ossible. The general aim, of course, is the same as in
the longer story, to present real characters of unique appearance and
speech. And the writer's resources--again of course--are the same, but
the brevity of the short story forces him to concentrate upon one matter
of soul, one matter--or at most a few--of appearance, and one matter of
speech. The whole art of fiction is selective; even the novel cannot
present justly the complete man; and the short story, simply because it
is short, is the most highly selective fiction of all. It cannot present
the whole man, but it must seem to. A reader will not feel the absence
of traits not involved in the events, and by vivid and brief descriptive
touches, reinforced by unique speech, any character can be invested with
what will be accepted as a complete physical presence.

As stated, the story itself, if a true story and not a tale, will show
its writer that his expository matter or direct statement as to
character must bear only upon the traits involved in the plot-situation
of the story. The necessity is not peculiar to the short story, but it
is more insistent than in the case of the novel. The other points of the
technique of characterizing in the short story are purely verbal, and
the writer's success depends upon his faculty in pungent description and
in handling speech.

The remainder of the technique of the short story, apart from the matter
of creating real men and women, is not verbal, but constructive, and is
implied in--as it results from--the brevity of the fiction. Unlike the
novelist, the writer of the short story has space for nothing but the
story. He cannot drag in by the heels episodes unessential to the story
solely for the sake of their intrinsic interest; he cannot waste words
upon unessential persons. He is faced by two facts--that his story must
be interesting, so that it will probably have to involve considerable
complication as to persons, events, and setting, and that it must be
told with enough verbal fullness and elaboration to give it the body and
seeming of life. Trimming between the necessity to interest and the
necessity to invest his story with reality, the writer first must find
an interesting story, and then, in writing, or in developing and
writing, must be vigilant to transcribe nothing unessential to the
story, or he will be forced to exceed his space-limit.

The process comprehends most of the technique of the short story. The
whole di