From Sol Stein's "On Writing": What we mean by “dry” is that it does not enable us to see as we read, it does not move us, and, most important, it does not stimulate our intellect with insight, its ostensible purpose.
Dryness isn't a style problem, it's a sensation problem. Writing goes dry when it offers facts without friction — information arriving with nothing for the reader's imagination to catch on. The fix isn't decoration, it's specificity that does double duty: a detail that shows, moves, and means something at once. Say you're describing a father's layoff. "He lost his job" is dry. "He kept ironing his shirts for work that no longer existed" gives you image, emotion, and insight in one line. The caution: don't overcorrect into permanent intensity. Not every sentence needs to ache with meaning — transitions, facts, connective tissue can be plain. A paragraph where everything strains for insight exhausts the reader just as fast as one that offers none at all.
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