More writing/editing tips

1) -ly verbs.

These are one I run into quite a bit. I'm not saying NOT to use them, but use them sparingly. Especially if you have the following:

"Don't go!" she said angrily.
"Shut up!" he yelled back frustratedly.
"But I love you," she said lovingly.

I think you get the point. No good.

2) Dialogue tags.

Notice something else annoying in those three lines up there? Yeah, the whole he said/she said thing. Not every line of dialogue needs to say something. Leanr to let the dialogue speak for itself. If you have an exclamation point, do you really need to tell the reader that the character is yelling? If you have a question mark, do you really need to say "he asked"? No, you don't. When you do that, the reader skims over those or gets annoyed. You don't want readers skimming and you certainly don't want them annoyed. =) Action tags are much better and involve the reader much more.