My Favorite Story- What makes a good story?

My favorite story is "Lamb to the Slaughter" which we read in our humanities class. We read three stories, but I like this one best, because the author builds a lot of tension which leads to the climax. I liked the characters, how Roald Dahl described them and makes them more interesting with making Mr. Patrick a police officer and Mary an obsessing housewife, that she easily gets upset when something isn't in the correct order or something is unusual, and how she thinks of a plan, so that no one can tell, that she killed her husband. I liked the foreshadowing, Roald Dahl made by Mary notice something "strange" about how her husband acts when he comes home. I also liked the words, the author used to describe the setting and characters, so it is easy to visualize a picture. The story had a lot of tension in it, and I could easily empathize how the characters felt in certain situations, that's why "Lamb to the Slaughter" is my favorite short story.