Thank you for the tip on speeches! I suspect that will help my writing sound more natural too.

As for (2c), I've come up with a similar idea for doing multiple edits. I try to focus on a different writing "axiom" for each iteration. For example, I can cut out adverbs on the first run-through, add metaphor next, etc.

StackExchange has a nice collection of writing rules here: http://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-...