Have You Used Beta Readers?

Have you ever tried using a beta reader to get reactions to your writing? I haven't yet, though it seems like it might be something to try.

You see, I am NOT a believer in critique groups. I'm already hypercritical of my own work, and I KNOW what's wrong with it--- everything. And since I'm a person with Asperger Syndrome (autism spectrum disorder) and seem to radiate a 'vulnerable person' vibe, I'm afraid I might end up being the target of the über-negative critique group members (and every group has a few).

A number of people have written blog posts on beta readers. Here are a couple:
Beta Readers: The Magic Elves of the Publishing World
Ask Jami: Where to Find Beta Readers

I think one has to be very selective about a beta reader. They need to know and enjoy the genre, and they have to be OK with you and your personal style and, well, everything about you that might affect your story. For example, if you write faith-based fiction from an LDS church or Catholic point of view, you don't want an Evangelical beta reader who insists on correcting your 'wrong' theology--- even on points of your story that you didn't think HAD a theology. Or if you write a lot of sports activity into your story, you don't want a sports-hater who can't enjoy that aspect of your work.

There are two extremes people go in to when asked to read someone's unpublished work: the cheerleader and the critiquer. The cheerleader lavishes insincere praise on almost everything, the critiquer comes up with laundry lists of things allegedly wrong with your story. Both extremes are unhelpful.

What I think a writer needs from a beta reader is REACTIONS. Good or bad reactions. They don't have to come from an expert writer or editor, either. An ordinary unsophisticated reader can tell you whether your story was something they couldn't put down or something they couldn't manage to finish. They can tell you it was boring for the first 30 pages and then got exciting. They can tell you they identified with THAT character but found THIS character unbelievable and boring.

The writer using beta readers needs to be clear to them about what he wants from them. Some writers use beta readers to check out a specialty subject they don't know much about: a hunter or gun owner to make sure they didn't make any firearm mistakes, or a cop to catch police procedure mistakes. From these beta readers, you don't need or expect any remarks about plots or characters, and you ought to make it clear that this is what you are looking for.

For the general beta reader, specify what you in particular are interested in knowing. For example, if you have a tendency to write un-compelling characters, you might ask for reactions to the characters--- which ones they liked or disliked, which ones they would liked to have seen more of, which ones they would have liked to have seen less of.... If you write great characters but dull plots, ask plot questions.

When you receive your responses, you must remember that you aren't a schoolchild and your beta readers aren't your English teacher. You need not 'correct' everything they see to be a flaw. You need not 'correct' anything! It's still YOUR book. You should feel free to ignore anything you don't think is valid, and also anything that may well be valid but you can't do anything about. For example, if a beta reader didn't like your 'voice' or your 'style'.

How do you go about finding a beta reader? I haven't a clue. I'd use my writing friends, but as a not-untypical person with Asperger Syndrome, I don't have writing friends that think of me as 'friends'--- more like 'that annoying gal I once interacted with online'. I suppose when the time comes I might put out a call on this blog and on the Facebook groups I founded and take part in.

One suggestion that I haven't yet read elsewhere: why not ask for beta readers for your first chapter only to start with, or for a short story? It's less of a commitment for them. And if they beta read chapter one and didn't find it utterly awful, they might be willing to read more.

In fact, for short first chapters and sections of longer first chapters, you might post it on your blog and ask for beta-reader reactions there, and offer the rest to anyone who liked it enough to read on.

How about you: have you used beta readers? Did it work out well, or not so well? Do you have any ideas to make the beta reader process go better? Or on how to find good beta readers?

My Facebook writing page:
http://www.facebook.com/NissaAnnakindt

Keeping Your Writer's Secrets

While reading a recently purchased book, The Weekend Novelist Writes a Mystery by Robert J. Ray and Jack Remick, I came across a section called 'A Writer's Secrets'. And while I hadn't heard that term before I recognized it as an issue that I, and perhaps other writers, have dealt with.

Namely, how much, if any, of your current Work In Progress should you share with others--- ANY others? The concept of keeping your writer's secrets implies that there is a lot that you SHOULD be keeping secret, including your plot outlines, major plot points, your first draft and perhaps your second....

Why? Because at a delicate point in the alchemy of writing, the reaction of others can kill the spark, crush the dream, turn a Work In Progress into yet another abandoned novel idea.

And it's not just harsh criticism that can do this. Praise that wholly misses the point of what you are trying to write can be just as discouraging as a 'this whole plot is utter dreck' criticism. And even fulsome praise can crush a writing project under the weight of your friends' expectations.

I remember reading one of Lawrence Block's many how-to-write books. He mentioned having an idea for his next Bernie Rhodenbarr mystery--- and then he said he wouldn't say any more about it, he didn't want to leave his fight in the gym.

I think what he meant was that if you talk about your work with enough people, you dampen your drive to actually write the darn thing. You've told the story, after all, you've gotten reactions to it--- part of your mind is likely to conclude that the work is done.

Keeping your writing secret in the early phases can be scary. Anyone who has been subjected to the typical school training knows that anything you do secretly and on your own is NOT good--- it's goofing off at best. REAL schoolwork is done in a group setting with everyone doing the same thing in pretty much the same way.

So when we begin serious writing, there's a nervous part of us that has the need to check with others on each and every plot point to ensure that we are doing things 'right', in just the way everyone else does them.

But sharing your work in the early stages can lead to a sort of 'writing by committee' work habit. Many of the original and interesting things about your novel won't even make it into the first draft because your friend or your mother or your hairdresser didn't like it. What will come out is a group-written novel that is as dull and conventional as can be--- and the bewildered writer can't understand why everyone doesn't like it the way the 'co-writers' did.

But if you determine to keep your writer's secrets, to not discuss or share from your WIP until it's not only first-draft-finished, but in a polished version ready to be seen be a critical world, you are flying in the face of the way critique-group advocates say a writer should operate.

In critique groups, and even more in creative writing classes, you are expected to expose your first draft naked before the whole world. Not only that, the criticisms you will reap from that random group of people are expected to be taken to heart, and you are expected to change your work in accordance with their decrees, at least some of the time.

The answer, if you believe that not keeping your writer's secrets has harmed your writing and caused potentially-good projects to get dropped, is to stay out of critique groups and classes that work that way. If you want to be in a group, find one or found one in which only polished work is shared.

For many of us that may mean that we will end up being 'a writer alone'. But that's good. Writing is a lonely game, and it's meant to be. It's your name (or pen name) that will go on the finished product. You need to be bold enough to make your work your own, without feeling the need for constant reassurance from others during the writing process that you are doing things the way other people think is right.

How much do you share about a current WIP? Do you share too much or too little? 

Featured Kitties: Katniss, the orange-y one, is sitting and letting Myfanwy (Other Myfanwy) use her as a pillow. 

My Facebook writing page:
http://www.facebook.com/NissaAnnakindt

Confessions of an 'Egotistical' Insecure Writer

A Hostile Critiquer

I've always known I have writing problems. My self-esteem is so low that I have a hard time getting any words out at all. Because if you don't write your stories down, no one can tell you they are dreck. I also give up on perfectly fine writing projects because I falsely believe they are no good at the moment, and then can't get back into them when I realize how wrong I was.

But until I was so informed by a self-appointed hostile critiquer, I didn't know I was egotistical about my writing. Egotistical because I won't post excerpts of my writing on his Facebook critique group for him to grind into dust. As he does everything I say in my own Facebook group which is NOT a critique group.

So, I'll own up to it. I'm egotistical. I have my own way of writing--- though I experiment with variations--- and one thing I am not is someone who can 'write by committee'. Some people are that way. They may need a critique group to look over every word and suggest changes before they can proceed. If they can't get a good critique group, they will settle for critiques from random internet strangers. I can't understand working like that, but if it works for them....

I have my own way. Perhaps it's because I have Asperger Syndrome. I write. I find my own mistakes. I fix them if I can. Sometimes I can't. I may know that a certain scene needs more bits of description, but I may have done as much as I can along that line at the moment. I work alone toward a goal that perhaps only I think of as worth pursuing.

I don't want 'critiques' or writing instruction from self-proclaimed-brilliant small-press writers. I probably couldn't process the input from a first-class critique properly, and critique from random sources of varying levels of expertise just doesn't seem worth dealing with, for me. And then there is always the problem of attracting someone who will crush my already-almost-non-existent self-esteem--- for my own good, of course.

What I want is something I can use: reactions. Feedback. I mean, I want to be able to share a bit of my writing and see how people react to it. For example, I shared the basic premise from my WIP 'On Tejas Trails', about a girl who uses an amulet to be transformed into a male guise, and I got some good feedback that mentioned some Shakespeare plays in which females pose as males. Great, that was something I will probably work into the story.

I also got a few people who said the story sounded interesting. Were they merely being kind to poor, autistic me? Maybe. But I took it as encouragement and it helps.

If you are also an insecure writer, I encourage you to be 'egotistical', like me. YOU are the one I might think, for example, that you really need to fix some 'as-you-know' dialogue in your first chapter. But maybe you are not yet ready to deal with that input right now.
writer who can best tell what kind of help you need right now.

Know what feedback you are looking for at this moment and very specifically ask for it. If you have specific issues that you plan to deal with later--- perhaps you are a poor speller--- mention that you don't want feedback in that area at this time. I mean, if your major concern is whether your relationship between Tristan the vampire and Isolde the dwarf is believable, 1000 comments on your spelling errors will just get in the way of getting the feedback you really want.

And do feel free, when someone ignores your specifications on the feedback you want and gives you a rundown of your spelling mistakes, to tell that person to go to hell. Even if it is me. YOU are the one who knows what you need, and what just makes you feel defeated. Don't be afraid to speak up for yourself.

But what if you are a writer who is really bad? Aren't you cutting yourself off from a chance to improve when you don't invite critiques from all comers? No. Let's face it, a lot of critique comments are useful only as comic relief. Some person has heard some obscure writing rule and demands that everyone bow down to it even when the rule is not only invalid, but bizarre. I knew a woman once who was dead set against the use of the word 'and'. Didn't have much problem with a string of 4 adjectives in a row, but hated that word 'and'. Trust me, your writing will not be harmed by ignoring critiques like that.

It will also not be harmed by not asking for critiques prematurely, or in areas you are not ready to deal with at this time. Maybe what you need most right now is just some encouragement to believe in yourself as a writer. Because if you keep trying, your writing will keep improving. Whether the hostile critiquers like it or not.



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Inferior Writers: Shakespeare, Austin and Dickens

When I was young, I thought the writers of the past--- Shakespeare, Jane Austin, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville and the like--- were good writers. But now that I have learned what it takes to be a good writer--- a critique group and an editor-for-hire--- I know they were bad writers. Since they didn't have critique groups and editors-for-hire back then, it's clear that quality writing hadn't even been invented yet.

Besides the badness of the writing of that pre-modern age, it's clear that writing back then was
a lonely pursuit. Just the writer and his pen, alone, until the work was finished. The writer didn't have a batch of critique-y 'friends' to hold his hand through the writing process. How could a writer decide whether that scene or bit of dialog was OK, worthy to be kept? He had to rely on his own judgment and not defer to the judgment of others--- or gain strength through defying the judgment of others in the critique group.

Modern writing, it seems, is a much more social affair. You don't have to have the delayed gratification involved in writing a novel and doing the corrections on your own. The moment your first paragraph is set down on the page, you can rush it to a critique group to get their unvarnished (and unprofessional) opinions. You then eagerly shape your work around those opinions. When your novel is finished, your critique group will give it high praise--- after all, they helped write it, too. It's a pity that the royalty-paying publishers don't realize how great it is also.

So you take the next step and hire an editor who is a 'professional'. What does 'professional' mean? Only that they are willing to take money for it. Much of the time you don't even know, as you hire a professional, if they even have the knowledge to catch your spelling errors, much less if they are able to make your novel more publishable, rather than less.

LESS publishable? Well, that can happen. Lawrence Block, in one of his many books on writing, wrote about the varying opinions among published writers on whether revision/rewriting was a necessary step. He quotes a fictional hack writer who declares that revision would rob his crap of the one thing it had going for it, its freshness.

Incessant revision can make a work less powerful, as the writer systematically removes every word, every phrase, that is the least bit original, fearing them to be incorrect, or at least risky. That's with old-fashioned revision, with the writer as the sole decision-maker.

When you add the influence of a flock of critique-group members and an editor-for-hire, you have many more chances to weaken your work. Even if you luck out and receive only good advice, you are weakened as a writer when you learn to depend on others instead of developing your own writer's intuition.

Why, then, are there so many folks these days who insist that all writers must seek out critiques and hire professional editors? In part it's because of changes in the community of would-be writers. Bad schools have robbed them of the chance to learn grammar and even, perhaps, correct spelling. Personal computers have made it easier for nearly anyone to throw together enough words on the page to say they have written a novel, and the internet connects such 'writers' to the writing community and to information on where to submit their 'writing'.

When faced with a bad novel, it is far easier to say 'join a critique group' or 'hire a professional editor' than to say out loud that the work is filled with misspellings or with long words misused, that the characters, where they exist, are flat, or that much of the work reads more like a book report on a novel than a novel itself. It's passing the buck, really. People who say these things are counting on critique group members or professional editors to say the thing that is to socially awkward for them to say. But chances are no one is going to want to say the hard things, except for members of the carnivorous critique groups that say them to everyone whether it's true or not.

I'm afraid that I myself am not a social animal, and will not be participating in the critique groups that are considered so essential today. Instead I am developing my own discernment, and my own ability to take responsibility for my words, to not need permissions or praise from others to write what I am called to write. This, of course, condemns me forever to the ranks of bad writers. Like Charles Dickens. But I'm OK with that.


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Link Caritas:
Mike Duran's DeCOMPOSE: Is Writing in the General Market LESS of a Ministry Than Writing for Christians?  Mike Duran, previously published in the Christian fiction market, explains why he's aiming his next work at the secular market.

Jeff Hargett's Strands of Pattern: Sunday Surfing   Jeff gives some links to writing-related blog posts of interest.