@Dominions SonThat's the key, as it's not so much 'minimal storytelling' as it is a general 'cleanup' form having read through the entire story—thus you know which story threads never 'played out' (i.e. were never successfully completed), yet 'scenery' is considered 'setting a story in a specific time and place', and like character development, are just as vital—if not more so—than the plot itself is.
One is making a story feel 'real' or 'authentic', no matter how unreal the story universe (by sharing the common values most often cherished in each separate universe) and the other is simply sweeping up all the things we first planned planned to develop, yet never did.
And, at least for me, I try to focus on keeping my stories shorter, rather than routinely writing epics which essentially go on forever, though the dull, more boring segments, so in most cases, I instead jump from one 'episode' to another, to skip over those 'slower' segments entirely, just as I write a bar or restaurant scene, by leaping directly to the most vital elements of the dialogue, not the same-old, 'how's the wife and kids? Yeah, mine are fine too? So how's the job?'
That ends up being a LOT of text, which doesn't advance the story at all, as it's just 'filler', adding text for not real purpose at all.
Thus it's a more structured way of keeping the overall word-count down. You're not dropping anything essential to the story, you're just not wasting your readers valuable time, and instead you're writing concise text.
But, if you prefer those more roundabout story elements, than please read another story, as mine will only piss you off, anyway! ;)
Again, I never write for the masses, instead I write to challenge myself—writing the kinds of story no one else will, the more unusual, less orthodox, unusual stories I've long cherished.