Edgar Allan Poe declared that the definitive characteristic of the short story was its unity of effect and said that the short story writer, ‘if wise, has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents, but having conceived, with deliberate care a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out he then invents such incidents—he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect.’ Hence Duggal was not being very contemporary when he said that the structuring of stories according to plot is outmoded and the stories may be actually structured round a psychological rather than physical effect.
April 1976, volume 1, No 2