[Quiet Man Cometh]

Yeah. In short stories the space you can devote to setting the stage is minimal so one needs to find little tricks to develop the environment while simultaneously moving the stories along. If course, I write thing that are very short. I'm lucky if I manage over 1000 words so I need to keep stuff as concise as possible, or maybe it's just my habit to do that.

As a result, I find that I often leave out things that don't influence the story directly, such as the appearance of the characters, unless the opportunity to sneak it in comes up. For instance, a character removing his hat and scratching his head is an excuse to say that he has black curls, and a hat.