Precious Beta Readers

A beta reader is someone who looks over your manuscript to find weaknesses before making suggestions for improvements.  Unlike how we utilize critique group members, your beta reader usually reads the entire book at once.  He more accurately simulates the experience of your book’s ultimate audience—your buyers.  Their time and skills are best used if they don’t need to focus on line edits like grammar and spelling.  Try your best to give them a clean copy. 

A helpful beta reader will make suggestions to improve the story, characters, and setting, basically all the big picture items.  I’ve been a beta reader and I’ve also had others take that one last look for me.  I’ve found they can be book-savers: finding plot holes, questionable believability, problems with continuity and characterization, even factual inaccuracies.

It’s common for a careful writer to have a beta reader or two peek at her book before she sends it to agents or editors or out for self-publishing.

It helps your reader to know what you are concerned about.  Below are some questions you might want to ask so you can get actionable feedback on your book:

- Did you feel drawn into the story?

- Did anything bug you?

- What's the one word you'd use to describe each character?
- Who was your favorite character?
- Favorite scene?
- On which page do you think you know what the story will be about?

- Did the story grip your attention right away?
- What do you wish were different in chapter one?
- What's your favorite Chapter?
- Where did you skim?

- Why?

- What do you feel the arc of each character was?
- Was that satisfying?
- Where did you cringe?
- Why?
- Where did you cry/gasp/laugh?
- Why?
- What was too predictable?

- Where?
- What do you consider the dark moment?
- Were you satisfied by the end?
- Why?

- Would you want to read the next book?

You'll notice there are many whys... that's because it’s much more helpful to know WHY something is good or bad so you can go back and do more or less of that thing.

Remember to thank your Beta Reader!  In one case I sent my beta reader a box of goodies that matched the theme of the book she’d read for me.  One of the best gifts you can offer is to reciprocate.   It’s a learning experience whether you are on the giving or receiving end.  To all the beta readers out there:  THANK YOU!   

      -   From the Inkpot

PROTECT YOUR VOICE

I'd like to offer a few thoughts about voice and editing.

There are times for rules and times for forgetting the rules.  Craft is always something to master, even if only to ignore.

Despite my repeated warnings about adhering too obsessively to “rules,” it’s still true that some of my editing clients have craft trip-ups that make for tough reading.  I see clumsy grammar gremlins, over qualifying, unnecessary attribution to POV characters, cart-before-the-horse descriptions, etc. They can be distracting and thus detracting. 

None-the-less, your voice might lead you to break rules,

In my opinion, great voice walks right up to the edge of troubled writing… That cliff and its risk make up the writing sweet spot.

Write brave but keep clarity in mind.  And always be careful to protect your voice.

Remember: It may not be perfect, but it may be right.

Write well.  All best from the Inkpot.

PET PEEVES IN EDITING: Use that FIND feature

I imagine we all have pet peeves when it comes to fiction. Those niggling habits writers have that trip us up, waste words, and mince meanings. If enough of them distract, we are tempted to repurpose the book for kindling.


When editing my clients' work, I tend to run into certain bugaboos quite often.


Some of them require an ear for Tense (and manipulating it as needed for backstory), Point of View (the blinders that keep that horse from seeing what’s behind him), underuse of contractions, telling when showing would be more powerful, etc.


Luckily, others are less nuanced and can be addressed easily with our word programs’ search/find features.


Search and destroy:

When you‘ve placed these two words -- and then (side by side). Pick one or the other. You don’t need both.

Qualifiers deflate prose. Examples: began to, begin, started to, start, a bit of, a little of, seemed to, what appeared to be, maybe, almost, decided to, plan to, any (as in: Note any changes you make.), all of (as in: I'm too old for all of this.)

Frequently used throwaway words that weaken the prose such as: just, oh, anyway, well, fairly, seems, though, very, really, many, a lot, so, and of these (as in: several of the boys)

Passive construction: watch for forms of “to be” paired with gerunds. Simple past tense is better, more active, more engaging. “She is holding” versus “She holds”

Vague and less vivid words like:
sit (how about “plop” or “eased down into” or “collapsed into”)
walked (strolled, marched, traipsed, sauntered) and run, went down, went over, moved, laugh, look…

!!!!!! Use exclamation marks only when absolutely necessary. Good dialogue or narrative already conveys the urgency or excitement

Suddenly and immediately. Most of the time they aren’t necessary. Let the thing happen, the context will let us know it happened suddenly.

Unnecessary qualifiers weaken the prose. Let them be or do instead of “start to be” or “begin to do” something: watch for “began” and “started”

Unnecessary wordiness (like redundancies and phrases that can be simplified without changing meaning) Ex: "down below" becomes "below"

Unnecessary attributions of thoughts, beliefs, etc. If we are solidly in POV we assume those thoughts etc. are those of the POV character. Ex: I thought, He felt, I believed

“THAT” can often be eliminated. If a sentence can read just fine without it, take it out.

Fancy dialogue tags. “Said” is typically the best dialogue tag – others like hissed, addressed formally, argued, etc. call attention to themselves and slow the read. Good dialogue doesn’t need description – unless it is unclear in context that something is said sarcastically. Even "said" can be replaced with an action of the character. "Don't you dare." John grabbed his beer can and sqeezed it into a crumple of aluminum.

Make use of the FIND feature and you’ll clean up many editors’ pet peeves and will help your reader continue moving forward.

Inkpot wishes you good editing.

Figure Out the Fix

Time for another go at Mu Shu Mac-N-Cheese. After many glowing rejections, one agent was able to spell out more clearly what’s wrong with it.

Others came tantilizingly close to grabbing it up, loved the writing, the characters, the storyline, the premise…but…something was not quite connecting. When it comes to editing, it's pretty hard to work with a vague feeling.

Today, in contrast, I feel I have something more to work with. The new plan: after brushing up the last two chapters I wrote on my new one…I’ll put it aside and go back to Mu Shu, do a read and summary, and try to figure out how to make each chapter "swell under its own crescendo." That is the writing life: Figure out the Fix. Thank you Barbara Poelle of Irene Goodman Literary Agency.

TURN OFF THAT EDITOR!

I’ve got to get through it, that first attempt at getting my story down, living as my characters live, moving toward an inevitable yet unpredictable end. Those sh__ty first drafts, as Anne Lamott calls them in her brilliant book, Bird by Bird. All the workshops, all the books, all the talented and successful writers I know tell me to cage up the editor and whip through the sentences, to puke out the chapters, clean up the mess later. My brain, however, thinks more like an editor. I spit out a sentence, stop, fix that sentence, spit out more, notice that I didn’t backload a paragraph with the most powerful sentence, then the grammar checker is indicating I need to look at a word back where I wrote that clever reversal. Then there’s that pesky run-on sentence…

I’m not talking about scrolling back a few pages to edit and refresh my memory, then moving forward into my next chapter. I’m talking about scrolling back each paragraph and, on a particularly critical day, scrolling back each sentence. Yes, I’m an obsessive editor. I’ve always written that way. In fourth grade I did it. Back then I wrote mostly poetry, a very tight and disciplined form. That didn’t help. Next I graduated to a twelve-year-old version of erotica--wish I’d kept some of those scenes to compare to my adult notes. But I digress. Doesn’t it go figure, I’ve reinforced the early analyzing habit by becoming a professional editor.

Some tell me not to worry over it. I’m still prolific, having written almost a dozen screenplays, three novels, a literary cookbook, newspaper and magazine articles, and short stories (some of them erotica--hopefully different than my grade-school imaginings). I wrote all that while raising two boys. Sure, pat myself on the back, but get on with the writing, and slap that hand that continues to go back, go back, go back. As if I just can’t do my book justice without making every entence perfect as I go. What's up with that?!

To make matters worse, I write my sh—ty first drafts long hand, scrawling my additions and corrections all over the yellow pad –yellow to boost creativity. Unfortunately, yellow also nourishes my editing fixation. To make matters doubly frustrating, I have the worst handwriting known to the literate world. So my crazy first drafts are often indecipherable. Even to me. I have only my sisters to turn to when I’m puzzled to the point of pop-eyed madness, for they know me so well that they often step in to save my sh__ty first draft by interpreting my Gs that look like Ss and my Rs that look like Is and my ups and downs and arrows and my bubbles with sentences that are absolutely necessary to the line above or below or up the side and let’s not forget the middle phrase in the run-on sentence near the bottom of the page. This is no exaggeration. It’s a joke between us.

But when I’m working away solo at a restaurant over lunch, it’s not a joke. Sometimes I wish I could ask my waitress just what it was I wrote half a page up. Ten minutes ago. But then they’d think I wouldn’t be able to read the menu and so would bring me the picture menu. If they had one. OK, now my train of thought has drifted from editing to first drafts to penmanship. I think I need to go back and consider giving this blog entry a work out. Yes, the above photo is of a typical sh__ty rough draft page of mine, taken by my sister Storm Petrel. Is there a 12-step program for this obnoxious inclination?

It’s no use for me to seek advice on what I can do to improve my penmanship; teachers have been trying to help me there since my early erotica days. But I do ask, dear blog visitor, if you have any hints about how I can turn off my editor.

Gratefully, Inkpot