The Writer's Gaze

I was reading the work of a local writer, and basically found the writing style to be clumsy. I tried to identify exactly what was clumsy about the style, which seemed quite common to new local writers.

The style, as I would describe it, is akin to having a fixed writer's gaze. A novel, like a movie, has a gaze. This gaze essentially is the camera in a movie or a perspective in the novel. When the gaze is fixed, the narrative starts feeling stilted. An example of such stilting is the constant act of describing what happens in the story from a fixed perspective. The woman enters the bathroom. It has pink tiles. She turns on the water and soaks in the tub once it is full.

Now, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the description. It does indeed let the reader know what is going on in the scene. However, the perspective taken also creates a sense of distance, with a distinct lack of richness. How does the bathroom smell? What are the sounds? Is there something going on in the immediate area? Undoubtedly, there are times when distance is desirable and can even be used to create suspense. However, when an entire story starts being written with such distance and lack of sensory richness, it gets stale in a hurry.