The Order to Follow in Editing Your First Draft
To ensure that you don’t waste time or duplicate work, take the advice of a seasoned editor and use a hierarchical system for making changes.
First come big, structural changes. These need to be in place first. I’m referring to chapter order, or large chunks of writing within chapters. Then move on from there to the level of paragraph. This has more to do with the way information is flowing on the page. Only after you have dealt with the paragraphs can you come down to the level of sentence structure. And finally, I urge you to wait if you can, to the very end, to get to that most dear of all editing changes: word choice.
See, if you start with word choice you could take a month just on that and still not have dealt with the reorganization that’s necessary. I have found over and over whether it’s my own writing I’m working with or someone else’s, if I can stick to this order, and take notes but don’t get stuck on the items below the level I am at, I get more done, faster and clearer, and the more detailed work actually gets more time and attention in the end.