Anton Chekhov on setting a scene

Don’t Tell Me the Moon Is Shining; Show Me the Glint of Light on Broken Glass

- Anton Chekhov

Chekhov wrote to his brother Alexander, who had literary ambitions: “In descriptions of Nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture. For instance, you’ll have a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star, and that the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled past like a ball.”