When I finish a rough draft of a story, the prose reads rather prosaic. The time has come to breathe some sugar and spice into the prose. Verbs and nouns become the seasoning to the story. Things like instead of tree, the pine, oak or other variety brings a picture to the reader's eyes. Everyone talks about "smart phones". In one story I had my heroine when speaking of her boys that she'd given them a "dumb" phone. Brings a different picture to the reader.
Verbs are wonderful ways to spice up a story. He walked can become he ambled, he sashayed, he clumped. All these bring some sense of character to the story. Verbs need to show something is happening. That's why was, is or other forms of to be are seen as weak. Not that they can't be used in a telling way depending on the rest of the sentence. Use your verbs to suggest immediacy rather than he has walked across the room. He walked or one of the other words to signify walking.
Brevity can work and sometimes can harm. What you want to do here is show the character in an action and if more words adds spice to the prose, go with it. Of course problems occur when all the sentences sound the same but that's another problem.
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