The Rule of Thirds is a general guideline for how to create an interesting composition which states that any image—painting, photograph, graphic design—should be broken into a grid with two vertical and two horizontal lines, creating nine equally proportioned boxes.
The setting of "Marigolds" is during the depression or the 30s. You know this because the story says, "The depression that gripped the nation was no new thing to us" and "the black workers of rural Maryland had always been depressed".
Varied Sentence Structure. Sentence structure is how you arrange your words, phrases, and clauses in a sentence. Writers who don’t vary their sentences repeat the same sentence subject, length, and type. This repetition bores the reader, and it weakens your voice. Varied sentences give your writing life.