ry, is
false.

The vice of such statement originates in failure to distinguish between
the two types of short story, the story of atmosphere and the dramatic
story. The story of atmosphere, of totality or unity of emotional effect
on a reader, can hardly escape manifesting the dramatic unities of
place, time, and action. The emotional effect will usually be that of a
single definite place, for reasons brought out in the preceding chapter;
the time will be brief, on account of the inherent difficulty to sustain
the atmosphere; and there will be little complication or prolongation of
the action, for the same reason. But the dramatic short story is not
subject to the limitations imposed by the necessity always to regard
atmosphere, or emotional effect, and it may or may not manifest the
dramatic unities.

The way to state the relation between the matter of unity and the
dramatic short story, the short story of true plot, is this: on account
of the limited space available, the plot for a dramatic short story will
tend to involve relatively few shifts of setting, relatively short
spaces of time, relatively few and relatively simple events, and
relatively few persons. No other sort of plot can be adequately handled
within narrow word limits. The short story must be written with verbal
fullness and elaboration, that its phrasing may not be bare and unlike
the shaded contours of life, and the plot complicated as to any one of
its three elements of personality, setting, and event cannot be
adequately developed in a few thousand words. The short story is the
result of just conception and selection, rather than of mere rhetorical
compression. Stevenson's "Markheim," for instance, is written more
elaborately than almost any other episode in fiction, long or short,
that is, any other episode of equal length in point of the time it would
take to happen in actuality.

Poe was the first writer to say much of anything definite about his art,
and commentators on technique who have followed him have merely expanded
his thesis rather than said something new. The only trouble, in relation
to the short story, is that Poe spoke of unity and singleness of effect
with his own peculiar type of short story in mind, the short story of
unity or totality of emotional effect, the short story of atmosphere.
When he stated that the short story--his type of short story, the short
story of atmosphere--should possess unity and produce a single effect,