The credit for formulating a set of principles governing short story writing belongs to Edgar Allan Poe. In a review of Hawthorne’s “Twice-Told Tales,” published in Graham’s Magazine in 1842, he specified these requirements:
“1. The story must aim at one predetermined effect:
2. It must rigorously exclude everything which does not contribute to that effect and thus possess complete unity;
3. It must be short, but not so short that the pre-established design cannot be realized.”
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Students need to note that Poe included no single word, no detail which was not necessary to the design. Such economy is important to the short story, and while students have observed it elsewhere, it is probably most obvious in “The Cask of Amontillado.”
