Use "said" in dialogue tags. A lot. The word "said" is so common that the reader almost skips over it as they read. If you're constantly putting more active, unique words into a dialogue conversation like "exclaimed," "shouted," "cried," "lamented," "mourned," etc., you're drawing attention to the specific word choice and forcing the reader to discern the nuances between all of those modifiers. The more often your characters simply say things, the more often the reader will glance over that word and insert their own inflection into the line.

Avoid purple prose. If you don't want to draw attention to something, avoid explaining it in florid, overly-long description. The "brown drapes" or the "white countertop" are small, quick details the the reader can quickly process and then move on from. On the other hand, if you're describing the drapes as "the same tan color as the West Saharan sands at dusk," or the countertop as "white like the ivory keys of the baby grand piano [your character] played as a child," you're forcing the reader to take more time and assign more value to the description than they otherwise would. If your goal is to draw attention to the story rather than the language used in the writing, keep the description clean and sparse.

Include very little extraneous information. When you're writing for the sake of the language, you can easily take up paragraphs or even pages lingering on the smallest details. If you're trying to let the story shine through, try focusing an appropriate amount of attention on the scene in question relative to its significance to the plot. In other words, describing what the detective has for breakfast or her home life probably doesn't need the same level of attention to detail and description as what the detective notices while investigating the scene of the crime. By making judicious determinations about what parts of the story warrant extra description, you'll help focus the pacing and direction of the story on the plot rather than the presentation.