Edit Your Own Writing More Effectively

Editing a first draft in one pass is like painting a wall and fixing the plaster at the same time. The useful process works in passes: structure first, then language, then line. Each pass has a different question to ask, and some problems are invisible until you are looking for them specifically. This gives you the three-pass process, the structural problem most first drafts share, and the thing that reading aloud catches.

I have written a first draft of [describe: an article, essay, blog post, or short story] and I need to edit it well. I tend to either change too little (protecting what I wrote) or change too much (losing what made it work). Give me: a three-pass editing process, each pass targeting a different level of the work, specific questions to ask about each element at each pass, the most common structural problem in first drafts of this type, and one thing to read aloud to catch that cannot be caught reading silently.