Do you cut about 30% of your draft on the second pass, or am I being ruthless? Did that at 6 a.m. today and the lede finally breathed.
Cut ‘30%’ on pass two as well; I read aloud, not at 6 a.m. Do you keep a cut file?
Building on @gregory_l12, I do a quick reverse outline on pass two: write a 3–5 word label for each paragraph and cut or merge anything with a duplicate label — turns the draft from junk drawer to tool kit fast. Caveat: if cuts push it under about 70% of the original word count, I pause to smooth transitions; how do you decide when to stop trimming?