ROBUST discussion

I found these questions for beta-readers helpful in organizing my own beta-reading projects. This list was compiled by Jodie Renner:

YA and children’s fiction author Michael Broadway (Cornell Deville) contributed these questions:

* Did the story hold your interest from the very beginning?
* Was there a point at which you became less than excited about finding out what was going to happen next?
* Could you relate to the main character? Did you feel her/his pain or excitement?
* Did the setting pull you in, and did the descriptions seem vivid and real to you?

Friend, co-blogger and suspense-mystery writer extraordinaire, LJ Sellers, suggested these questions:

* Was the opening compelling? At what point did you first stop reading?
* Did you relate to the character? Did you come to feel you knew the character?
* Was there anything that confused or frustrated you?
* Was the ending satisfying? Believable?

Here are some questions and thoughts contributed by my client, author Robert Beatty:

“When I ask someone for what I call “Story Reading,” I want the reader to give me his or her detailed impression and thoughts as he/she is reading the story. I want to know what he/she is thinking and feeling as he/she reads the story. I ask questions like this:

* What scenes/paragraphs/lines did you really like?
* What parts did you dislike or not like as much?
* Where did you get bored?
* What parts resonated with you and/or moved you emotionally?
* What parts should be compressed?
* What parts should be elaborated on?
* What parts are confusing?
* What characters do you connect to and like?
* What characters need more development or focus?

Ideally, I want the reader to make many notes in the text as they are reading so that I can tell what they are thinking and feeling at each point. I literally want to be reading their mind. This allows me to know whether I’m connecting, communicating, and having the impact I intended. Some people are very good at giving me their thoughts and feelings as they go along. Besides asking “lay people” to read my stories critically, I also use freelance editors for the above kind of feedback, in addition to copyediting and/or proofreading.”

Robert Beatty, author of Sapo, Lioness, and Richard’s Laws of Motion. www.robert-beatty.com

To the above questions I would add:

* Did you get oriented fairly quickly at the beginning as to whose story it is, and where and when it’s taking place?
* Were the characters believable? Are there any characters you think could be made more interesting or more likeable?
* Did you notice any discrepancies or inconsistencies in time sequences, places, character details, etc.?
* Did you get confused about who’s who in the characters? Were there too many characters to keep track of? Too few? Are any of the names or characters too similar?
* Did the dialogue sound natural to you? If not, whose dialogue did you think sounded artificial?
* Did you feel there was too much description or exposition? Not enough? Maybe too much dialogue in parts?
* Did you notice any obvious, repeating grammatical, spelling, punctuation or capitalization errors?

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*****

Any others to add to this list?

What an excellent thread, Sue!

I've found that the shorter the list of questions/instructions, the better it works. What most of these questions come down to is simply, "As a reader, what disturbed the flow of the reading experience?" A stop is only an advanced stage of interrupted reading!

That assumes of course that your beta readers are constant readers, familiar with the conventions of literature or at least genre.

If a list is required, I think LJ Sellers has the most useful one, modified as follows

* Was the opening compelling? At what point did you take your first break from reading?
* Did you relate to the character? Did you come to feel you know the character? [Note the change in tense from knew to know.]
* Was there anything that confused or frustrated you?
* Was the ending satisfying? Believable?

Every single on of those specific points is encompassed in my shorthand -- "As a reader, what disturbed the flow of the reading experience?"

There is, however, a problem with all these lists, and with my redaction of the Great Question. All these professionals, and I, I confess it, are simply blithely assuming that delivering to the beta readers a pretty good novel, already within a small technical polish of as good as it will ever be. None of these questions will be helpful if the manuscript is a structural or literary mess, the sort of thing you stop reading after a few pages.

So, in my opinion at least, these lists best serve those writers who are long accustomed to grabbing every advantage, no matter how small, no matter how much time it takes, who clearly are those who least need help, the born perfectionists.

The poor buggers who really need help generally don't know someone who can help them. And some of them don't even know they need help.

Amazon should hand out the post above and make people tick a box that they've read it, before they are permitted to publish books on KDP!

This is a very good list, some of those questions I could have asked before. My previous reasons for wanting a Beta Reader was about structure and timelime elements. The last book I wrote, Passion of the Unknown, I was worried that I overdid the history references from the first two books. It turns out my fears were unfounded, but as a writer, paranoia does tend to be a bit thicker in the frontal lobe more often than not. Especially when it comes to what I wrote.

One of the problems I think is also finding Beta Readers who know how to actually beta read. The ones who have beta read for me on The Indie Spot are all fantastic, no complaints there. I wish I could hire them as staff, lol. But I got a few beta readers from The Water Cooler that made me want to bang my head on the desk. Hard. They know the genre is romantic fantasy, they know it's on a different planet that's not Earth, they know the people are elven, and then tells me that 'Minlo'Var' isn't historical sounding, and they suggest something simple, like 'Ralph'. (Yeah, that actually happened.)

To make the issue really clear, I was looking for plot holes, not suggestions on the names. I got two pages of feedback (all useless to the actual theme of the novel) and only one small two word sentence on the plot structure. "It's fine." And I'm one to actually consider every word of feedback given, sought after or not, as there might be something going on that I didn't anticipate. But when it starts with... "Why is the hero strong, as in muscular?" I need more padding on my head bang spot. ^_^

Andre Jute wrote: "What an excellent thread, Sue!

I've found that the shorter the list of questions/instructions, the better it works. What most of these questions come down to is simply, "As a reader, what disturbe..."

Andre, I agree, too many questions and some of them are too leading and/or open ended, i.e. the question about the number of characters. Today, many books and TV scripts have ensemble casts with eight or 10 principal characters. Books include the famous Doc Savage pulp series, 87th Precinct and many others. TV includes Homicide: Life on the street; Southland, Army Wives, Grey's Anatomy, Chicago Hope, ER, Law and Order, etc., etc.
Another element that seems to be lacking is the need to address the quality of writing from grammar, spelling and punctuation perspectives. Just my ramblings on the topic.

Andre Jute wrote: "What an excellent thread, Sue!

I've found that the shorter the list of questions/instructions, the better it works. What most of these questions come down to is simply, "As a reader, what disturbe..."

Andre, excellent point. Amazon should hand out such a list to self-publishers.

Daniel, unfortunately only those of us who take pride in our writing seem to suffer such paranoia. I've reread some fiction manuscripts 50 times or more. Because of that, some remain unpublished while I hone. It was a lot easier as a journalist when I had a specific deadline and had to file the stories. :-)

Don't be embarrassed to let it all hang out, Larry. I researched IDITAROD, a novel that was never going to sell more than 10K copies, for 13 years at a cost of probably quarter-million dollars (mostly not my money, though), and did dozens of rewrites...

If there were a Booker or a Pulitzer Prize for Procrastination, I'd be the clear winner!

And the winner! In Ireland, is ...

Andre Jute!

(Roar of crowd)


;-)

Thank you SJM

These questions will come in handy for me after I tweak them a bit for my story. I wish I found this group 3 years ago.

You're welcome Jo (though all I did was to pilfer them from a woman named Jodie Renner). As Andre and others have noted, it's overly complicated, but I thought it a good starting point. Happy tweaking!

I did notice that but take the praise anyway. I spent weeks wracking my brain about what to ask. Nothing sounded right. These questions gave me a guideline. So Thanks again and Thanks to Jodie too.

Actually, I refer to Sue's list, and my redaction of it, often. It's a handy thing and I know where to find it, and don't have it written down elsewhere.

Will do, Jo. Thanks! I'm glad it's been helpful.

I just copied and pasted it to a Scrivener file - entitled Icy Road Publishing.

I'm in dire need of organization - so I'm pilfering ideas from Robust.

K.A. wrote: "I'm in dire need of organization - so I'm pilfering ideas from Robust."

ROBUST ideas are thrown out here to sink or swim, or be rescued by whoever wants them. Help yourself.

Thank you, I need all the ideas I can get.

So far, so good, though.

Thanks for sharing this list and for crediting me for it, Sue. I agree that it's overly complicated, and I created a more streamlined one since this one and posted it on The Kill Zone blog on June 16, 2014. Here's the link to the much-improved list for beta readers. Let me know what you all think!

15 Questions for Your Beta Readers – And to Focus Your Own Revisions - http://killzoneauthors.blogspot.ca/20...

- Jodie Renner, editor and author www.JodieRenner.com

Thank-you Jodie. That's a helpful revised list.

Sue

P.S. I enjoyed hearing you speak at When Words Collide this year. I got a lot out of your Spark up Your Story session. My pen was flying across the page!

Thanks for your kind comments about my talk at When Words Collide, Sue! Can I use your comments on my website, under the Workshops page? Perhaps with an added sentence about how my tips helped your writing? I'd appreciate that!

IF so, maybe you could email me at Info@JodieRenner.com with your last name and anything else you'd like people to know about you.

Thanks in advance for that!

Jodie Renner www.JodieRenner.com

Jodie wrote: "Thanks for your kind comments about my talk at When Words Collide, Sue! Can I use your comments on my website, under the Workshops page?"

Yes. Emailing….