Remember that your reader doesn’t need to know everything about these places and times-one well-chosen detail can do a great deal of work to establish the general place and time of an event in your story. Know these differences and use them to create images for your reader.

The subway in 1954 Tokyo looks and feels different from the 1919 Metro in Madrid. More distant nations and times need their own markers. The United States in the twenty-first century is easy however, California in the mid-1950s is different from Georgia in 1862. Know the big picture (country/epoch) and move to minute particulars (position in room/minute of the day).Your reader needs to know fairly early in your story what country your characters are in, and what general time period. And the bottom-line rule might be as follows: only provide the details that illuminate the plot. But the key lies in knowing which details to provide.

The overarching trick to establishing the place(s) where your characters are having their experiences and acting out their desires is to provide precise, concrete nouns (“cottage” or “bungalow” or “chateau” instead of merely “house”) and sensory detail-images that lead your reader to visualize, “hear,” imagine smelling and touching and tasting.

Really, the question is, “When and where are your characters? And what does that have to do with the story you want to tell?” Here are a few tips: When and where are you? It seems easy to say, “So just provide the details of the place and time,” but it’s a little more complicated than that. If you don’t make sure that your reader can imagine the where and the when of your story, that poor reader won’t stay with you, no matter how scintillating your plot is. To state the obvious: everything happens somewhere, sometime.

Easiest short stories to write