Greetings, I'm a fan of Stephen King and the way he is able to create a small town America diorama in his stories - often in Maine. For example Derry in IT, Salems Lot, Castle Rock and so on. He sites Ray Bradbury and Something Wicked as inspiration but I expect it is employed by several authors such as Mark Twain. My question is what tools can a writer employ to create those boundaries?
I'm not sure what you mean by creating boundaries, but to paint a word portrait of a small town it helps to have spent some time in one or maybe several. I've never lived in one, but my grandparents did (as did my mom when she was young, with them), and I visited them many times. I heard the talk. The thing about a small town is—everybody knows everybody's business, and there's no hiding anything you do. There's no anonymity like there is in larger towns or cities. If you do something stupid, word will spread like wildfire, and everyone will know. And there's a lot of shaming behavior that goes with that. Gossip is the lifeblood of a small town, and it can be vicious. Many people never recover their reputation once it's been tarnished. The stories will get told for decades. When I was in 8th grade my science teacher was from that same small town, and in fact my grandpa had been his barber (he was THE barber). That teacher always called me Barber. That's the kind of background behind Salem's Lot and the rest of King's small towns.
Building off of what Xoic said, the other thing about a small town is that your family reputation can supercede your own, good or bad. Oftentimes, your future will be written by the town folks before you're old enough to talk. Probably less so now, but a generation or two ago when people migrated less, your marriage options were more limited, and if you came from a "bad" family, you'd have a hell of a time getting near a potential mate from a "good" family. That's the plot of a zillion teen romances.
