s title story as “a brilliant distillation of her Chekhovian art.”

Never a Novel

Ms. Munro was able to live a life remarkable for its normalcy. Her days, like her characters’, were filled with quotidian routines punctuated by the explosive mystery of happenstance and accident.

Outside of a decade spent on the west coast of Canada during her first marriage, she lived with a great deal of satisfaction in the Ontario bramble she celebrated in her stories, quietly composing them in the house where her second husband was raised, not far from the place where she was born.

Perhaps the question that most dogged her throughout her long career was why, with her abundant talents and perceptive eye, she restricted herself to what is generally seen as the limited world of the short story rather than launch into the glittery universe of the novel.

“I don’t really understand a novel,” Ms. Munro confessed to Mervyn Rothstein of The Times in a 1986 interview. “I don’t understand where the excitement is supposed to come in a novel, and I do in a story. There’s a kind of tension that if I’m getting a story right I can feel right away.”

While one of her early collections, “Lives of Girls and Women,” is sometimes called a novel, Ms. Munro and her longtime editor at Alfred A. Knopf, Ann Close, considered it a collection of linked stories.

“Once I started to write that, I was off,” she told The Paris Review. “Then I made a big mistake. I tried to make it a regular novel, an ordinary sort of childhood adolescence novel. About March I saw it wasn’t working. It didn’t feel right to me, and I thought I would have to abandon it. I was very depressed. Then it came to me that what I had to do was pull it apart and put it in the story form. Then I could handle it.”

At times she swore she would never write a novel — almost dismissing the challenge as too great for her to even attempt. But at other times she seemed to wistfully wonder, as one of her characters might, how different her life might have been had she written a blockbuster novel.

“I’m thinking of something now, how it might be a novel, but I bet you it won’t be,” she said in a 1998 interview, just after publication of her widely acclaimed collection “The Love of a Good Woman.” She confessed that on occasion she had experimented with stretching her stories into novels but said she found that the stories “start to sag” when she did so, as though being taken beyond their natural limits. Still, the lure never completely evaporated. “My ambition is to write a novel before I die,” she said, also in 1998.

She never did.

Shortly before receiving her Nobel in 2013, Ms. Munro told several interviewers that she had decided to stop writing. As far back as 2009, she had disclosed her cancer diagnosis and that she’d undergone heart bypass surgery. Her declining health had robbed her of strength, but she also remarked that she’d been writing since she was 20 and had grown weary of what Del, a character in “Lives of Girls and Women” who is generally taken to be Ms. Munro’s proxy, says is a writer’s only duty, which is “to produce a masterpiece.”

“That’s a long time to be working,” Ms. Munro said, “and I thought maybe it’s time to take it easy.”

Rural Beginnings

Alice Ann Laidlaw was born on July 10, 1931, in the village of Wingham, Ontario, hard by the banks of Lake Huron. She was the first of three children of Robert Eric Laidlaw and Anne Clarke (Chamney) Laidlaw. Her father had tried his luck at the rather exotic undertaking of raising silver foxes and mink, but when that failed he went through a number of professions, including stints as foundry watchman and turkey farmer.

When Anne Laidlaw developed Parkinson’s disease, it fell to Alice, not yet a teenager but the oldest of the three children, to care for her mother, an experience that she wove through her writing. She was able to attend college after winning a two-year scholarship to the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, about 65 miles south of Wingham.

She majored in English but initially kept her ambition to write fiction to herself. She dropped out before completing her studies and married a fellow student, James Munro. She sold her first short work of fiction, a story, to the radio service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The Munros settled in Vancouver and had two children; a third died at birth. Ms. Munro said the domestic demands of those years — balancing parenthood with her dream of writing, “getting apple juice, answering the phone and letting the cat in” — left her no time or energy for ambitious projects like writing novels. Instead, she dedicated herself to mastering the short story, a form that she felt she could manage in between raising her children and taking care of her house.

In 1963, Ms. Munro and her husband moved to Victoria, where she helped him found a bookstore, Munro’s, and gave birth to another daughter. The marriage ended in 1973, and she moved back to Ontario.

By then, her literary reputation in Canada was established. In 1968, her first book, “Dance of the Happy Shades,” a collection of short stories compiled over a dozen years, introduced readers to what would later be widely recognized as “Alice Munro Country” — the rigidly introspective landscape of solitary country roads and stolid houses of yellow brick within which shy lives and solemn secrets unfolded.

“Everybody knows what a house does, how it encloses space and makes connections between one enclosed space and another and presents what is outside in a new way,” she wrote in a 1982 essay. “That is the nearest I can come to explaining what a story is for me.”

Her stories are blanketed with countless small but sharp observations that animate Munro Country. For instance, in “Spaceships Have Landed,” a story in the collection “Open Secrets” (1994), the main character drunkenly flirts with her boyfriend’s friend, only to be grossly insulted by him. The next day, she calls him to the porch of her house and confronts him while using a piece of steel wool to clean freshly laid eggs.

Such details evoke a sense of the semirural Canadian backcountry, a quiet land where people never deliberately call attention to themselves and the ordinariness of life can be suddenly disrupted by accidents, arrivals and unanticipated departures.

Although Ms. Munro was most often described as a Canadian writer, her stories evoked not Canada itself but the bittersweet triumphs, mishaps and humiliations of small town life. And in the end, every landscape served as backdrop for her central themes, which were the unpredictability of life and the betrayals that women suffer or commit — scenes redolent with autobiography.

In “The Albanian Virgin,” a celebrated story featuring a rare exotic setting as well as the familiar Canadian landscape, the female protagonist runs a bookstore in Victoria and dreamily contemplates the errant directions taken by her life: “But I was not despondent. I had made a desperate change in my life, and in spite of the regrets that I suffered every day, I was proud of that. I felt as if I had finally come out into the world in a new, true, skin.”

A Publicity-Shy ‘Plodder’

Ms. Munro shunned much of the publicity usually associated with literary success and limited her book tour appearances and readings. She often referred to herself in a self-deprecating way; she said she had not “come out of the closet” as a professional writer until she was 40, and she called herself a “plodder” because of the slow and deliberate way she worked, often writing in her nightclothes for several hours in the morning and then extensively revising her stories before sending them off.

But to critics, there was nothing plodding about her stories, which were put together so seamlessly that the many flashbacks, flash-forwards and shifts in time and place that she employed happened without notice. She often started her stories at a point where other authors might end theirs, and continued them well past the climax or denouement that would have satisfied others less driven by the twists of fate. Inevitably, this left readers to work out who exactly the narrator was and how one character was related to another.

Eventually, though, every piece would fit together. “It’s like a child’s puzzle,” the novelist Anne Tyler once said of Ms. Munro’s work. “In the most successful of the stories, the end result is a satisfying click as everything settles precisely into place.”

After the turbulence and dislocation she went through before Ms. Munro turned 40, her life and career clicked satisfyingly into place when she returned to southern Ontario. She started seeing Gerald Fremlin, a geographer, and after a brief romance married him and moved into the house in Clinton, Ontario, where he was raised.

She is survived by her daughters, Sheila, Jenny and Andrea. Sheila Munro is the author of the 2001 memoir “Lives of Mothers and Daughters: Growing Up With Alice Munro.”

She embarked on an ambitious schedule of publishing a collection of short stories every three or four years, winning praise and admiration across Canada, where she comes close to being a household literary saint. After receiving her first Governor General’s award, she won it twice more, for “Who Do You Think You Are?” in 1978 and for “The Progress of Love” in 1986.

In 1998, she received the Giller Prize for “The Love of a Good Woman,” and in 2004 she picked up another for “Runaway.” After the National Book Critics Circle agreed for the first time to consider authors from outside the United States for its award, Ms. Munro won in 1998 for “The Love of a Good Woman.”

As if she were a character in one of her stories, plagued by bad timing and unlucky happenstance, Ms. Munro was not at home when the Swedish Academy called to tell her that she had won; it had to leave a telephone message. She was in Victoria visiting her daughter, who heard the news and woke her mother at 4 a.m. Still groggy when interviewed by the CBC, Ms. Munro admitted that she’d forgotten that the prize was to be awarded that day, calling it “a splendid thing to happen,” adding, “more than I can say.”

Struggling to control her emotions, she reflected on her success and what it might mean for literature. “My stories have gotten around quite remarkably for short stories,” she told the interviewer. “I would really hope that this would make people see the short story as an important art, not something you play around with until you got a novel written.”

Lisa D. Awano and Sofia Poznansky contributed reporting.

An earlier version of this obituary misspelled the given name of an author who praised Ms. Munro’s writing. She is Anne Tyler, not Ann.

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Alice Munro, Canadian author who mastered the short story, dead at 92

Munro, who won the nobel prize in 2013, acclaimed for blending ordinary lives with extraordinary themes.

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Alice Munro, a Canadian author who was revered worldwide as master of the short story and one of few women to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, has died at the age of 92.

Her publisher said she died at her home in Port Hope, Ont., on Monday evening.

"Alice Munro is a national treasure — a writer of enormous depth, empathy, and humanity whose work is read, admired, and cherished by readers throughout Canada and around the world," read a statement from Kristin Cochrane, CEO of McClelland & Stewart, which is owned by Penguin Random House Canada.

"Alice's writing inspired countless writers too, and her work leaves an indelible mark on our literary landscape."

Munro wrote more than a dozen acclaimed collections over the course of her career, seamlessly blending ordinary people with extraordinary themes — womanhood, restlessness, aging — to develop complex characters with the nuance, depth and clarity most writers can only find in the wider confines of a novel.

In honouring her with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013, the Swedish Academy hailed Munro as "master of the contemporary short story," affirming what her peers, critics and readers had proclaimed for years.

• Canadian authors remember the late Alice Munro — and the literary legacy she leaves behind
• Alice Munro's legacy with the New Yorker

"Alice Munro was one of the world's greatest storytellers. Her short stories about life, friendship, and human connection left an indelible mark on readers. A proud Canadian, she leaves behind a remarkable legacy," read a statement from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday.

"On behalf of the Government of Canada, I offer my condolences to Mrs. Munro's family, friends, and many fans. Her creativity, compassion, and gift for writing will remain an inspiration for generations."

Early years in small-town Ontario

Munro was born Alice Laidlaw in Wingham, Ont., on July 10, 1931. The eldest child of Robert and Anne Laidlaw, she was raised on what she described as a " collapsing enterprise of a fox and mink farm " in the throes of the Great Depression.

An avid reader by 11, Munro was drawn to the work of literary legends Lucy Maud Montgomery and Charles Dickens. She began "making up stories in her mind" after discovering the works of Alfred Tennyson, according to her official Nobel biography.

Alice Munro on the craft of writing

As the eldest child, Munro took on most of the domestic roles in the household after her mother, who had been a schoolteacher, was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Though only 12 or 13, Munro said the work gave her "a sense of responsibility, purpose, being important. It didn't bother me at all."

Despite the family challenges, she began writing short stories when she was a teenager. She graduated valedictorian of her high school class in 1949 with a two-year scholarship to the University of Western Ontario in London.

Her first published story, The Dimensions of a Shadow , appeared in Western's undergraduate creative writing magazine, Folio, in the spring of 1950 . Two more pieces followed, with all three receiving praise for their exploration of the lives of girls and women.

It was there that she met and began dating honours history student James Munro. She also noticed Gerald Fremlin, an older student and another contributor to Folio.  Laidlaw and Munro married at her parents' home in Wingham on Dec. 29, 1951. The following year, James gave his wife a typewriter as a 21st birthday present.

The Munros had three daughters — Sheila, Catherine and Jenny — in the early years of their marriage. (Catherine died the same day she was born.) Munro left university when the scholarship money ran out and the family eventually settled in West Vancouver's Dundarave neighbourhood.

• 92 things to know about master short story writer Alice Munro
• Alice Munro’s friend and editor on what made her ‘a world-class figure’

The monotony of the girls' early years was reflected in 1978's The Moons of Jupiter , which described "wives yawning, napping, visiting, drinking coffee, and folding diapers; husbands coming home at night from the city across the water."

"We had become a cartoon couple, more middle-aged in our twenties than we would be in middle age," she wrote.

5 coolest things Alice Munro told CBC about her writing

Devotion to the short story.

Munro later said she devoted her career to the short story medium — regarded by many as notoriously difficult and by others as inferior to the novel — because the demands of marriage and motherhood didn't allow her the time to complete longer works.

In 1963, the Munros moved to Victoria and opened Munro's Books on Yates Street. Munro credits the bookstore, which made a "marvellous" $175 on its first day and is still flourishing, as helping her overcome the writer's block she experienced from her mid-20s to her mid-30s: "The writing ceased to be this all-important thing that I had to prove myself with. The pressure came off."

"Just as she would shape Munro's, Munro's would shape Alice," the shop wrote in a tribute to its founder. "Jim enjoyed recounting his wife's urge to write something better than the 'crappy books' that sold alongside the store's more palatable titles."

Alice Munro remembered at the beloved Victoria book store she co-founded

Munro's first collection of stories, Dance of the Happy Shades , was published in 1968 — two years after she gave birth to her fourth daughter, Andrea. The anthology drew attention from other Canadian literary giants such as Margaret Atwood and earned her comparisons to the famed Russian short story writer Anton Chekhov.

After her marriage ended in 1972, Munro moved back to Ontario. She reconnected with Fremlin — whom she'd shared pages with in Folio back at Western — after he deduced from an interview of hers on CBC Radio in 1974 that she was back in Ontario. The pair married and moved to Clinton, Ont., not far from her hometown in Wingham.

Fremlin, a retired geographer and cartographer, was the one to use the office in the couple's home. Munro opted to write at a tiny desk facing a window overlooking the driveway from the corner of their dining room, according to a 2013 profile . 

Alice Munro amazed by Nobel win

International recognition came after the New Yorker bought its first Munro story, Royal Beatings , in 1977. Munro nurtured a decades-long publishing relationship with the magazine, cementing the Canadian author's status with an elite group of contributors who defined the American publication's celebrated love affair with short fiction .

An unapologetic revisionist, Munro was known to keep reworking stories even after her publisher had sent them back without asking for any changes.

• Alice Munro on writing about life, love, sex and secrets
• Alice Munro on the craft of writing short stories

In one instance , she personally paid financial penalties in order to add an entirely new story and change the voice from first to third person after the printing deadline for Who Do You Think You Are? — a collection of short stories that went on to win Munro the Governor General's Award in 1978.

Munro won a litany of literary honours over the next decades of her career, including two more Governor General's Awards, two Giller Prizes and the Man Booker International Prize. She also received an honorary degree from her alma mater, Western University — the "only such honour" she ever accepted, the school has said .

In mid-2013, shortly after the death of her second husband, Munro told the National Post that she was content with her career and "probably not going to write anymore."

She won the Nobel Prize in Literature that October, becoming the 13th woman to receive the honour.

In an interview with CBC after her Nobel win, Munro said: "I think my stories have gotten around quite remarkably for short stories, and I would really hope that this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something that you played around with until you'd got a novel written."

Munro's last collection of work, Dear Life , was published in 2012. She introduced the final four stories in its pages, called Finale , as "autobiographical in feeling", if only partly.

"I believe they are the first and last — and the closest — things I have to say about my own life."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Senior Writer

Rhianna Schmunk is a senior writer for CBC News based in Vancouver. Over a decade in journalism, she has reported on subjects including criminal justice, civil litigation and climate change. You can send story tips to [email protected].

• Send confidential story tips with SecureDrop
• Follow Rhianna on X

With files from CBC Books

Related Stories

• Canadian authors remember Alice Munro and her literary legacy
• audio Alice Munro’s friend and editor on what made her ‘a world-class figure’
• Alice Munro wrote about life, love, sex and secrets — revisit her 2004 conversation with Eleanor Wachtel

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Alice Munro, Nobel literature winner revered as short story master, dead at 92

FILE - Canadian author Alice Munro poses for a photograph at the Canadian Consulate’s residence in New York on Oct. 28, 2002. Munro, the Canadian literary giant who became one of the world’s most esteemed contemporary authors and one of history’s most honored short story writers, has died at age 92. (AP Photo/Paul Hawthorne, File)

FILE - Canadian author Alice Munro is photographed during an interview in Victoria, B.C. Tuesday, Dec.10, 2013. Munro, the Canadian literary giant who became one of the world’s most esteemed contemporary authors and one of history’s most honored short story writers, has died at age 92. (Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press via AP, File)

FILE - Nobel Prize-winning Canadian author Alice Munro attends a ceremony held by the Royal Canadian Mint where they unveiled a 99.99% pure silver five-dollar coin in Victoria, B.C., on March 24, 2014. Munro, the Canadian literary giant who became one of the world’s most esteemed contemporary authors and one of history’s most honored short story writers, has died at age 92. (Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press via AP, File)

FILE - Writer Alice Munro attends the opening night of the International Festival of Authors in Toronto on Wednesday Oct. 21, 2009. Munro, the Canadian literary giant who became one of the world’s most esteemed contemporary authors and one of history’s most honored short story writers, has died at age 92. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)

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Nobel laureate Alice Munro, the Canadian literary giant who became one of the world’s most esteemed contemporary authors and one of history’s most honored short story writers, has died at age 92.

A spokesperson for publisher Penguin Random House Canada said Munro, winner of the Nobel literary prize in 2013, died Monday at home in Port Hope, Ontario. Munro had been in frail health for years and often spoke of retirement, a decision that proved final after the author’s 2012 collection, “Dear Life.”

Often ranked with Anton Chekhov, John Cheever and a handful of other short story writers, Munro achieved stature rare for an art form traditionally placed beneath the novel. She was the first lifelong Canadian to win the Nobel and the first recipient cited exclusively for short fiction. Echoing the judgment of so many before, the Swedish academy pronounced her a “master of the contemporary short story” who could “accommodate the entire epic complexity of the novel in just a few short pages.”

Munro, little known beyond Canada until her late 30s, also became one of the few short story writers to enjoy ongoing commercial success. Sales in North America alone exceeded 1 million copies and the Nobel announcement raised “Dear Life” to the high end of The New York Times’ bestseller list for paperback fiction. Other popular books included “Too Much Happiness,” “The View from Castle Rock” and “The Love of a Good Woman.”

Over a half century of writing, Munro perfected one of the greatest tricks of any art form: illuminating the universal through the particular, creating stories set around Canada that appealed to readers far away. She produced no single definitive work, but dozens of classics that were showcases of wisdom, technique and talent — her inspired plot twists and artful shifts of time and perspective; her subtle, sometimes cutting humor; her summation of lives in broad dimension and fine detail; her insights into people across age or background, her genius for sketching a character, like the adulterous woman introduced as “short, cushiony, dark-eyed, effusive. A stranger to irony.”

Her best known fiction included “The Beggar Maid,” a courtship between an insecure young woman and an officious rich boy who becomes her husband; “Corrie,” in which a wealthy young woman has an affair with an architect “equipped with a wife and young family"; and “The Moons of Jupiter,” about a middle-aged writer who visits her ailing father in a Toronto hospital and shares memories of different parts of their lives.

“I think any life can be interesting,” Munro said during a 2013 post-prize interview for the Nobel Foundation. “I think any surroundings can be interesting.”

Disliking Munro, as a writer or as a person, seemed almost heretical. The wide and welcoming smile captured in her author photographs was complemented by a down-to-earth manner and eyes of acute alertness, fitting for a woman who seemed to pull stories out of the air the way songwriters discovered melodies. She was admired without apparent envy, placed by the likes of Jonathan Franzen, John Updike and Cynthia Ozick at the very top of the pantheon. Munro’s daughter, Sheila Munro, wrote a memoir in which she confided that “so unassailable is the truth of her fiction that sometimes I even feel as though I’m living inside an Alice Munro story.” Fellow Canadian author Margaret Atwood called her a pioneer for women, and for Canadians.

“Back in the 1950s and 60s, when Munro began, there was a feeling that not only female writers but Canadians were thought to be both trespassing and transgressing,” Atwood wrote in a 2013 tribute published in the Guardian after Munro won the Nobel. “The road to the Nobel wasn’t an easy one for Munro: the odds that a literary star would emerge from her time and place would once have been zero.”

Although not overtly political, Munro witnessed and participated in the cultural revolution of the 1960s and ‘70s and permitted her characters to do the same. She was a farmer’s daughter who married young, then left her husband in the 1970s and took to “wearing miniskirts and prancing around,” as she recalled during a 2003 interview with The Associated Press. Many of her stories contrasted the generation of Munro’s parents with the more open-ended lives of their children, departing from the years when housewives daydreamed “between the walls that the husband was paying for.”

Moviegoers would become familiar with “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” the improbably seamless tale of a married woman with memory loss who has an affair with a fellow nursing home patient, a story further complicated by her husband’s many past infidelities. “The Bear” was adapted by Sarah Polley into the 2006 feature film “Away from Her,” which brought an Academy Award nomination for Julie Christie. In 2014, Kristen Wiig starred in “Hateship, Loveship,” an adaptation of the story “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage,” in which a housekeeper leaves her job and travels to a distant rural town to meet up with a man she believes is in love with her — unaware the romantic letters she has received were concocted by his daughter and a friend.

Even before the Nobel, Munro received honors from around the English-language world, including Britain’s Man Booker International Prize and the National Book Critics Circle award in the U.S., where the American Academy of Arts and Letters voted her in as an honorary member. In Canada, she was a three-time winner of the Governor’s General Award and a two-time winner of the Giller Prize.

Munro was a short story writer by choice, and, apparently, by design. Judith Jones, an editor at Alfred A. Knopf who worked with Updike and Anne Tyler, did not want to publish “Lives of Girls & Women,” her only novel, writing in an internal memo that “there’s no question the lady can write but it’s also clear she is primarily a short story writer.”

Munro would acknowledge that she didn’t think like a novelist.

“I have all these disconnected realities in my own life, and I see them in other people’s lives,” she told the AP. “That was one of the problems, why I couldn’t write novels. I never saw things hanging together too well.”

Alice Ann Laidlaw was born in Wingham, Ontario, in 1931, and spent much of her childhood there, a time and place she often used in her fiction, including the four autobiographical pieces that concluded “Dear Life.” Her father was a fox farmer, her mother a teacher and the family’s fortunes shifted between middle class and working poor, giving the future author a special sensitivity to money and class. Young Alice was often absorbed in literature, starting with the first time she was read Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.” She was a compulsive inventor of stories and the “sort of child who reads walking upstairs and props a book in front of her when she does the dishes.”

A top student in high school, she received a scholarship to study at the University of Western Ontario, majoring in journalism as a “cover-up” for her pursuit of literature. She was still an undergraduate when she sold a story about a lonely teacher, “The Dimensions of a Shadow,” to CBC Radio. She was also publishing work in her school’s literary journal.

One fellow student read “Dimensions” and wrote to the then-Laidlaw, telling her the story reminded him of Chekhov. The student, Gerald Fremlin, would become her second husband. Another fellow student, James Munro, was her first husband. They married in 1951, when she was only 20, and had four children, one of whom died soon after birth.

Settling with her family in British Columbia, Alice Munro wrote between trips to school, housework and helping her husband at the bookstore that they co-owned and would turn up in some of her stories. She wrote one book in the laundry room of her house, her typewriter placed near the washer and dryer. Flannery O’Connor, Carson McCullers and other writers from the American South inspired her, through their sense of place and their understanding of the strange and absurd.

Isolated from the literary center of Toronto, she did manage to get published in several literary magazines and to attract the attention of an editor at Ryerson Press (later bought out by McGraw Hill). Her debut collection, “Dance of the Happy Shades,” was released in 1968 with a first printing of just under 2,700 copies. A year later it won the Governor’s General Award and made Munro a national celebrity — and curiosity. “Literary Fame Catches City Mother Unprepared,” read one newspaper headline.

“When the book first came they sent me a half dozen copies. I put them in the closet. I didn’t look at them. I didn’t tell my husband they had come, because I couldn’t bear it. I was afraid it was terrible,” Munro told the AP. “And one night, he was away, and I forced myself to sit down and read it all the way through, and I didn’t think it was too bad. And I felt I could acknowledge it and it would be OK.”

By the early ’70s, she had left her husband, later observing that she was not “prepared to be a submissive wife.” Her changing life was best illustrated by her response to the annual Canadian census. For years, she had written down her occupation as “housewife.” In 1971, she switched to “writer.”

Over the next 40 years, her reputation and readership only grew, with many of her stories first appearing in The New Yorker. Her prose style was straightforward, her tone matter of fact, but her plots revealed unending disruption and disappointments: broken marriages, violent deaths, madness and dreams unfulfilled, or never even attempted. “Canadian Gothic” was one way she described the community of her childhood, a world she returned to when, in middle age, she and her second husband relocated to nearby Clinton.

“Shame and embarrassment are driving forces for Munro’s characters,” Atwood wrote, “just as perfectionism in the writing has been a driving force for her: getting it down, getting it right, but also the impossibility of that.”

She had the kind of curiosity that would have made her an ideal companion on a long train ride, imagining the lives of the other passengers. Munro wrote the story “Friend of My Youth,” in which a man has an affair with his fiancee’s sister and ends up living with both women, after an acquaintance told her about some neighbors who belonged to a religion that forbade card games. The author wanted to know more — about the religion, about the neighbors.

Even as a child, Munro had regarded the world as an adventure and mystery and herself as an observer, walking around Wingham and taking in the homes as if she were a tourist. In “The Peace of Utrecht,” an autobiographical story written in the late 1960s, a woman discovers an old high school notebook and remembers a dance she once attended with an intensity that would envelop her whole existence.

“And now an experience which seemed not at all memorable at the time,” Munro wrote, “had been transformed into something curiously meaningful for me, and complete; it took in more than the girls dancing and the single street, it spread over the whole town, its rudimentary pattern of streets and its bare trees and muddy yards just free of the snow, over the dirt roads where the lights of cars appeared, jolting toward the town, under an immense pale wash of sky.”

This story has been updated to correct the title of “The Beggar Maid.”

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• Copilot is faster, offers more integrated image editing tools, and is integrated with Microsoft 365.
• ChatGPT excels in writing eloquent content, has fewer ads, and restricts content imitation more than Copilot.

OpenAI's ChatGPT Plus and Microsoft's Copilot Pro are among the biggest names in artificial intelligence. Yet, these chatbots arguably have more in common than any other subscription-based AI software. That's because both platforms are built with versions of GPT-4 . In theory, this means one shouldn't be any smarter than the other. However, while the underlying training data is similar, the two AI platforms have a few noticeable disparities that could make all the difference in choosing where to spend that $20-a-month subscription.

I created a ChatGPT Plus vs. Copilot Pro battle by feeding both programs the same prompts. Both use GPT-4 and DALL-E, yet Copilot just made GPT-4 Turbo available even to non-paying customers. That move gives Microsoft's offering a bit more speed. Yet, that's not the only distinction. The wildly different user interfaces, integrations, and policies create noticeable gaps between the two AI chatbots. ChatGPT tended to be a bit more long-winded yet offered more descriptive language and varied sentence structures. On the other hand, Copilot offered more tools inside the AI app while simultaneously being integrated into more places, like Word and Outlook.

With both subscriptions costing $20 a month and utilizing GPT-4 and DALL-E, the differences between ChatGPT Plus and Copilot Pro make one a better fit. Here's how the two programs differ.

I tested Gemini Advanced against ChatGPT Plus to see which AI is better

Image test: copilot has more built-in image editing tools, yet chatgpt delivers the requested style a bit better.

Both chatbots had the same struggles that feel fairly universal across generative AI -- neither could properly spell "happy birthday" within the graphic itself when I asked it to create a birthday card. Similarly, both struggled with human hands and portraying people in a way that didn't feel artificial.

While the platforms share similar struggles, looking at the integrated tools, Copilot pulls ahead. Microsoft's AI created four image options, whereas ChatGPT created one. But Copilot's real benefits come from the integrated tools. Designer, the GPT made for creating images, has a few integrated tools where you can edit the resulting graphic. Integrated styles allowed me to convert to a different genre like watercolor or pixel art. I could even click on part of the image to create a background blur or a color pop effect or switch to a square aspect ratio, all without leaving Copilot.

The one thing I felt ChatGPT excelled at was getting the style right on the first attempt. When I asked for a watercolor image, ChatGPT produced a watercolor image. With Copilot, it produced a render that wasn't at all like a watercolor. With Copilot, I could then use the built-in tools to select a style, and then the result was closer to what I was looking for. Still, Copilot's watercolor featured black outlines more consistent with comic book art than with a painting.

Copilot: Everything you need to know about Microsoft's AI

Writing test: chatgpt is long-winded, but more eloquent, copilot was able to add in more recent facts.

ChatGPT tends to get wordy if you don't request a specific length. However, the program from OpenAI also produced more polished content. ChatGPT's writing, for both business and creative tasks, contained more varied sentence structures, less passive voice, and more descriptive language.

In contrast, when tasked with writing a short story about a haunted house, Copilot started with "once upon a time" and ended with "happily ever after" in an odd mashup of horror tropes and fairy tale storytelling. Copilot did a bit better when I switched from the fast conversation style to creative, though I still enjoyed ChatGPT's story more. Copilot also misunderstood instructions when I asked it to write up a letter of recommendation for a former coworker, writing a letter to me rather than from me.

The one area where Copilot performed a little better was pulling recent information. ChatGPT integrated more specifics in an email about the iPhone 15 Pro when requested, but acted as if the phone hadn't been announced yet and reminded me to check the specifications. Copilot seemed to do better at incorporating recent information, adding specifications about the smartphone on the first attempt. Both programs incorrectly stated that the Pro version had the A16 chipset, serving as a reminder to always check factual data when using AI.

I tried ChatGPT Plus. Here's everything it can do

Advice test: chatgpt often suggests more options, but co-pilot still had some sound advice.

What felt long-winded when tasked with writing a professional email turned into more ideas when I asked ChatGPT for advice. When I asked for gift ideas, the chatbot churned out more ideas in general than Copilot.

However, the two programs felt most similar here in chatting and asking for advice. I could have asked for a specific number of ideas and received very similar results. ChatGPT listed more options, but both churned out fairly standard advice when I asked for gift ideas and job interview tips.

How to master GPT-4 in ChatGPT: Prompts, tips, and tricks

Speed test: copilot tends to finish faster, copilot has three modes for choosing when speed is most important.

With ChatGPT coming from OpenAI, the company behind GPT-4, it's a bit surprising that Copilot is actually the first to utilize GPT-4 Turbo. While the upgraded GPT is available for beta users of ChatGPT Pro, Copilot began integrating the Turbo version for consumers first, resulting in a tendency to answer questions faster.

When I asked for a poem, Copilot finished plus added four images (that I didn't request) before ChatGPT could even finish just the text. In general, Copilot seemed to finish faster nearly every time.

Copilot also has three conversation styles to choose from, so you can prioritize speed, creativity, or precision. Switching to creative mode occasionally allowed ChatGPT to finish first. But, in general, Copilot completed more tasks first.

ChatGPT seemed to experience more freezes. It's limited to 40 messages every three hours. Microsoft doesn't list a specific number for Copilot, but the company recently removed the former 300-message daily limit for the free tier.

How to use ChatGPT to make AI-generated art and images

Ethics test: both chatbots use the similar training data, but chatgpt has more content restrictions in place.

With both chatbots using GPT-4, the difference in ethics between the two platforms lies in each company's content policy guidelines. Neither chatbot refused to generate an image in the style of Van Gogh. However, when I asked for an image inspired by more recent living artists, ChatGPT refused, as imitating a specific artist's style is against the content guidelines.

Neither platform refused when asked to imitate a writer's style, past or present.

10 ChatGPT extensions to try and what exactly they can do

Privacy test: copilot doesn't use data for training, but both platforms have some data controls.

Both ChatGPT and Copilot allow users to delete their previous chats. ChatGPT will delete your data automatically every 30 days if you turn off chat history. Copilot has a privacy center where users can visit and manually delete their data, though this also deletes Bing search history.

Microsoft says it doesn't use data typed into Copilot for training -- which makes sense as the system is based on training data from OpenAI. ChatGPT will use your data for training, but users can turn this off in the settings.

OpenAI launches GPT Store for custom chatbots in ChatGPT

Extra features test: copilot has more integrations, but chatgpt has more custom gpts and fewer ads.

Naturally, as a Microsoft product, Copilot is integrated into more apps. You can use Copilot in Word and PowerPoint if you also have a Microsoft 365 subscription. Microsoft also incorporates the AI into Outlook email. That means there's less copy-paste action to get the AI-written content into your email, word processor, or presentation. You don't have to go back and forth between the Copilot app or web version and the program you are using.

Copilot also has more integrated tools. You can edit your images right from the image generator. Copilot Notebook will also generate content for you without the chat-like experience, allowing longer descriptions of what you would like the AI to write for you.

While ChatGPT doesn't have those same integrations, it does have a longer list of custom GPTs. The Explore GPT section has plenty of different options in a number of different categories, while Copilot is limited to Copilot, Designer, Vacation Planner, Cooking Assistant, and Fitness Trainer.

ChatGPT also doesn't have ads within the paid mobile app or web platform. Copilot annoyingly sneaks in some links and even some photo ads after nearly each generation.

How to use Google's Gemini AI from the web or your phone

Verdict: which ai chatbot subscription is the best, copilot has a free trial and is faster, and the free version uses gpt-4.

Despite sharing similar training data, ChatGPT Plus and Copilot Pro both have unique quirks that make the decision on which chatbot to use a more clear-cut choice. Both have the same $20 a month cost, though Microsoft is the only one with a one-month free trial accessible by downloading the mobile app.

With integration into Microsoft 365, Copilot is the better choice for users who already have a subscription to the brand's suite of tools like Word and PowerPoint. While the AI is in addition to the subscription costs for Microsoft 365, the integration means less back-and-forth between separate apps.

Copilot is also the faster of the two AI systems, with fewer message limits. Microsoft's chatbot also has more integrated image editing tools for use with DALL-E graphics. The user interface also has a separate Copilot Notebook, allowing for generating text without the chat-like experience.

While Copilot is the better choice for those who already use Word and Outlook, ChatGPT Pro consistently produces more eloquent written content. Where Copilot's felt more like a first draft, OpenAI delivered more varied sentence structure and vocabulary for a smoother read. ChatGPT also has content restrictions that prevent imitating another modern artist. The OpenAI program was also free of the ads that dotted Copilot.

Looking outside the subscriptions to the free tiers, the decision is more clear-cut. The free version of Copilot uses GPT-4, while ChatGPT uses the older GPT-3.5 for non-paying users. That allows Copilot to deliver better results in less time for those who cannot swing the cost. The free access to GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo is limited to non-peak times, however, and the free option also excludes the Microsoft 365 integrations.

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MM 5.21: Start time announced for Maryland men’s lacrosse vs. Virginia

This is the Maryland Minute, a short story followed by a roundup of Terps-related news.

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No. 7-seed Maryland men’s lacrosse will take on No. 6-seed Virginia at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday in the NCAA Tournament semifinals, it was announced Sunday. The game will air on ESPN 2.

The Terps defeated No. 2-seed Duke, 14-11, in the quarterfinals last Saturday. Maryland trailed by three at halftime, but a seven-goal fourth quarter propelled it to victory.

Meanwhile, Virginia beat No. 3-seed Johns Hopkins, 11-10, in double overtime on Sunday. The Cavaliers were led by McCabe Millon, who posted three goals and three assists in the win.

No. 1-seed Notre Dame and No. 5-seed Denver will also play on Saturday at noon. The winners of Saturday’s games will meet in the NCAA Tournament championship game on Monday at 1 p.m. All games will be played at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.

In other news

Former Maryland women’s basketball player Abby Meyers was named British Basketball League Playoff Final MVP on Sunday.

An #UNBEATABLE performance from Abby Meyers earns her #BritishBasketballLeague Playoff Final MVP Relive the action on our YouTube channel: https://t.co/S4iQPHK0sC pic.twitter.com/t5eKcV8p7a — Women’s British Basketball League (@britishbasketw) May 19, 2024

Former Maryland women’s basketball player Alyssa Thomas nearly posted a triple-double Monday.

She’s that good. Alyssa Thomas is your Seriously Nice Player of the Game, brought to you by @BreezeAirways ! pic.twitter.com/WLt5qR7ssZ — Connecticut Sun (@ConnecticutSun) May 21, 2024

Next Up In Maryland Football

• MM 4.29: Maryland football announces spring game award recipients
• Tracking Maryland’s undrafted free agents after the 2024 NFL Draft
• Tre Colbert signs with Baltimore Ravens as undrafted free agent
• Gottlieb Ayedze signs with Philadelphia Eagles as undrafted free agent
• Ja’Quan Sheppard signs with Las Vegas Raiders as undrafted free agent
• Jeshaun Jones signs with Minnesota Vikings as undrafted free agent

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