.. short story is a literary genre. It is usually fictional, narrative prose and tends to be more concise and to the point than longer works of fiction. These stories have their origins in oral story-telling traditions and the prose anecdote, a swiftly-sketched situation that comes rapidly to its point. The history of this kind of stories dates back to the oral story-telling traditions. Modern trend in them emerged as their own genre in the early 19th century. They tend to be less complex than novels. Usually, a short story will focus on only one incident, has a single plot..