If you’ve taken Kris & Dean classes, this is roughly analogous to what they call “fake details.” I don’t happen to find that term helpful, but you might! What I respond to is the idea that if you don’t create a detailed description of what you want the reader to imagine every time, then link it by using the same term when you create the detailed descriptionand when you want the reader to recall that description, then it’s a broken hyperlink.
I’ve had to code enough HTML to feel the sense of disgust at having to fix hyperlinks in my guts. When I say “broken hyperlink,” I react with disgust: I have pretty strong associations with the term!
You can use another term, if you like. Any concept related to triggering a memory would work here.—What I’m trying to say is that you can treat learning how to write like anything else you need to remember: explore the idea, sum it up, give it a name. If you associate sensory details or a strong emotion with it, you’ll feel that technique in your subconscious writing “bones” pretty quickly.
(I’m pretty sure this is how similes work, by the way: we say some clouds are like cotton to make them feel tactile and because we know what a cotton ball looks like; if we say “The clouds were cottony,” then we know it’s not the middle of hurricane.)