Once I’ve completed this revision, which will hopefully fill most of the holes, shore up weak areas, and trim a lot of unnecessary or redundant material, I’ll ship it off to another beta reader or two—someone who’s already read the piece, and somebody who hasn’t. In this stage, I’m focusing on really polishing the copy, and tightening it up as much as I can. I find my first round of revisions usually increases word count, where the second and third revisions reduce it dramatically.