The Word Cloud

1. Avoid using vague nouns such as: this, that these those, and it. Be specific.
2. Avoid beginning a sentence with a passive phrase like "There was." "It was."
3. Check your sentence length, and your paragraph length (leave plenty of white space).
4. Words like feel, felt, watched, saw and heard are red flags for telling, not showing.
5. Weed out vague words like somewhat, perhaps, and uncomfortable. Be specific.
6. Check every adverb and see if you can reword the sentence to get rid of it. (the dreaded -ly)
7. Try to keep prepositions close to the verbs they modify.
8. Know your grammar weaknesses and master them, or keep a rule book handy.
9. Avoid weak verbs such as was, get, make, went, give, go, take, do, and put.
10. Keep your dialogue tags to a minimum, and keep them simple.

Interesting, but I have to say that I disagree furiously with every single one of those, except possibly the second half of 10.

Lol! It doesn't mention that a lot depends on voice, pov etc. I've just been through my WIP and looked at all the 'It was' s. But I left them all in because they were suitable to the third person narration.

That's reduced my 118,000 word book to 48 words.