Orion's Toolbelt

B is for Beta

On Beta-reading and Being Betaed

by The White Lily

And so we come to the most important tool on Orion's Toolbelt: the beta-reader.

I occasionally have the kind of dream where I realise, during the course of a perfectly normal day, that I'm not wearing enough clothes. I think we all do.

It was only after I started taking writing seriously that I started having another kind of nightmare, one far more disturbing than merely having the whole world seeing my body naked. I'd happily post a story, and then realise... it hadn't been beta-read.

The whole world was seeing my story. And it was naked.

Part 1: Betaing Benefits

Of course, no author should be without a beta-reader, and no story is anything close to finished without being beta-read. I think that goes without saying - as proved by the fact that I seriously do have nightmares about going unbetaed.

But there's another side to the coin.

I was reading Steven King's On Writing: A Memoir recently, and was nodding along as he gave the oft-repeated advice to becoming a writer: read more. But I couldn't hold in a smile when I read, "... we read to experience the mediocre and the outright rotten; such experience helps us to recognise those things when they begin to creep into our own work, and to steer clear of them. We also read in order to measure ourselves against the good and the great, to get a sense of all that can be done."

He didn't know it, but he was talking about the fanfiction community - about the ethos of reviewing and of being reviewed. Most of all, he was speaking about beta reading.

Oh, I'm not saying that every story you might beta-read will be mediocre or outright rotten - hopefully a great proportion of it will be the good and the great! But there will be bits and pieces of all four - and reading the writing of another person and really thinking about which bits are good, bad, ugly or simply brilliant is an invaluable learning experience.

Writing style develops as a conglomerate of what you've read; seeing something and going "oh, I want to be like that!" - seeing something else and saying "oh, I'd never do anything like that" (and shortly thereafter realising that you'd intended something very similar for the very next scene in your work in progress). But more than that, writing style develops as a conglomerate of what you've considered critically. To say "I'd never do that" doesn't help you very fast if you haven't worked out exactly what it is that made the scene or concept or sentence fall flat.

Every writer should be a beta reader. Because the best way to learn something is to teach it.

Part 2: Being a Beta

Tip 1: Always begin and end with praise.

Don't ever forget this. As long as you make sure to begin and end with praise, you can rip a story up one side and down the other without causing the author to cry or give up writing altogether. Even carefully couched constructive criticism that doesn't do this is called a flame.

I learned this rule the hard way, when I lost the beta I'd done of a dear friend's document and had to redo all my comments in a hurry. I focussed on remembering all the negative comments I'd made (because they're the important ones, aren't they?). I've never forgiven myself for the impact I made.

Don't, however, in your zeal to attend to this, tell a lie. Ever.

Presumably there's a reason you're betaing for this person. Presumably there's something you like about their work - whether it's a brilliant story that just needs a typo cleanup, a lovely concept carried out in a totally disappointing way, or a story that lacks pretty much everything except the occasional enchanting turn of phrase. Perhaps you just like them as a person, and they're really not a very good a writer at all - yet. But you know what? Anyone can be a brilliant writer, and every story has potential. Find something in the fic worth loving, or worth encouraging. And tell them how much you love it.

If you tell them you love something that you actually hate just to have something to say, you're doing them a disservice - because they'll try to do it more, and if it's not working for them, their writing quality will drop overall as a result.

Tip 2: Comment, don't correct

This is the difference between an editor and a beta. An editor fixes up a single document for typos or factual inaccuracies before sending it on to be published. But your job as a beta is not just this story. Your job is to help the author grow.

It's actually more self-serving than you might imagine; if you're spending all your time fixing comma splices, a quick lesson in how to use a semicolon should hopefully make your job easier in future - and make very sure that you're certain how to use it yourself. If you're continually pulling the author up on characterisation or plot realism, on the other hand, it's not as easy to give a quick lesson in how to do better. But by pointing out the problem and explaining as much as you can why it's causing a problem, you force the author to think about and make the changes themselves, gradually doing exactly the same thing.

I use MS Word's comment feature, but I've also worked with people who add in bolded comments, or even just converse over MSN while making their way through the document.

Tip 3: Couch suggestions in a positive way.

No, I'm not saying you have to preface every suggestion with "this is good, but..." But the comment "Holly's characterisation is bad here," may not be particularly useful. Depending on how self-aware the author is, they may suspect or know exactly where the weak points of their story are already. They just don't know which are the worst, or how to fix them without completely dismantling their story. On the other hand, if they're not aware of how to characterise Holly, they may misunderstand your comment and take her in the wrong direction, making her even more out of character.

Something like: "It might sound more like Holly if you tried a note of indignation, eg. ...," works to put across your point in a positive way. It helps to pull the author out of their initial fear that it's a fundamental flaw, into the understanding that with a bit of editing, they can fix it. It shows them where to start, and gets them thinking along the right lines of "how do I make it sound more like Holly" rather than "it doesn't sound like her now".

It can be a little trickier when you can't put your finger on what, exactly, needs to change to fix the problem. In this case, be honest. "I'm not sure what the problem is, but Holly's characterisation doesn't seem right here." You've just opened a dialogue, you're on the same side as the author, and you can work it out together from there - or decide together that it's too hard and leave it as is.

This rule isn't quite so important after you've developed a good betaing relationship with someone, and they've learned all of the top ten pieces of advice you dole out as to where to go from there. Although, to tell the truth, I've only just broken through a block on fixing a particular aspect of a fic that a good friend pointed out to me in a negative way a year or so ago.

Tip 4: Comment on more than just the problems

It's just as important for the development of your author to do more of what they're doing right as it is to stop doing whatever it is they're doing wrong.

So don't just pick up typos and plot holes and characterisation issues, mention the places that made you laugh, that gave you a warm fuzzy, or the moment where everything suddenly became clear to you.

Tip 5: Make sure you're actually right about the correction.

If it's a grammar correction, look it up in your favourite grammar guide before you send it off. Double check. Make sure. You want to earn the author's respect, make sure what you're telling them is actually right - or at least a valid way of doing things.

Tip 6: Make sure to check character names/canon specific proper nouns

In my first fic, until my beta pointed it out to me, I was spelling both McGonagall and Parvati incorrectly. Our eyes don't read words character by character, they read whole word - sometimes even whole sentence - at a time. They recognise the pattern of characters, like some kind of complex shape that resonates in their brain as a particular person. That means that words we haven't seen all our lives can easily be wrongly spelt in the mind of your author, without their ever noticing, because spell-check doesn't help with proper nouns. They can also be wrongly spelt in your mind, so if you do think it's wrong, make sure to doublecheck.

Part 2: Being the Betaed

Tip 1: Thank your beta. If you've already done it, do it again. And make sure to acknowledge them in the author's notes.

If you have a good beta-reader, treat them like a king or queen. You want them to keep reading for you - make sure it's something they'll be glad they've done for you. An acknowledgement in the top of the fic is all well and good, but it's a bit like signing a greeting card without adding anything to the message inside. Take some time to thank them publicly and privately, and really think about what you're saying. They're taking time out of their lives to help your story get better. Now that's a seriously nice favour.

Tip 2: Take what your beta says seriously.

Think very carefully before deciding not to make a change your beta has suggested. Even if you don't want to make the exact change they've recommended, the fact that they've recommended a change at all means that what happens there is unclear. Every issue you can address at this stage is one more comment you won't get in three separate reviews and inside the heads of fifteen more people who never bother to say a thing about it.

Tip 3: Respond to what your beta says.

There's nothing more depressing, as a beta, than having everything you say simply vanish into the ether, not knowing which of your comments the author has accepted, which they've rejected, and which they've not even understood what you meant. In the same way as you feel ownership over your story and want to know that people are reading it and what they're liking about it, your beta feels ownership over their comments. Let your beta know that you appreciate them by giving them detailed responses to their comments. You may also find that explaining what you'd meant and what you're intending to do about it will help you come up with the way to solve the problem - it'll definitely help your beta understand more about your story and be even more help to you in future.

A couple of things to keep in mind, though: try not to respond defensively or dismissively to their criticism. Your beta is on your side. They're trying to help your writing improve, not tear down what you've done, even if they might not have expressed it all that well.

Also make sure to accept their positive comments graciously - don't prevaricate and tell them that what they liked wasn't really that good or even just let them slide, or you'll make them doubt their own work and you're likely to lose the positive comments altogether. If all you have to say is a smilie face to let them know that you're glad they liked it, then go ahead. But feel free to expand and tell them exactly how you came to with the bit they liked - this is your ultimate opportunity to rave about your story to a captive audience! Why waste it?

Tip 4: Don't be afraid

You shouldn't be afraid to launch the worst, most horrifically trite, stupid, or random ideas at your beta-reader. They're your initial sounding board. They're the sieve through which your work passes before being inflicted on the general public.

Trust them to be sceptical about your ideas, to bounce them back saying - that one's not bad; that one needs to be enclosed in hazmat container and buried; but that one... oh, wow, please write it! Swear them in a blood bond never to speak of your awful strawberry-based seduction or your four-way mixed metaphor - or learn to laugh them off and move on.

But whatever you do, don't be afraid to give your own ideas voice. If you're afraid of them, if you're embarrassed about what you write, it can only act to stifle your creativity. You might end up flashing the occasional bit of skin at your beta - but at least you won't be turning up to the beach in fourteen layers of fleece jackets.

Tip 5: Shop around.

A beta's secondary purpose is to make themselves obsolete by improving the author's writing until they're not needed anymore. Of course, this never happens; we all, always need an external eye cast over our work. And once a betaing relationship has developed into a friendship with a person whose opinion you respect, you'll always want their opinion on your fic.

But different people have different things that they notice, that they know how to do instinctively, and that they understand how to teach. If you stick with just one beta your whole fic-writing career, you won't ever learn those things that they can't do themselves, that they can't put into words, or that they do instinctively and don't even know they're doing.

Personally, while I love to stick with the betas that work for me as an author, I have a very short career as a beta-reader. As soon as I've betaed three or four one shots, or a few chapters from the same author, I start to feel like I'm not making enough of a difference anymore to their writing. I start feeling insecure, I start taking a really long time to return things because I feel like there's got to be more in there I haven't found, and I start getting bored. But the point is, I've taught the author the things I know how to teach, I've learned the things I can from scrutinising their writing, and at that stage I've become an editor. Which is still important, but just isn't nearly as rewarding for me.

And there we have it. My tips for how to become a better beta-reader and be better at being betaed.

No author should be without a beta. Whether they know it or not, they are the lifeblood of our fiction, the first port of call for our plot-bunnies, the funeral home for our typos. They are our teachers, our mentors, our friends; they are those trusted, blessed people who prevent our most embarrassing fictional blunders from becoming a part of the story others see.

But don't let the feeling that you are barely worthy to kiss your beta's toes prevent you from betaing for them or for another author. Deconstructing someone else's work and deconstructing your own are just different sides of the same coin - and there's no friendship like one formed through the bond of betahood.

So, get to it! Good luck, and happy writing!

_{(This issue's article is brought to you by the letter B and Lily's decision that if she couldn't beat all this rampant alliteration, she might as well join it.)}