Compared with pauraque’s excellent contribution above, I can now think of only a few superficial points. I write in a probably unusual manner, editing my text constantly, at least after each paragraph, and often reading from the beginning of the scene or from the very beginning. However, I agree that distance is important, and I prefer leaving the completed story for a few days before going over it all once, and only after that sending it to my beta, and when revising old fics, it’s a pleasure to see more clearly how the text can be improved.

I’ve noticed that when there’s not much distance in time, it helps to read the text in a form where the line breaks are different (like when I’ve pasted the uncompleted fic in a private post so as to read it at LJ or DW on my phone). That somehow helps me see the text as new and spot at least typos and also repetition.

(Remembering what my beta had to point out once) I check in particular that in the opening (of a scene) I give all the information a reader needs so as not to get any false ideas about where and when the story is set.

Like pauraque I’ve got the habit of reading my text aloud – listening and checking that it sounds fluent. However, it’s a bit disconcerting to know that a lot of readers only glance at each line or even take in a whole paragraph at one glance. Because I always both read and write slowly, I guess I need a beta to also check that the text works for that kind of reading, too.

(EDITED Oh, other excellent contributions have appeared while I was writing mine slowly!)