Tension from beginning to end
The short story remains one of the most difficult genres for authors and academics to define. Some say that it is the closest genre to poetry. Others affirm that there are no specific rules, but prevailing ideas and themes that finally determine whether or not a short story works. Force, brevity, tension, intensity and meaning are the words most often repeated when it comes to discussing this literary means of expression. A short story should capture the reader's interest with the first few lines and keep it until the end. In this respect the short story contains all the force of literature in that it touches us and by touching us, transform us.

Everything is a short story
Even the most routine daily episode can be the subject of a short story. According to Cort�zar, the short story is able to brusquely illuminate something that goes beyond the mere anecdote it relates.

The brief phrase or merely suggesting without explaining are the main characteristics of a short story's language. This is the case of Anton Chekov, one of the most important Russian short story writers of the 19th century. Stories such as The lady with the dog or The chorus girl are able to relate an apparently anecdotal event in an emotionally overwhelming manner. Chekov believed that the reader should always be kept in a state of tension. This unrepeatable author felt that in short stories it was best not to say enough than to say too much.

Raymond Carver is perhaps the most important English short story writer of the 20th century. This U.S. author shares Chekov's ability to create a powerful story from a seemingly unimportant anecdote. However, his vision is more incisive than that of the Russian. Carver concentrates on people's trivial daily problems to demonstrate a devastating reality. His books, What we talk about when we talk about love, Three yellow roses and Cathedral present us with a gallery of characters that are perfectly recognisable. The protagonists of these stories are everyday folk whose silent pain affects the reader in an indescribably deep manner. The U.S. author believed that in short stories you could give the most common objects the most immense attributes and that even the most seemingly innocuous dialogue could send a shiver up the spine of the reader.

Short story versus novel
A good short story can reach an intensity that a novel cannot sustain. The short story has a physical limit and is usually fairly brief: from 100 to 2,000 words in its most reduced form and from 2,000 to 30,000 words in its longer form.
In France, for example, a short story cannot exceed 20 pages. This limitation makes for a reading time that is likewise short. Edgar Allan Poe felt this time should last between 30 minutes and 2 hours. But the truly important factor is the emotion and interest roused in the reader by the short story. For this reason, the ideal reading time would be that able to capture the author's intended effect in a short space of time.

The perfect library
Although a personal book collection is always down to the taste of the reader, there are some essential short stories that should be part of all decent collections. Here are some of the most well-known authors and stories:
- Edgar Allan Poe: The black cat, The fall of the house of Husher, The purloined letter, The murders in the rue Morgue and The gold-bug
- Katherine Mansfield: The garden party
- James Joyce: Dubliners and The dead
- Lev Tolstoi: The death of Ivan Illich.
- Herman Melville: Bartleby, the scribe
- Jorge Luis Borges: Ficciones and El Aleph
- Julio Cort�zar: La noche boca arriba and Casa tomada
- Horacio Quiroga: Cuentos de amor, de locura y de muerte
- Juan Carlos Onetti: El infierno tan temido
- Juan Rulfo: El llano en llamas
- Augusto Monterroso: El dinosaurio
- Isak Dinesen: The dreamers
- Clarice Lispector: Family ties
- Ernest Hemingway: The assassins and fifty big ones
- Franz Kafka: The vulture
- Guy de Maupassant: Boule de suif
- Truman Capote: The grass harp
- J. D. Salinger: Nine stories

This will be an endless list... and it's just the beginin!