(no subject)
So, I finally just sat down and typed up a beta-reader request, and posted it over on sg_workshop. The more I write, the more I realize that I desperately need one. There's a great gaping gulf between How I Write and How I Want To Write, and having a dedicated person who can sit down with me and say "Okay, if you want to get your reader here, you can't do this, and should consider this" would be a great help. If there's one thing I'm lousy at, it's predicting how readers will respond to things.
I may as well post it here, too, in case anyone who reads this journal wants to volunteer.
Hi. I'm looking for a beta.
I've been writing sporadically in SG1 for a while, and have so far been posting everything without any beta-ing (with mixed results). At the moment, though, I'm thinking that for what I want to do and where I want to be, having a dedicated beta reader would be an immense help if not absolutely essential. So now to the personal ad?
I write across all lengths, but I mostly get ideas for Stupidly Epic Fics and have a harder time coming up with one-shots or vignettes. I don't write a lot of sex or romance, but I have occasionally considered trying to rake up an NC-17 on violence/darkness. I focus mostly on action/adventure, drama, character studies, psychological horror and alien political ficiton. Most of my stuff falls in/between Season 4 and Season 7.
Ideally, I'd like someone (or a collection of someones) who can do three things:
1) Go through with an eagle's eye looking for punctuation errors, typos, misplaced words, and sentences, etc.
2) Have a dialogue with me through the course of writing the fic (especially on longer ones) about what's working and what's not and what might, and who I can bounce ideas back and forth with throughout the process.
3) Look over the finished draft and help with polishing and revising.
Of course, that's my wishlist; any help is appreciated, especially since I have no beta now.
LJ will email me commens on this entry, or you can poke me at magistrata @ gmail.com. Thanks!
You know, maybe at some point I should try to organize some kind of fandom Crit Group. It'd be like a normal crit group--every week or whatever someone sends out a fic, and then everyone reads it and meets on AIM or IRC or in a forum or an LJ comm and discusses it critically, and then the author goes off and revises--but it'd be for fanfiction, which is (perhaps ironically*) often lacking in critical review. Though I may put off organizing that until I have a bit more name recognition in some fandom or other.
*I say "perhaps ironically" because, for me, a lot of writing fanficiton is critical response to the canon. When the opportunity's arisen, I've written critical work in class that takes the form of fanfiction. That's what I did when we read The Moon Is Down in american Lit. Darkside was or aspired to be a critical look at issues in Final Fantasy VIII, notably the ethical values the world put forward. S Is For Silicate was a look at implications in Space: Above and Beyond. Fanfiction is probably the most comfortable way for me to respond critically to fiction, but that's probably a topic for another entry.
I may as well post it here, too, in case anyone who reads this journal wants to volunteer.
Hi. I'm looking for a beta.
I've been writing sporadically in SG1 for a while, and have so far been posting everything without any beta-ing (with mixed results). At the moment, though, I'm thinking that for what I want to do and where I want to be, having a dedicated beta reader would be an immense help if not absolutely essential. So now to the personal ad?
I write across all lengths, but I mostly get ideas for Stupidly Epic Fics and have a harder time coming up with one-shots or vignettes. I don't write a lot of sex or romance, but I have occasionally considered trying to rake up an NC-17 on violence/darkness. I focus mostly on action/adventure, drama, character studies, psychological horror and alien political ficiton. Most of my stuff falls in/between Season 4 and Season 7.
Ideally, I'd like someone (or a collection of someones) who can do three things:
1) Go through with an eagle's eye looking for punctuation errors, typos, misplaced words, and sentences, etc.
2) Have a dialogue with me through the course of writing the fic (especially on longer ones) about what's working and what's not and what might, and who I can bounce ideas back and forth with throughout the process.
3) Look over the finished draft and help with polishing and revising.
Of course, that's my wishlist; any help is appreciated, especially since I have no beta now.
LJ will email me commens on this entry, or you can poke me at magistrata @ gmail.com. Thanks!
You know, maybe at some point I should try to organize some kind of fandom Crit Group. It'd be like a normal crit group--every week or whatever someone sends out a fic, and then everyone reads it and meets on AIM or IRC or in a forum or an LJ comm and discusses it critically, and then the author goes off and revises--but it'd be for fanfiction, which is (perhaps ironically*) often lacking in critical review. Though I may put off organizing that until I have a bit more name recognition in some fandom or other.
*I say "perhaps ironically" because, for me, a lot of writing fanficiton is critical response to the canon. When the opportunity's arisen, I've written critical work in class that takes the form of fanfiction. That's what I did when we read The Moon Is Down in american Lit. Darkside was or aspired to be a critical look at issues in Final Fantasy VIII, notably the ethical values the world put forward. S Is For Silicate was a look at implications in Space: Above and Beyond. Fanfiction is probably the most comfortable way for me to respond critically to fiction, but that's probably a topic for another entry.