One of the talents necessary for great fiction is the ability to use descriptive language to captivate the audience and allow them to visualize the characters and the decorations. By using specific words and phrases, writers focus attention and spark the imagination, allowing the reader to create a unique and detailed framework in their mind. One striking way to illuminate the importance of this ability is to juxtapose an author's original text with less colorful formulations. For example, one can take some exemplary samples from two different stories, "A & P" by John Updike and "The Lady with the Dog" by Anton Chekhov and blunt the language, to present it in a more factual way, by removing completely any setting that the author so brilliantly created. In doing so, it will provide insight into the complex craftsmanship, mechanics, and descriptive wording used in the stories. John Updike, in his story "A&P", uses an array of similes, metaphors and descriptive language to allow the reader to visualize the scene, take the reader into the A&P grocery store and provide vivid and detailed images of the characters and environment that would not otherwise be evident. In this book, he makes a point of giving the reader a clear idea of ​​Sammy's perception and point of view of A&P and the people who shop there. Referring to a woman at his checkout, he writes: "She's one of those checkout supervisors, a witch about fifty years old with red on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I know that it bothered her pleases to trip me up. She had been monitoring cash registers for fifty years and had probably never seen an error before. By the time I smooth her feathers... she gives me a little sniff as she passes, if she had been born at the right time on...... middle of paper ......e reader interested but also doing the reader is aware of the emotions and feelings of the characters. Chekhov's descriptions, although less visual, are just as descriptive as Updike's. The descriptive wording chosen by these two authors represents more than the words themselves, but also actions, images and feelings that elicit a response, whether it is a vision or an emotion. Both authors are able to captivate the reader with what is really just word choice and sentence structure. Fiction is very mechanical, putting well-chosen words together into a precise and particular sentence structure, and when executed correctly, it is incredible to see the emotional and visual reactions it elicits from the reader. It's an art, just as painting is also mechanical: putting paint on a canvas in a certain way. When done correctly, the results can be beautiful.