When reading short stories, the authors need to draw you in quick to make their story successful. Reading stories that fail do this lack something, but what is it? Personally I feel that two characteristics that make stories successful are; the writers ability to make us envision the setting and to go beyond the five senses and use body language. First of all if you do not envision the setting then how do you really get in to the story? It would be like watching television with no picture. Furthermore if you can connect and make the characters unforgettable then you will have a successful short story. The setting I feel Is one if not the biggest part of the making a short story successful. If you cannot make the reader feel that they are in the story then you have little chance to be successful. Charlotte Perkins dose this in her story Yellow Walls. She gives a description of the house, “ A Colonial mansion a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house and a reach the height of romance felicity.” She also gets on to describe the landscaping, “ there are hedges and walls and gates that lock and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people. Characters make up every story, as a writer you need to try and make the reader connect with the characters and make them become unforgettable. James Baldwin uses this in Sonny’s Blues while describing a couple characters. He starts with Sonny’s friend, “He was sort of shaking, his head and his eyes looked strange, as though they were about to cross. The bright sun deadened his damp dark brown skin and it made his eyes look yellow and showed up the dirt in his kinked hair. He smelled funky?” By this description you can already visualize this character. While there are other things that make a short story great these are two big points for me. When reading a story and the setting and characters are not