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plancktum
Ah, not being able to draw the red line. Yeah, in fiction writing there is an idea called "Kill Your Babies". I forget who first came up with it, by the idea is to be suspicious of your first impulse, examine what you've written objectively later, and apply a mean editing hand.
One of the really nice ways for controlling that tendency is using the "Fronts" from Dungeon World. Uh, there's a Dungeon World SRD for free on the net that describes what a "Front" is in more detail, but the gist is a discrete conflict/threat that the players will face. For a given adventure you probably only want 1 or 2 Fronts, and for a campaign 3-5 is about right. A good technique to self-edit is to say: Ok, I have # this many Fronts in my campaign and here's what they are... Any idea I come up with that doesn't fit into one of these fronts (or is clearly related to a PC or logically draws from last game session) gets the red pen. Cut it out.