Writing with precision

Sol Stein, author and publisher, calls it "particularity." It is telling the reader the patron at McDonald's paid $5.67 for a meal, rather than "about six dollars." The reader can picture someone paying for a meal with exact change.
Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute advocates the same thing when he says, "Name the dog." Is the dog's name "Fluffie" - or is it "Bruiser"? Names tell the reader a lot. No names tell nothing.
Novelist John Updike described his craft this way: "I try to write with precision what my mind's eye conjures up."
It's one thing to look out a window and write what we see with precision. It's quite another to use our imagination and then "write with precision what our mind's eye conjures up."
But that's what every great novelist has done throughout the ages.