I love this topic. Forgive me if I ramble at you, but I LOVE doing betas and I have lots of thoughts about them.
I've done scads of writing workshops, so my betas tend to follow those rules.
1. Always find something nice to say. (Roughly, find 3 nice things to say for every ten things that don't work for you.)
2. Never say, "This sucks." Say, "Okay, this part isn't working for me because of x, y, and z. But if you do this other thing instead, then it would flow much more smoothly."
3. Story editing and copy editing are two different things. A good beta does both.
4. Never submit something for beta until you're ready to have your baby put up for critical inspection.
5. Do not kill the writer! A beta's job is to encourage, like pruning tomato plants in the garden to help them grow into gorgeous healthy bushes that produce lots of fat, happy tomatoes. Hacking the plant off at ground level helps no one.
For me, someone who just looks something over and gives general impressions is more of an alpha reader instead of a beta. I want a beta to pick things apart and help me see what I'm not seeing because I'm too deep in the story to have any sense of perspective about it.
I write tons and tons of comments on most betas I do. Mostly questions about motivation, setting, or wondering if the character would actually use a certain phrase. I do this because I'm nitpicky as anything and I figure if the writer addresses a tenth of my questions, then the story will be much, much richer for it.
But the main thing to remember is the story is the writer's prerogative. She totally has the right to disagree with a beta's suggestions -- which is why it's so great to have more than one beta look at a story. Different readers pick up on different things, esp as we're all influenced differently by our individual issues and preferences. And it's hard to tell sometimes if a perceived problem is on the beta-side or the author-side. /states obvious :P
Oh, a tiny modly side note: on ds_noticeboard, I tend to delete beta requests as soon as I see they've been filled -- if the requester hasn't done it already. It's just an effort to keep things as clutter-free as possible. :)
Actually, I meant to say in #3 that a god-like, ideal beta does both. Realistically, we all have our strengths and this is another reason why it's great to get more than one set of eyes to proof your fic. I suck at punctuation (though I TRY, honest) and paragraph breaks...so I'm a better story editor than copy editor. And I totally use Word's Grammar Check whenever I remember to. Even though telling it to ignore my stupid sentence fragments gets really annoying! :P
I've done scads of writing workshops, so my betas tend to follow those rules.
1. Always find something nice to say. (Roughly, find 3 nice things to say for every ten things that don't work for you.)
2. Never say, "This sucks." Say, "Okay, this part isn't working for me because of x, y, and z. But if you do this other thing instead, then it would flow much more smoothly."
3. Story editing and copy editing are two different things. A good beta does both.
4. Never submit something for beta until you're ready to have your baby put up for critical inspection.
5. Do not kill the writer! A beta's job is to encourage, like pruning tomato plants in the garden to help them grow into gorgeous healthy bushes that produce lots of fat, happy tomatoes. Hacking the plant off at ground level helps no one.
For me, someone who just looks something over and gives general impressions is more of an alpha reader instead of a beta. I want a beta to pick things apart and help me see what I'm not seeing because I'm too deep in the story to have any sense of perspective about it.
I write tons and tons of comments on most betas I do. Mostly questions about motivation, setting, or wondering if the character would actually use a certain phrase. I do this because I'm nitpicky as anything and I figure if the writer addresses a tenth of my questions, then the story will be much, much richer for it.
But the main thing to remember is the story is the writer's prerogative. She totally has the right to disagree with a beta's suggestions -- which is why it's so great to have more than one beta look at a story. Different readers pick up on different things, esp as we're all influenced differently by our individual issues and preferences. And it's hard to tell sometimes if a perceived problem is on the beta-side or the author-side. /states obvious :P
Oh, a tiny modly side note: on ds_noticeboard, I tend to delete beta requests as soon as I see they've been filled -- if the requester hasn't done it already. It's just an effort to keep things as clutter-free as possible. :)
Reply
Reply
Thank you for expanding on those beta points! You delineated the traits between a 'good beta' and a 'nice beta' wonderfully!
Reply
Leave a comment