The Five Beta Readers You Meet in Heaven

My revised opus is sitting in my agent's inbox. We shall see what happens.

But I want to tell you my revelatory experience with beta readers. There are TYPES. If you are lucky and have cultivated your writerly Team of Rivals well, you will be surrounded by very different beta readers that give you very different feedback.

Different is good. If everyone is agreeing with each other (and worse, you) this is bad. Is it possible that your work is so perfect, so completely without flaw that there is only consensus in your little garden? No. I really don't think so. Even if you disagree with most of your feedback, just being open to those different opinions will challenge you, make you think deeper. This can only make the work better. Which is the point, right?

Let me introduce you to my wonderful beta readers.

THE OUTSIDER
Maribel, my outsider beta, is my friend from high school. I love her dearly and trust her. But she's also smart, loves to read widely and has specialist knowledge that I needed to consult for this book (specifically, she's Cuban.) She's an outsider because she's NOT a writer. That means she's solely a reader; she doesn't toggle between reading like a reader and reading like a writer/editor. She gets immersed in the story and can truthfully tell me if I've accomplished the trick of transporting her to another world. Having said all that, she caught a plot hole that NONE of my other, more experienced Betas caught.

THE DIFFERENT GENRE
Jenny Herrera is a very talented writer who doesn't write in my genre (well, she's thinking about it - J! come over to the YA dark side!) This is important because she questions genre tropes that it sometimes becomes too easy to fall into. The love triangle, the frenemy, the distant parents. She probes these tropes with a sharp stick, making sure they aren't just made of cardboard but of fleshed out characters. She also has a wicked 'spidey' sense that ferrets out when things are too...convenient.

THE ONE THAT DOESN'T WRITE LIKE YOU (a)
Kerri Maniscalco is a wonderful writer who has a fluid, expansive style. She's so good at feelings and interiority that you feel like her characters are sitting next to you, telling you their secrets. This is not my writing style, however. K's feedback is often about putting in more, showing more. She's excellent at spotting places where I *thought* I conveyed a message, but it's not on the page.

THE ONE THAT DOESN'T WRITE LIKE YOU (b)
Renee Ahdieh kicks ass. Her writing is glorious - sharp and spare as a knife. There's never a sag in the action, the pacing is meticulous. This isn't my writing style either - but with R's feedback, I'm able to pare down repetitiveness and make my writing sleeker. Between Kerri and Renee, I'm able to find a balance that suits my style perfectly.

THE ALLY
You need a team of rivals, but you also need an ally. In my case this is my husband and my mom. My mom because the world in my book is one she understands (her own mother and grandmother were curanderas - healers in their native Uruguay.) And because she was able to remind me that, whatever happens with this book, just writing it was an accomplishment. And she said it made her laugh, which made me so happy. My husband was the last to read my book and the last to comment. He knows how important this book has become to me, how much of my heart and hopes are tied up in it. And he's the first to say, "Good job, honey. What's next?" Because he knows that this book, even though I poured myself into it until I wondered if there was anything else left, is only one book on a continuum. There's more to write. ONWARD.

I am so grateful to my betas for letting me tap into their prodigious talents and wit.

Who's on your team of rivals?

How I Revise Pt. 1

Notice I didn't say, "How To Revise." Because I know two things about revising: Everyone does it differently and you should constantly be revising (hee hee, see what I did there?) your technique, adding new tricks and tools to your Revising Tool Box.

I'm on the very last pass of my ms before sending it to my ninja agent. While I'm nervous about her reading it (PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF VODKA LOVE IT AS MUCH AS I DO!) I'm also so proud of it that I could burst. Ultimately you need to be in that place with your ms - you need to feel that it's the best thing you've ever done. And you can only get to that place if you've been Ming the Merciless while revising.

Here's how I do it:

1) Rewrite. I write the first draft, then immediately go back and revise it into a second draft. Why? I do this because I'm a pantser, not a plotter. I don't know where I'm going in the story until I get there, so when I get to the end I'm often like, "Who knew that guy was a jerk?" Which is fine, but I need to go back through the draft make sure those connections make sense, that the seeds of the ending are there in the beginning. If you are a plotter and know exactly where you are going, you may not need this step. But it can't hurt.

2) Beta readers. I wrote extensively on Betas here a while back. To sum up - you need them and you need to be very clear on what feedback you are looking for. Then, you need to carefully consider that feedback. Some advice might make total sense immediately, while other advice might be painful to hear. Read the feedback and consider it carefully. Consider the source, meaning, every reader has their biases. Be aware of where your Betas are coming from so you can weigh their feedback accordingly. Finally - do not let your ego get in the way. If feedback is wounding your ego, it's probably on target.

3) Wait. At least a day between getting your Beta feedback and starting revisions. It's a wonderful thing what your subconscious can come up with while you are sleeping or watching the Vampire Diaries - as long as you give it a bit of time. Sit with the feedback. It's the pause that refreshes.*

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Which will be coming on Thursday!

In the meantime a question: What's your revision style?

*I forget which soft drink this slogan is from, but whoever you are, please don't sue me. I love fizzy drinks!

Down the Revision Rabbit Hole

I'm on Twitter. I'm on Facebook. I'm participating in March Madness (a wonderful way to keep writers honest - at least for the month of March) with daily check-ins. So, in March, I'm all over the place. But I'm not here, on this blog.

I have a mountain of revision to do on FIND ME after getting feedback (very different feedback, of-effing-course) from my two beta readers. There will be whiteboards. There will be Post-Its. There will be scribbling in the margins. But there won't be any more posts for the month of March.

What will you DO without me?



See you in April, friends.

The Beta Band

You know you need beta readers. You need all kinds of partners in writing. Crit partners, writing groups and beta readers. You need them because you aren't perfect. You make mistakes and, when writing, you become blind to your own fails. Writing partners give you a chance to get inside your reader's head before you unleash your creation on the world (whether that world is an agent, a publisher, self-pubbing or your grandma.)

I've had enough experience in beta-ing and being beta'd to offer this short guide to beta reading (or giving any kind of feedback.)

1) What Do You Want?
Know what you're being asked for/asking for. Beth Revis has a great post here that goes into deep detail - not only Alpha, Beta and Gamma reader definitions, but also, what point in your writing you'd need any one of these.  Know what kind of read you are asking for or you're being asked for and you won't be disappointed.

2) A Great Beta Read...
...Is like a conversation with your book. The comments aren't all smiley faces and 'like it'. They need to ask questions, test your logic, poke holes in your plot. The best beta reads I've had do that. I argue with the comments my readers make and sometimes they'll suggest something so obvious (which I left out) and such an elegant solution for putting it back in that I sit back and say, DAMN! (This just happened to me with the beta read I got from Jenny Herrera. That girl is smart.) Be the beta reader that gives THAT kind of care and attention to the work. Even if you think the comment might hurt a little, or if you think the writer was doing something on purpose. Err on the side of over commenting and put down every time something (good or bad) occurs to you. You wouldn't believe how many times one comment, one question shifts the whole meaning of the draft for me. Crystalizes it in a really good way.

3) Take the Time
To read and comment, it takes time. Beta reader's need to not only read and comment but think and digest your story, interact with it. I am guilty of being very impatient when my book is out. I am a beta reader stalker, having to sit on my hands to keep them from emailing, "Well? So? What did you think?" By the same token, when you are reading, take the time to do it properly (even if you are being stalked by the writer!) A bad beta read is one (and I got this once) that has few comments and a one paragraph sum up at the end that says something along the lines of 'Great Job! Really liked everything about it. I can see it on the shelves already. You're the Best!" Unless you are in Middle School, this kind of praise is meaningless. You know you aren't the best and that your ms. isn't perfect - that's why you sent it to the betas. So don't be a sloppy beta reader. It's not what you want in return.

4)WHAT TO DO IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE BOOK.
This is tricky, tricky. Firstly, you should know the writer you are beta-ing for to know if you like or respect their work (generally.) If you don't, why are you offering to beta for them? Secondly, you don't have to like the book to be constructive. Art is subjective. All you have to do to be a good beta reader  is to respect the writer and to respect the craft. If you can do that, you can beta anything. I'm not a super huge fan of romance as a genre (though when I was a teen, I read every single Jude Deveraux book there was. Twice.) But I can beta romance because I can respect the writing. I look at the work, not as a reader, but as a writer. I can see where something is working well and where something is confusing. I don't have to like pirates or time-travel or zombies. I just have to respect them. (Actually, I love time-traveling zombie pirates, if anyone has such a book for me to beta, I'm in.)

That's it. That's my guide. What did I miss? What do you look for in a beta? What do you bring to the table when you are beta-ing?

After THE END

On New Year's Eve, right before fireworks and falling into bed (because that's the kind of party girl I'm not) I wrote THE END on my current book, FIND ME.

The next day, my eldest gave me a card she drew. It said - Did you write a Book? YOU DID? Good Job! (many smiley faces and flowers)(Can't find the card now, but when I do, I'll post it here. You know it's totally adorable.)

If you get a card from your kid, that means you're all done, right? No....
After taking a couple of weeks to noodle around with an ending I was just not happy with, I'm now ready to put FIND ME out to Beta readers - ALMOST.

Here are the things I had to do to make it ready. It's my Get Ready For Prime Time Check List:

1) Spell Check
Yeah, duh. But you'd be surprised how in the heat of writing you can misspell exhilerate. excillerate. exhilarate. Spell check also catches repeated words. His his or or on on - when I'm cutting and pasting I'll inevitably leave behind some orphan prepositions. And the grammar check wants to ask you if you really need quite so many fragments.

2) TK
TK is copy edit short hand for To Come, as in, I can't stop to look this up right now so I'm going to slap on a TK and move on. Yesterday I filled in my TK's which means I did the following google searches (in case the FBI is wondering about my browser cache)

• Quote from The Neverending Story
• MTA Maps
• Irish Football shirts
• Latin phrases
• Indigenous place names in Northern New Jersey
• Scouting NY (an awesome website by a NYC film scout - he finds the most amazing places!)
• Maps of Palisades Parkway
• La Lupe (Cuban singer)
• Blood Donation and replenishment
• Brust Park
• Tastee Kake
• Trojan Horse
• Spanish name origins
• What's in a knish?
• Colleges near Bronx
• wax melting temperature
• metal melting temperature
• HS AP English syllabus

3)Crutch Words
Oh Lordy. When you are drafting, you've got your voice flowing, you're ducking and diving you're in the zone - it's awesome. Then you come up for air and realize you use some phrases and words too much. These words are repetitive and can echo in the reader's mind - in a bad way, pulling them up short. When I use lazy crutch words it's because I'm in the zone and I'm too rushed to be thoughtful, so I grab at a word I use a lot, one I like and am comfortable with. Comfy words are fine and make up a writer's voice, but DON'T GET LAZY! Some words are used really really a lot in real life (like 'really') so it's not quite so egregious to use those often. But for me, so far, some of my crutch words are pristine, probably, paste a smile, and whatever. There will be more that I don't catch. I'm trusting my beta readers to stop me from using lazy words.

4) Beats
As in dialogue beats. I am usually pretty good when writing dialogue, I tend to include beats - moments around the dialogue that ground the reader in the action and location of the characters speaking. This is so you don't finish reading a section of dialogue and have no mental image of where the characters are or what they are doing. People don't (unless they are stoned or robots) usually walk into a room, stand in front of each other and talk until they are done. They fidget, they pick things up (and put them down.) They interact with their space. I want to make sure I don't inadvertently turn my MC into a robot or a stoner.

And that's it. On friday FIND ME will go out to beta readers and I will forget it exists (HA!) for a month. Then in March I'll take it out of it's virtual marinating drawer, compare notes from beta readers and polish the EFF out of it. Then I'll send it to Barbara while swilling a new cocktail of my own creation called the Nervous Nellie (recipe to come.)

What do you do to get ready for Beta Readers?

Betas are Better than Alphas

(Note: I know I said I'd post on Thursdays, but a sinus infection sort of obliterated 'thursday' and I woke up with an Nyquil hangover on Friday. Forgive.)

Beta SP used to be used for high end video production before everything became digital.

The Beta Band was this awesome Scottish band that was around for a nano second then gone (but not forgotten, see High Fidelity soundtrack) and that was about all I knew about beta (except it's the second letter of the greek alphabet.)

Last week I came to the realization that I needed beta readers. I have great crit partners, who have been reading my work in chunks - in real writing time - for almost a year now. They know my characters and my world inside and out. The know my motivations, where there have been major changes, and what I've been worried about. In short, they know too much. They could never read BookEnd the way a reader would - the way an agent would.

Rachael Harrie came to the rescue again with her beta swap board. I found two wonderful beta readers (hey Yvie, hey Sharon). I mean, I'm saying they're wonderful because they've even agreed to read my 85K book and that seems a huge gift. If they like it and give me some useful feedback, that's gravy. I'm looking forward to getting their work, too.

I also reached out to an amazing, powerhouse editor and writer I met at a conference last May. Becky Levine wrote The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide (essential, whether you have a writing group or not.) I asked her for some quick advice on what to look for in a beta reader. She gave me comprehensive advice and suggested we beta for each other. 

I FELL OFF MY CHAIR.

Then said, HECK YEAH!

Can't get over the generosity of the writing community.

So, below is my synthesized list (from many sources) of what I think is important when looking for a beta reader. 

Beta Readers

1) Understand the difference between a crit partner and a beta reader. Here's a link to a post by Mary Kole at KidLit that explains some differences. For me, a beta reader is the stand in for the reader (buyer) and the gatekeeper (agent). For that to work, they have to read your book when you are completely done with revising it. Also, the kind of feedback a beta would give is more general and not quite so specific (missed a comma, this is an en dash, not an em dash) - not that those kinds of things can't be included, they can. I just don't think that should be the focus of a beta reader.

2) Write a 'want' ad for the beta reader.

Include specifics about who you are as a writer, what stage you are in (querying? planning to in the next 6 months?), what the genre is etc. It might be helpful to include what you think comparable titles would be, to give the beta reader an idea of where your book would 'live' on the bookshelf. 

Then list what you want from the reader: light/medium/heavy feedback; one time beta read or ongoing beta read relationship; can/cannot handle tough love (Be honest here. everyone wants to say they can handle it, but if you truly can't, then the feedback you get from a reader who rolls this way will be useless to you).

3)Let them know that you are available to reciprocate and read for them (if/when they are ready). I believe you must be willing to do this. You want you and your beta reader to be invested in the relationship. I also offer to bake cookies for everyone who reads for me. Choc-chip-mint cookies. I know, so good.

4) Finally, don't forget to discuss what format you want to receive/give feedback in and the timeframe - is there a deadline looming for you or your reader? What can you expect and what can they deliver. Clearing that up in the beginning will avoid disappointment later.

Now a question: What do you want from a beta reader? What's your best/worst experience with beta readers? (OK, that was two questions, remember sinus infection?)