To beta, or not to beta?

[kaige68.livejournal.com]

It’s a serious question, and there are a number of things that factor into a writer’s decision making.


Do you have a word cut-off? I had a discussion with haldoor once where I told her that she didn’t need to have a beta reader for under 2,000 words. I don’t know who I thought I was that I could make this decree, but I did and the two of us generally abide with it. In some part of my brain that’s the line between a fic that I put diligent effort into, and a mad dash couple of pages that I did to get a scene out of my head.

This is not to say that there aren’t 1,800 word fics that I want to have looked over, or 2,500 word fics that I slapped together and don’t want anything further than to run a spell check. It happens both ways. But I want to know if you have a word count that you use as a guideline.

How about timing? 9 out of 10 times when I write a drabble, it’s with a deadline/weekend challenge in mind. I’m usually just under the wire and up the post goes with barely a spell check to it. OR - I’m in such a rush of inspiration in a series of drabbles or drabble-like fics that I want them done so I can move on to the next one as I’m excited about them. Again it goes back to the above with the things I’ve put effort into versus the pieces I’ve rushed through, and the rushed pieces don’t get double checked.

Do you beta read your own work? I don’t have this capability. I reread what I’ve written and generally see what I was thinking when my brain was dictating to my fingers. But I can conceive of saving something and going back at a later date to a much better level of self-editing. Maybe you can do this.

Do you even think you need one? I do. I think we all need one. I read a published fiction book once, bought-it-at-a-bookstore book written by a well known author, who got the earth’s rotation wrong. It wasn’t a reality suspending piece of science fiction, it was chick-lit where the big action-y thing that precipitated all the changes in the characters lives was a train crash that happened during rush-hour in Boston which was the pre-dawn hours in England. I don’t know how that got by an editor. Obviously, this still bugs me something fierce.

I know me, I quack when I meant to quake, I she’d instead of he’d, and yes, I’ve been spoken to about they’re/their/there. I know I need things pointed out to me like where the sun rises and how many t’s there are in commitment. But I freely admit that there are people better at this than I. Do you?

Gift fics? This Christmas was the first time I’d really written a gift fic, it was under my word cut off, and it came to me rather effortlessly, but because it was something that wasn’t going to completely belong to me when it was posted, I wanted it to have a much more thorough going over than would have been my norm. Do you treat gift fic (or something someone else prompted) differently than something you did strictly for yourself?

Is buddy reading enough for you? I have a relationship with a couple of different people where I send ‘chapters’ as I write them. Frequently this is to gauge impact or to just have someone egg me on and tell me that they can’t wait for the next bit of something I won’t make public until it is complete. And I buddy read for them as well. Mostly to supply cheer-leading and interject American dialog. Maybe I’ll chime in with ‘don’t forget to run spell check’. But it’s much more of an encouraging thing than an actual critique. When is that enough?

Do you think you aren’t good enough to get a beta? Everyone is different, and we have all progressed through various stages in our writing, but one of the natural stages is to think of ourselves as small writers. You can just about mentally hear someone say to you Honey, it’s 600 words and you did it in two days. You’re a little writer, you don’t need to have it proof-read. I’ve said things like that to myself, not as an excuse to not have a beta reader, more as a belief that I wasn’t good enough.

I’m not going to say that it doesn’t happen, that someone wouldn't say that to you, but you can’t fix a mistake you don’t know you’ve made. A beta reader worth having, wants your fic to be the best it can be, no matter the size or effort. Is this something you’ve convinced yourself to do?



THEN there are the other aspects of beta reading.

How do you tell someone they need a beta reader? You’ve read those fics, and you’ve had a mental line in your head that’s been crossed because there were too many mistakes (and not in a bad!fic way). Is there a count of errors where you put your foot down and PM the writer to get a checker? Is there a place where you need to find a way to tell the writer to get a better beta? Is there a place where you just turn away and learn not to read that writer anymore?

And if you do tell the writer, how do you do it? Because I want to know how to say that helpfully.

Do you beta read? I consider myself to be a rather crappy beta reader. I spent my 6th grade grammar classes being tested for a learning disability, and was never able to catch up with the rest of the class. I have a good vocabulary, and a decent ear. I try to remember corrections that have been pointed out to me, and the things that I know I don’t know, I’ve learned to work around. But I do feel as though I might be doing a disservice to the people I read for by being their only reader. Do you think you’re good enough?

Recently, I read through something for a friend, and the writer was told in a comment to find a proofreader who had graduated from middle school because spell check does not equal proofreading. It was a troll, and my ego is quite intact, but I do feel that I’ve failed my writer just a bit. And I wonder if I’ve failed other writers. (Seriously, I thought this long before the troll.) A beta reader is defined as a ‘critical eye’, how do you know you’ve done enough?


OKAY, we’re on page 3 of this so I’ll wrap it up soon.

How many beta readers is enough? How many people have read your fic, when you finally feel it’s good enough to post? Do you have someone who reads for content, then someone who reads critically? Do you have a buddy, then plot checker, then spell/grammar checker, then buddy again?


The relationship with a good beta reader is a beautiful thing. If you can find someone who can constructively tell you what you want to hear and what you need to hear, you have won the lottery. It takes time, effort, and good communication on both parts. I am guilty of taking the criticisms that I asked for too severely, and I am guilty of being a sledgehammer when I read other people’s work. I firmly believe, that the longer you work together, the better writer you become, the better the fic becomes.

So one last question: Have you hugged your beta today?