A terrific exercise is to take a paragraph of someone's writing who has a really strong style, and using their structure, substitute your own words for theirs, and see how they achieved their effects.

Use description of landscape to help you establish the emotional tone of the scene. Keep notes of how other authors establish mood and foreshadow events by describing the world around the character.

Most people use twenty verbs to describe everything from a run in their stocking to the explosion of an atomic bomb.

Janet Fitch Quotes