Practically, trade abstractions for specifics and static states for observable change. Replace “She was sad” with “She keyed the door code wrong three times, then reread the hallway notices she’d seen all winter.” Anchor each scene in a single sensory through-line—the clack of a ceiling fan, the iron taste of rain—and let verbs carry weight. As Viktor Shklovsky argues in Art as Technique (1917), defamiliarization renews attention: not the generic moon, but moonlight cutting itself on a bottle shard. During revision, highlight any sentence that asserts rather than evokes and ask: What can the reader see, hear, or touch instead? By repeatedly posing that question, you steer naturally toward the glint. [...]
