Another common rule:
Useless words;
They are usually an adjective or pronoun, or even a part of a verb phase, if I'm not mistaken.
"She walked up to the dark, onimious door, inspecting it's rustic clook and peeling, black paint."
Good sentence, but the adjective "black" is not needed. You already mentioned that it was a dark door, and you may seem a bit repetative. Also, it's good to let the reader infer and imagine that the door is black since they already know that it is both ominous and dark.
"She looked at the man, hoping that he didn't wake up at the sound of her creeping footsteps."
Another good one, but the thing is, you could change the phrase "didn't wake up" into a great number of different wordings! For example, there is "hadn't awoken," "didn't wake" (simply taking the "up" out), and "stayed sleeping" if you really wanted.
This one got a bit off-subject but I hope someone somewhere learned something maybe!
