Small Towns

Many stories prefer a big city because it's exciting. But sometimes a story instead needs a small town setting, where people know each other, and "time slows down to a crawl". Of course, size is relative, and a small town can be anywhere from tens of thousands, to a few hundred, depending on your perspective.

A good example in fiction: In The Wheel of Time series, the heroes come from Emonds Field, which is a small town of a few hundred people. They get to a city (regional capital) and are all amazed at the size: thousands of people! Then they go to the capital city, and discover that "big city" they were so impressed by is considered a small town, and that nobody has even heard of Emonds Field.

There are a lot of specialized subtropes of the small town: -


 * Arcadia can contain really low level population towns
 * A Close Knit Community is often a small town.
 * Down on the Farm can also contain them.
 * Dying Town
 * Everytown, America
 * Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here
 * Only Shop in Town occurs most commonly with small towns.
 * Small Town Boredom
 * Small Towns Are Evil
 * Quirky Town