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Sanding seams, filling gaps, and heavy coats of primer all soften the fine surface detail molded into plastic kits. Once those recessed lines and raised rivets vanish, panel line wash has nothing to grab, and the finished model looks flat under paint. Restoring the detail before you prime is what separates a clean build from a great one.
A scriber or scribing needle, flexible scribing templates or dymo tape as a guide, fine sanding sticks in the 400 to 1000 grit range, a sharp hobby knife, and a riveting wheel sized to the scale you are working in. A little liquid cement or filler helps you correct any slip before it becomes permanent.
Start by masking a firm guide along the original line with tape, then draw the scriber toward you in light passes rather than one deep cut. Repeat the stroke until the groove reaches the depth of the surrounding untouched lines. Clean the raised plastic burr away with a sanding stick, then check the line under a strong light at a low angle so shadows reveal any wandering.
Run a riveting wheel along a taped guide with steady, even pressure to reproduce a row of dimples at consistent spacing. For raised rivets, tiny drops of thick cement or stretched sprue trimmed flush work well. Test your spacing on a scrap piece of sprue first, since rivet pitch that is too coarse reads as out of scale immediately.
Polish the worked area with progressively finer grits, then lay down a light coat of primer. Primer is the honest test: it reveals shallow spots, doubled lines, and stray scratches while there is still time to fix them. Deepen anything faint, sand back anything doubled, and reprime before moving on to paint.
Cutting too deep on the first pass, scribing freehand across a curved surface, mixing rivet sizes on the same airframe or hull, and skipping the primer check are the four errors that show up most often. Work slowly, and treat every pass as a light one.
Keep a junk kit or a sheet of scrap styrene on the bench and practice a few lines and rivet rows before touching a build you care about. The technique is mostly muscle memory, and an hour of practice will carry you through dozens of models.