I avoid adjectives because they tend to slow down my prose with unnecessary flowery language. Adverbs are the worst. They're the bane of my writing. If an adjective is a road bump in the flow of writing, an adverb is a truck-sized boulder on the interstate. Because I avoid adjectives and adverbs, I don't wear them out and I don't have to be careful about how often they appear. Verbs, however, are an entirely different issue.
I mentioned a few weeks ago in another post that there are a few words I tend to rely on too heavily, verbs make up a high percentage of those. Dialogue tags are the worst for me. I'm a writer that loves dialogue, and that means I spend a lot of time perfecting what's before, in-between, and after dialogue.
To expand on my point on dialogue tags, I struggle with what I call "The 3 M's," mumble, mutter, and murmur. They describe the same low volume, but are vastly different in easily identifiable ways. Mumble gives a shy or ashamed effect, mutter is annoyed or uneasy, and murmur is vulnerable and candid. Because of the wonderfully descriptive nature of these words, I sprinkle them throughout my writing a little bit more than I should.
Some other dialogue tags that cause me trouble are 'ask' and 'say.' Usually, when I find myself overusing these two, I cut the dialogue tag out entirely and replace it with an action separated from the speaking itself. 'Ask' and 'say' are self-explanatory enough.
'Step' is my favorite verb because of how often I write it (stepped forward, stepped away, stepped out), and it's agonizing that I have to stagger out when I use it. 'Stagger' itself is also a walking verb I love, along with 'stumble.'
The simplest things to do are the hardest things to write, and it's important to get it right because so much depth can be added to a character by describing how they behave. If a person walks and talks with their head up and shoulders back, they are confident. If a person hunches their shoulders down and avoids eye contact, they are shy. If they guffaw, they're not afraid to laugh as loudly as they please. If they giggle, they're more restrained. One word or phrase can say a lot about a person, if they're used right and not too often.