Forget the cliché about "painting a picture in the reader's mind." A movie is the right metaphor. Vivid writing stimulates a sequence of scenes in the reader's mind—a "motion picture," as they used to say. This movie feeling comes through using lots of character subjects and action verbs.
When you watch a film, you can easily name the main characters. When you read a well-written text, it should be just as easy to name the main people or things that the text is about. They are the characters, protagonists, agents, doers—call them what you like—and they should become the grammatical subjects of your sentences.
If you were paying attention in your high school German class, you may remember hearing about Nominalstil. And if your teachers were especially traditional, they might have emphatically told you that nominal style = sophistication. For those who daydreamed through that lesson, let me jog your memory with an example:
