Engage all of the senses. Sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, temperature. All these senses provide anchor points with which to relate to the story, the characters and its setting. Put simply, it makes the story more real. Too many writers can "see" what they are describing in their mind's eye, but they give us few if any sense-anchors to see it ourselves.
Develop fully rounded characters. Character development is crucial. Too often authors have a conversation between ill-defined characters where each speaker is a cardboard reflection of the other and both have the same "voice". Two ways of developing characters are populating and planning: Populate your characters with real people you know then put them in a situation and see how they write content for you. Otherwise, try planning. When sketching your plot, establish some characters. Have some cups, one filled with traits (tall, hairy, lanky, short) and one with flaws. Take some from each and see how this influences your plot ideas.
Take care with becoming too embedded in your preferred approach to description or dialogue. For example, if you're obsessed with describing exteriors without describing feelings, you'll lose the readers who would like to see feeling explored more. On the other hand, if all you do is describe feelings and get stuck on writing an internal monologue, you'll lose the interest of those readers who want the characters to spring into action and do something. Avoid putting your readers through Sleepless in Seattle on endless loop, or the Rocky movies on a loop. Find a balanced approach suited to the genre in which you're writing, to capture a broader readership.
Let the reader do some of the heavy lifting. Here is Tolkien's description of Aragorn at Bree: "a shaggy head of dark hair flecked with grey, and in a pale stern face a pair of keen grey eyes". While earlier description on the same page hints that Aragorn might be tall, it is the reader who decides Aragorn's jawline, nose, physique and height. The beauty of this from an authoring/marketing perspective is that the reader paints these pieces of blank canvas and becomes attached to their creation. It is the reader's emotional investment in your work. If you describe everything absolutely, and readers don't like it, their only choice might be to leave.
Use rich words, but don't ruin their flavour or piquancy by over-using them. Some words describe, others do the same but carry implications of emotions or sense with them. Invade the senses of your readers as the chocolate sauce of your words invades the vanilla pages they turn.
Role play a storyline. Got an awkward scene? Set it up as a roleplay for friends and maybe de-identify the characters. Let your friends play it through and get ideas from where it goes. When Tolkien wrote about Aragorn at Bree, he had no idea of his eventual significance to the finished plot.
Research in depth. If you are mirroring a period of actual history or creating a fantasy world with historical equivalents, do your research; more importantly, get it right. For example, bathing was rare in western Europe for centuries, so stories set in this period should have a big "nose component". The first fork in Italy came with a Byzantine princess, whereas before this a short knife and hands were the rage when eating.
Write using appropriate language. Medieval townspeople shouldn't be discussing philosophy and surgery using polysyllabic terms invented after WW2. Read literature from the period for ideas, but decide how you will limit or flavour your dialogue vocabulary so it feels appropriate or evocative of the period. Advanced concepts such as occupational health and safety would be ludicrous, unless that was the whole point (in the spirit of a Douglas Adams spoof).
Use short sentences for effect. Drag readers in. Lock down, then knock down. Short paragraphs can be powerful. "The thicket exploded into anger and movement and something striped launched at him". "Clearly outnumbered, she saw silence was essential -- until that twig snapped".
Allow your characters to have real attributes. For example, hunger, thirst, fatigue, sleep, or getting caught flatfooted while taking a pee.
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