Five Errors Every Successful Writer Must Avoid

1. Passive sentences.  Modern readers want action.  If you are writing sentences where your main character is being acted upon, rather than acting, change the sentence.  If you say that will make your writing to repetitive, change your paragraph.  Change is always possible.
2. Insufficient detail.  This is the bane of my rough draft.  Always insufficient detail.  I use subsequent drafts to fill in details, to give color to the passage.  Anyone can write:  Joe walked to the store and bought some groceries.  How dull is that?  What if Joe ambled along the sidewalk.  The trees hung low that autumn day covered with birds, flocks of them, like a shroud.   Perhaps they were oriels, he mused.  This was Baltimore, after all.  Or maybe they were common sparrows. He kicked a stone into the street, and watched it clang against the side of the red Ferrari before it fell into the gutter.  He wondered whether he should pretend like nothing had happened or run like all get out.  He picked up speed and glanced behind him.  Were they simply intent on an errand as he was or were they after him? 
3. Describing and explaining rather than showing.  Get rid of adjectives and adverbs and concentrate on verbs.  I don’t mean to actually cut adjectives and adverbs because we do need them, but to focus on the verbs.  I could have written that Joe walked to the store. His gait was slow and careless.  He walked uncaringly.  But isn’t it much more compelling to get rid of slow, careless, uncaringly and instead use the verb “ambled”?
4. Participle/Infinitive Verb Phrases.  Waiting for Godot, she thought he would never come.  How about instead, She waited for Godot. . . and waited. . . and waited.  She thought he would never come.
5. Lack of sentence variety.  No one wants to read sentence after sentence of the same structure and complexity.  Run, Pete Run.  Run, Spot, Run.  Run, Jane, Run.  Pete ran to the store.  Jane ran to the pool.  Spot ran in circles.  Vary your sentences.  Just as you would not want to read the simple Subject-Verb-Object sentences back to back, over and over, so you would also want to avoid successive long or complex sentences.  Writing has a rhythm and as you read and write you will find that rhythm.  All of the previous errors are often caused by the writer trying to avoid monotonous sentences.  Sentence variety can be achieved without writing badly.  Look over your own writing and see where you might make changes.

What are your biggest problems?  What are some ways you avoid them?