Word play

The editing continues, and the sheer amount of 'saidisms' is driving me absolutely nuts. On a single page, I've used: confirmed, ventured, confessed, interrupted, pointed out, warned, charged, reasoned and commented. Oh, the sheer pain of it. This is an easy enough edit to make -- I'm just taking the 'saidisms' out and when I go back through, I'll fix the actions/dialogue to make it flow better.

The other issue coming up (other than bad grammar) is the liberal use of adverbs. My current line of thinking is that adverbs should be used sparingly and that the action/dialogue should reveal the information instead of relying on the adverb to convey what the feeling/emotion/action/etc is. So I'm taking the adverbs out across the board -- again another easy edit to make.

A high school teacher once marked us down half a letter grade if we used the verb 'to be' more than twice on a page. At first I disagreed very strongly, especially when I got my first red-lettered D. But over time, I came around to his way of thinking. When I was sitting there, trying to eliminate 'to be' from my writing, I discovered how to construct stronger, shorter, more active sentences. I still try to limit my use of the verb and I may use that same rule for adverbs -- no more than two per page -- and see what happens. As for 'saidisms', I don't know if there's a rule of thumb -- maybe just a couple times throughout the entire story (this is a short story, about 12,000 words) -- or do away with them entirely. Anyone have an idea?