A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.
Interpretation
Edgar Allan Poe emphasizes the importance of maintaining a consistent mood in a short story.
This quote by Edgar Allan Poe underlines the significance of coherence in storytelling, particularly in short fiction. Poe suggests that a successful short story should evoke a single mood or emotional response, and every sentence should contribute to reinforcing that mood, thereby creating a focused and immersive experience for the reader.
In practice
An author discussing the principles of short story writing in a workshop.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.
Most writers - poets in especial - prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy - an ecstatic intuition - and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes.
...the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long and final scream of despair.
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.
I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. "Death," I said, "any death but that of the pit!" Fool! might I have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me?
In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.
I'm not a pyrotechnical director; I'm not good with all those innovative things. What I am interested in is how actors can touch the heads and hearts of an audience.
It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.
I have a mess in my head sometimes, and there's something very satisfying about putting it into words. Certainly it's not something that you're in charge of, necessarily, but writing about it, putting it into your words, can be a very powerful experience.
Against Him those women sin who torment their skin with potions, stain their cheeks with rouge and extend the line of their eyes with black coloring. Doubtless they are dissatisfied with God's plastic skill. In their own persons they convict and censure the Artificer of all things.
How quiet the writing, how noisy the printing.
The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.
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