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I have an old text file of tips when I was first learning how to write; I still reference them.

"Unless there is a specific reason for the modified word, one that has an import before or after its use, there is usually almost no reason to modify a word. It is frill."

"There is an old saw that a climax shouldn't occur before about 90% in to a work."

"What a character sees with his eyes is always more important in determining the character than what the color of his eyes are. Describe the things that matter to a character, and you have limned the important things- those stated and not."

[The context for the next one was a passage where a stubborn rancher has been ordered to sell off his cows & buy mohair goats to stay afloat.

"Only the mohair goats had paid their way. Those lousy goats! He had nourished a secret hope that they would lose money so he could throw them up to Big Emmett as an example of the banker’s poor judgment. But contrary to other commodities, mohair remained in strong demand. The goats not only more than paid for the little amount of feed Charlie had grudgingly bought for them, but they subsidized a considerable share of the feed bill for the sheep.

It was hard to hate something that continued to pay when all else was going to hell. If they hadn’t been bought at Big’s stubborn insistence, Charlie might have begun to like them."]

"This passage is simple, unadorned, and direct, yet the moment resonates. This is not to say that all writing has to be this way to be good, just that so much of it is bad, and so little of that bad follows this example."

"It is better to simply state that my character is dating a gorgeous brunet, for every reader will imagine a different gorgeous brunet than the next reader, no matter how detailed my wording. Now, if there is a particular aspect of the gorgeous brunet that has import in the later narrative, or defines her apart from other gorgeous brunets, even if just to the narrator, then it is a detail worth noting, but, failing that, gorgeous brunet will likely suffice as a term for my character’s lover."

"Any information imparted- be it descriptive or conversational- should be justifiable, not merely an exercise in preening."

"Realistic films know they are fiction, but mimic reality for the sake of art."

"Don't most real people fail to grow? Of course. But, a novel is art. In order for even dull readers to be pulled in to a book there needs to be movement of the characters, internally."

"1. No pretension.
2. Don't condescend to readers.
3. No extraneous detail.
4. No clichés.
5. Every detail given should be entertaining, pushing a plot forward, or character development.
6. Bad writing fails in few ways - banalities, poor music, or cardboard characterization.
7. Concision."

Follow them, and you too shall reap the benefits of, er... let's not talk about my collections.