Question

how does the interplay of elements of short story create a meaningful whole ?

Answer 1

first off:
It is nice that you try to do philosophical thinking by going to the roots of things. Its very nice in fact :)
But from what the geeky science nerd in me has learned so far about the "outside world":P, we react pretty confused when someone confronts us with his innermost thoughts, without explaining them wordily with terms or examples we already know and associate with the subjects. You can’t simply 'scan and email' your mind :)
I for example didn't get what you were trying to say quickly. I had to dig a while to understand your concern.
Why we can’t communicate with simple words about subjects which only take a pico-little-bit of space in our brains? I have no idea! -- It would be nice though if we could communicate with each other like ants, but we can not I think.

_______________________________________
This however is what I know regarding your question:
to get us started, a "pretty disturbing" fact about our brain: our brain is not symmetrical! The right part does the logical thinking, providing us with information, patterns, and some more things. We can control it quite well.
The left part however seems to be loose, uncontrolled, yet coming up with solutions, products, words, combinations of ideas, and so on, that our right part would be baffled with.
These products, and particularly the uncontrolled thoughts, are not illogical (even a madman and a disregarded loser of a modern artist have THEIR very own logic-- just like Indian Fakirs), but sometimes they are useless/harming and so on (just take a look at your friendly-neighbourhood-homeless-crazy person : ) ).
---------------------------------
In writing class the teacher taught us that we must use the left side of our brains in order to write. The right side can only come up with stuff we already have explored and are confident with and used to using (e.g. writing letters, sets of words, children stories about mice and cookies and so on.)
To get a grasp on how it works, and to explore new things from within, one method is to just put the pen on the paper and write a story with whatever meaningless, preferably funny-ish things come to your mind (funny stuff is easier to get started with, because they give you the ‘kick’ of laughing). After finishing, let your right side analyze it. You will automatically learn an additional thing or two even without noticing.
_______________________________________
The more 'meaningful elements' you pick up during your everyday life, the better and riper your stories will get.
My experience with writing poems (no one told me this in that class):
These elements sound much, much more convincing when they leave their influence in your writing, rather than when you talk about them or 'make them appear'. If you for example want to talk about how black and white people are equal, with the help of a set of well researched arguments, you can do that even better by bringing up the viewpoints from which your logically appealing arguments derive from, instead of going on and on about the arguments themselves. Mentioning 'black and white people are equal' would even also be enough once.

(This is >related< I think now to why sometimes using a certain word needs a deep insight in a subject and can enlighten a subject faster than a lengthy text can. You see, we just came a step closer to communicating like ants ;D )

FOUND FROM : http://ph.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110624080017AAMzVWY

Answer 2

Well, short stories are at one disadvantage when compared to long stories - they don't have as much time to get their message out! Because of this, writers use many, many, MANY elements in one short story. Some common ones would be diction (the words used), syntax (sentence structure; used to make impactful, memorable sentences), and figurative language, such as simile, hyperbole, etc. These elements play off of one another to interest the reader as well as tie many different ideas and events together in one small space. This is how the elements interplay to make one meaningful whole. I hope this helped you! :) For more information, you can read an edited short story that I attached here. it's REALLY funny, you should! lol :D

Answer 3

The most effective way to answer this question is to consider the composition of short stories. Short stories tend to be told in a narrative format, dealing with only a few characters. The relationship between these characters and these characters' emotions tend to be the focus of a short story, as opposed to longer pieces, which tend to be more focused on plot. It is the interplay between the characters, the mood, and the purpose of the story that create a meaningful whole.