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I think one of the best ways a word count comes down is in the removal of unnecessary words and redundancy of description. In the last couple of days, I've managed to trim 1000 words out simply by removing excess, "Look, seem, almost, just, and that" from the novel, among other things.
Though I believe the jury is out on whether or not the average reader is going to notice an excess of words like those (unless it's really awful), removing them does streamline the writing at least a little bit.
That having been said, my normal edits usually add a number of words or *cough* chapters.
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