Vignette

A vignette is a small decorative design, or a brief descriptive piece of writing. Vignetting is also used to indicate an unintended darkening of the image corners in a photograph.

Vignettes are the literary equivalent of a snapshot. They are usually found in sets, around similar subjects or ideas. These sets do not usually follow a plot, but more convey an overall mood, theme, or idea, abstractly. They usually contain colorful, poetic symbolism and metaphors. They are generally short, and to the point, not dwelling too long on anything. They are incomplete, fragments of a fragment of a story, which is what makes them like a snapshot. So incomplete, but profound.