Hello,
There is already few threads about short stories in this forum and few interesting articles on Narrativefirst.
I think the ide to mix one, two or four throughlines in a short story is interesting.
I saw here another short ‘rule’ that could be good hint:
short story with four Elements less than 1k words,
short story with four Variations between 1k and 3k words,
short story with four Types between 10k to 20k words.
Last time I did try to arrange my short story and running the idea through all three options (out of curiosity and for practice) I see in every case element is present. With increasing number of words we are moving from the bottom to the top.
1k - Elements
3k - Variations explored with Elements
20k - Types explored with Variations explored with Elements.
Is it allowed, does it make sense to move in opposite direction? Add more depth with increasing number of words?
1k - Types of a single Class
3k - Types explored with Variations
20k - Types explored with Variations explored with Elements.
