Beta Reader Group discussion

I noticed a lot of people looking for readers for incomplete, alpha or early drafts. This makes me quite curious as a first draft is usually quite a mess for me (Revising Fiction by David Madden targets first drafts with 185 revision questions).

My first draft was 145k. My second slashed 20k, addressed lots of issues and was ok for an external reader. Since then I've done another 4 drafts, slashed another 27k and it keeps getting more focused and compelling.

I reread Madden's book cover to cover this last week and returned to my work again excited about what worked and intrigued by what I could still do with it.

I always found that first drafts are so sloppy and all over the place that they leave too much to interpretation of a reader. They're more like a buffet than a gourmet meal... and that means readers glom onto this or that without having a sense of the whole.

I agree.

Madden's book is highly regarded but didn't do much for me. What did was the quotable quote, currently ascribed to Terry Pratchett but who knows, that the first draft is where you tell yourself the story and subsequent drafts are where you tell it to other people.

It's an unscrupulous beta reader who will take your money for reading a very early draft.

That's a great quote!

I agree with Ed on the question of early drafts and beta readers. But I want to make clear that I'm not an author, but an editor. I did beta reading while studying and practicing to be an editor. I recall one author, who is still a client, who sent me a sample so I could see if we were a good fit. The sample showed several issues that my experience told me would be showing up throughout the 100,000+ word manuscript. I pointed these out to him and explained that considering this, his manuscript was not ready yet for me to read and we re-scheduled him for six months down the road. He really took my suggestions to heart, addressed the issues and I think he ended up getting so much more from the beta read since I did not have to sift through those reoccurring issues.

If you have trouble in your early drafts and feel you need to hire someone to help, consider a book coach (and I am not a book coach so I'm not advertising here) as opposed to a beta reader. If you aren't looking to hire someone, or before you do, try editing by making passes through the manuscript focusing on just one issue, like world building or adding sensory words. It will take a good amount of time, but the single focus will add to the depth of your story.

I'm thinking that until you can write a compelling blurb, you're not ready for beta readers. Your blurb needs to reflect the core conflict and themes of your work. If you can't express them in a blurb, your draft probably isn't focused enough.

The blurb can be used as a tool to test your work and then aid in its revision at a strategic level so you're not "polishing a turd."

I studied forms of feedback on writing for my MA thesis and I learned that detailed feedback is pretty pointless if the writer didn't have the foundations. The details could change pretty radically. Worse, giving someone detailed feedback resulted in their focusing on those easy fixes and ignoring foundational issues.

I changed how I gave feedback to students to focus them on foundational issues. I ignored everything else until it was worthwhile.

This is why I think discussing blurbs is really important before I'd look at a work.

Not sure what your question is lol, unless if you're just writing to discourage authors from not submitting to betas on their first draft.

If we're speaking to the masses though, yes, I generally agree.

But I find that the quality of the "first draft" can vary significantly. -Some people are very proficient in their grammar and spelling and any required edits or mistakes made would be minimal.
-Some people are very meticulous plotters and don't put words to their processors unless the plot/structure/characterization makes near perfect sense
- And some writers (like myself) edit previous chapters and scenes as they're writing, especially if they're in a rut or brainstorming on how to move forward. This way there is no true legitimate first draft if previous sections have seen one or multiple revisions.

But yes...every author should at least once go over their work for a round of editing/reviewing and tackle their major known issues before submitting to a beta =)

As for unfinished works, then they should hire that beta for the purpose of recommended next steps if they are truly stuck.

I made some prompts for discussion, rather than questions.

I don't imagine anyone will be dissuaded from hiring a beta based on anything I say. I used to give into those cravings for validation as well. Having gone through peer-reviews for journals and a dissertation, I don't do that now.

The point was more that feedback can be a pointless exercise when a work is not ready in terms of craft. When a word count is 2x or more industry expectation, that's a red flag. It seems almost like someone asking the reader to tell them what the story should be. In my research I noticed that tendency leads to a lot of longterm grief... giving up artistic agency.

And there seem to be lots of paid betas lining up with effusive praise on pretty shaky blurbs, presumably to bid for a cheque.

It just seems like a pretty circular situation and I was wondering if someone would come out and set me straight on it.

I wonder how useful it would be to create a separate discussion for alpha reading. I've ended up sounding churlish a number of times through commenting on early drafts as though they had been more often or at all revised. On those occasions a shared understanding that the work was at a very rough stage would have helped. At present, about the best I can do is to return the work as unsuitable for beta reading.

Also, my heart goes a tiny way out to vloggers who make frequent mention of their alpha reader and eventually admit it was their mother. My impression is that vlogging has a tendency to open the work up at a wildly early stage. Does that justify strangers as alpha readers? I suggest it might help with content creation.

Interesting points, Ed. You are probably right about alphas. In a perfect world there would be criteria set out for these things.

The problem for me is I can't tell who a good beta would be. I thought I'd identified one. They had a nice website and said all the right things about balanced feedback and their fees were in line... and they linked to their own published work. When I read excerpts from those self-published books, I was shocked at how bad the prose was. Comically bad. And as seems weirdly common, it was part of a "series." This makes me fear that much of this cycling is vanity publishing.

I was thinking that workshopping blurbs might be a great focus, and I've been trying to test that hypothesis. Blurbs reflect the writing of the novel. If someone can workshop a blurb, then they can take that experience to improve the novel.

If a blurb is bad and an author won't work on it, then what's the point of beta-reading their manuscript?

I find myself keen to read some items, but blurbs are holding me back.