Identifing elements of a good story

Some elements are extremely necessary to a short novel. The most important for me are:


Brevity - No many details, it makes the novel more easily to be read. Billie Letts's novel have a lot of dialogues, so the narrator doesn't show up very often, which avoids to many unnecessary information.


Theme - The story makes the readers believe that family is much more than blood relations, it is "where the heart is" as the name of the book mentions.



Obstacle - Part of conflict, when the character face problems. In the novel I am reading, Where the heart is, the biggest obstacle happens in the beginning of the story, when the main character, Novalee, is left by her own.
"She knew he was gone, knew before she reached the door. She could see it all, see it as if she were watching a movie. She could see herself running, calling his name-the parking space empty, the Plymouth gone." (Billie Letts, 15.)



Turning point - The point of the history in which everything changes, in which big decisions are made and can't  be undone.
"Her baby was coming... But she wasn't ready. Why, she wondered, had she waited until the last minute? Where had the time gone? Two months had passed since Willy Jack had dumped her - and she had done nothing. She hand't look for a place to live, hadn't figured out how to make a living." (Billie Letts, 75.)

Foreshadowing - the reader is given clues of what is happening next. At the novel Where the heart is, the story happens in two different places and then they connect together. But even before it happens, we can have ideas of what is going to happen, because we know what each character had done.