The Short Story Through the Prism of Literary Mastery

This article represents the main conceits of development of a writer’s individual style and mastery, as they were interpreted in prose writings by Mikhail Veller, the modern Russian prose writer and publicist. There was shown that the views of a writer’s mastery in literary theory and in one’s own artistic practice could differ in terms, yet be similar in the main idea of an individual style development, which is the constant hard work on every word and phrase, whether in poetic or in prosaic writing. The keypoints of so-called ‘technology of a short story,’ as they were interpreted in writings by M.Veller, are thoroughly analyzed in the given article, based on the examples from Ukrainian and Lithuanian literatures. The author of the article has shown that such conceptual components of a literary process as the creative invention, genre modifications, composition, language and style, are to be connected by an artistic idea to make up the real short story which would be read non-stop.