I was over at my friend’s webpage (EileenBell.com) and she mentioned that she used some words a little too much in her novel Seeing the Light.

Her list was:
quite,
nearly,
almost,
just about,
mostly,
very close to,
usually,
even,
try to

I’ve added the following:
still (had 222 of these)
very (had 96 of these)
extremely (26)
completely (14)
quite (14)
particular (4)
rather (depends on its usage)

In Stephen King’s book On Writing, he suggests plucking as many dandelions (the term he uses for adverbs) as possible. One dandelion on a lawn may be nice, but when your whole lawn is dandelions…it becomes a nightmare.

Of Eileen’s list…1/3 are adverbs.

Examples: he stared intently (he stared).
My isolation finally ended (my isolation ended)
doubted his followers really knew (doubted his followers knew )

BTW, Eileen, even though I criticized the quantity of ‘just’ in Seeing the Light, I went through and found 150 ‘Justs’ in Curse of the Black Swan. Got rid of 125 of them.