Beta Readers: A Vital Part of the Process

Concept cover for The Curse of the Pharaoh's StoneI met with most of my beta readers this week for my middle grade manuscript The Curse of the Pharaoh’s Stone. My daughter’s wonderful school librarian put together an amazing local team of readers—4 kids, 2 teachers, a librarian, and a mom of middle grade kids. I also have 2 other incredible teachers and authors reading it. I am so excited to get their feedback!

Yes, I said excited. I know many writers get butterflies when they send their manuscript babies out to beta readers. Some writers are downright terrified. And I agree, when you let your work out into the world, even in beta, it can be scary. You’re opening yourself up to criticism, to the possibility that people won’t love your story as much as you do. Sometimes writers even see criticism at this stage as a failure on their part.

But I am strange—I love honest feedback. I think it comes from how my writing process evolved in a collaborative model with my best friend Donna Hanson Woolman. Then when I got my Master of Arts in English, my advisor was a blunt yet positive critiquer.  Of course, if the criticism is personal or nasty in nature, I don’t like that any more than the next writer, but in this post I am talking about thoughtful and honest feedback.

I enjoy the red pen on my manuscript because of my mindset. I am confident that Pharaoh’s Stone  is a good book. Its plot is solid, its characters rounded, and the prose is clean. I have read enough middle grade—both published and from an agent’s slush pile—to know my book is good. I am excited to get my beta readers’ feedback because I know that their feedback will get the book from good to great.

Beta reader copy of The Curse of the Pharaoh's StoneThat’s how we writers have to approach any constructive feedback—as a way to make our manuscripts better. A challenge to dig deeper and raise our craft higher. After working so long and hard on our stories (I’ve been with Pharaoh’s Stone for 11 years), we can lose the objectivity we need to make the final adjustments that will make our work shine.

That’s why beta readers are such an important part of our writing process. They bring fresh eyes, fresh brains, and a fresh perspective. I am so lucky to have an enthusiastic team reading my book, and I am so grateful to all of them for making the time and effort to help me.

Do you use beta readers? Where does their feedback fit into your process?

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The Art of Second-Guessing

Handwritten page showing second-guessing with crossoutsMy massive revision of Veritas (a YA sci-fi) is moving apace. Some chapters fight me hard—I have so much to revise and add that I virtually (and sometimes literally) rewrite them. But some chapters I tweak. Perhaps add a sentence or a few phrase. Those chapters provide a break for me, but when I get several “tweak” chapters in a row, I start second-guessing myself.

After struggling with a chapter that knocks me down, talks back to me, and generally kicks me around, when I get a tweak chapter I feel like I must be missing something. I mean, it can’t be that easy. Not when the last chapter was so hard. There must be some glaring mistake I am not seeing.

So I scrutinize and I poke and I prod, but I end up back where I started. I think this chapter is all right. But am I right? Second-guessing.

Marked-up manuscript--no more second-guessing!Luckily, this is where critique partners come in. They will look at my chapters, the fighters and the tweaks, and tell me if I’ve missed something. If weaknesses hide beneath the polished surface. They will tell me what doesn’t ring true, what doesn’t feel real, and what knocks them out of the story. Hopefully, this revision will have fixed most of those things.

Once I get their feedback, I will no longer second guess myself. Until then, I will continue to plod through the revision. I’ve just finished chapter 36…of 83. So there is plenty of second-guessing ahead for me!

What about you? Do you find yourself wondering what you’ve missed when revisions seem “too easy”?

Revision Paralysis

I love getting feedback on my work. I am no longer thin-skinned about it—in fact, it is one of my favorite stages of developing a novel. I want to know what worked, what didn’t and where I need to improve. I am an author who thrives on the creative synergy of back-and-forth with ideas and feedback. It’s a good thing.

 

You can have too much of a good thing.

 

I have recently gotten all my beta reader feedback from my latest WIP, The Oracle of Delphi, Kansas. The feedback is strongly favorable, but there are areas in the book I need to improve. I skimmed the feedback eagerly as soon as I got it—and it has been sitting there ever since.

 

I’d like to blame my procrastination on my 7-month-old daughter’s constant demands on my time. I’d like to blame it on the fact that every two weeks or so I am shuttling myself, my daughter and a carload of baby paraphernalia back and forth between New Jersey and Virginia (with side trips to Pennsylvania). I’d like to blame it on my other writing obligations, such as the complete revision of my middle grade novel The Egyptian Enigma and thinking up topics for this blog. But none of that is the real reason I haven’t gotten to the revisions of Oracle.

 

The real reason is that I suffer from revision paralysis.

 

I have so much feedback, so many things to revise, that it is overwhelming. Even worse, changing one thing often means changing another that wasn’t even on the list to start with. At first, I didn’t even have a list—just heaps of feedback scattered across multiple computer files. I took the first step and organized everything into a single file of feedback, dividing it into categories: Character, Plot, Setting, etc. I accomplished this in short order, and basked in the warm glow de-cluttering always brings.

 

But I still haven’t revised, because now instead of overwhelming heaps of feedback, I have a single overwhelming list of feedback.

 

The cure for my revision paralysis is near; I can feel it. The feedback, its implications, and ways to fix things are rattling around in my brain, simmering and surging. I am almost to the point where my creativity overflows and I must write things down. When I get there, I will turn to my revision file, take a deep breath, and dive in.

 

And once in, I will find, as I always do, that the water is fine and I love the challenge and satisfaction revision brings!

 

Do you suffer from revision paralysis? What’s your cure for it?

Conflicting Feedback

First readers and beta readers are awesome; let’s just get that out there right away. Having readers whose opinion you respect, and who have a sharp eye/ear/nose for writing is a boon to any writer. No writer can do without such people, and I, for one, relish their feedback.

 

That said, readers can also make you crazy.

 

There are occasions when two readers’ opinions clash. For example, two of my readers for The Oracle of Delphi, Kansas, gave me the following feedback:

 

1 – “Gram is thoroughly one-dimensional…and is utterly unsympathetic.”

 

2 – “Gram was unpredictable, and I liked her a lot.”

 

Hmmm. What’s a writer to do?

 

The easy thing, of course, would be to go with the opinion that you like best—the one that means you don’t have to go back and revise Gram’s character. However, a good writer needs to be honest, to go back and look at the character and see if there is validity to the first statement. Gritting your teeth and reading with an open mind is always necessary when you get conflicting feedback. After all, the reason you want others to read the story is precisely because they will see things you don’t – things you are too close to see. Dismissing their opinions when they are unfavorable is counterproductive to making your novel the best it can be.

 

This example also shows another truth that all writers must deal with—you cannot please everyone. Readers bring their own baggage, their own prism to the page every time they read. They will read things into the story that you did not intend. Their minds fill in the chinks with what they know, what they have lived, and what they have experienced. That is the magic of reading—the same book will be a unique experience for each reader.

 

Knowing this, writers cannot write to satisfy everybody. In the end, writers must be true to the story, to the character, and to their own vision. Feedback helps hone this vision and to open dimensions of the story you didn’t see yourself. But the bottom line is your gut, telling you what is right for your book.

 

So, what am I going to do about Gram? I have to read the manuscript and see, but I suspect there will be some “rounding” to be done for her character.

 

Thanks to all my readers for their valuable feedback! 

Re-Visioning In The Dark

I’ve been shopping my middle grade novel, The Egyptian Enigma, for a while now. It’s a good novel, a lot of fun, but I’ve had no representation on it yet. Why? The blasted economy is part of it, of course. And my query letter could have been better, and now is. Even with those problems against me, I have been lucky enough to have a handful of agents request partials and fulls. Alas, no bites.

 

The rejections don’t bother me. They are part of the business, and I certainly would not want an agent repping my book who was not whole-heartedly enthusiastic about it. So when the agents came back with, “It’s just not right for me.”, I was fine with that. Disappointed, but not upset.

 

What made it tricky, for me, was the lack of any productive feedback from those agents who had read the book. I know they are hard-pressed for time, but having taken the time to read the book, I had been hoping for at least a sentence of advice on how to improve it.

 

You see, I am no literary genius.

 

I don’t suffer from the delusion that what I write is immutable and perfect. I know I have learned much about my craft, but still have much to learn about it. I am eager for feedback, revel in productive criticism. Unlike some of my fellow writers, I actually enjoy revision. And I have come to the conclusion that this novel needs revision—something is not grabbing the agents who have read it. Unfortunately, none of the agents has given me any indication what that “something” might be.

 

So I am re-visioning in the dark.

 

When you know something needs changed, but not what, how do you proceed? I have realized the futility of continuing to send the manuscript in its current form out there—there is a fatal flaw somewhere in it. I must fix it. But how can you fix something if you don’t know what’s broken? For a long time, paralyzed by the uncertainty of how to proceed, I did nothing—just continued to send the manuscript out over and over, hoping for a different result.

 

Isn’t that the definition of insanity?

 

Coming Up: How I found the clues to the fix, and fixed it

My Writing Process, Part 2

After Donna died, I went through a painful process of rebuilding. Aside from the emotional devastation of losing a best friend at age 32, I had to learn a new skill—writing alone. For a while, I wasn’t aware of how daunting a task that would be.

I was in grad school at the time, so all of my writing was vetted by teachers or other students. Even though it wasn’t the same process as with Donna, it wasn’t much different. Even my final Master’s thesis, a story about Donna’s death, was intensively overseen by my thesis advisor. It wasn’t until I graduated grad school that I became aware of the gaping hole in my creative life.

Suddenly, the aching aloneness of my post-Donna life smacked me in the face. Whenever I contemplated writing, I froze. I couldn’t even think of how to get started. Every writing project seemed a dark, craggy canyon, full of shadows and perils. Who would catch me if I fell off a sudden precipice? Who could guide me through the darkest gullies? Who would help me climb over the rockslides in my way?

Me. Only me. Except that I didn’t know how.

All I could do was do it. So I wrote and revised and struggled and wondered if what I was writing was any good at all. I can’t tell you how many times I almost picked up the phone, or opened my email to ask Donna’s advice. Every time the impulse to talk to her grabbed me, it was a fresh thud in the gut over her death. But I pressed on, because writing is like my heartbeat—I can’t stop it. So I finally finished my first truly solo endeavor and then thought, “Now what?”

I needed feedback. Every author does, at some point, and I didn’t have it anymore. My grad school advisor pointed me to a writing group in Doylestown, PA. The location shook me a little—Donna had lived in Doylestown. Perhaps she guided me there, because it was like coming home. Sharing my passion with other enthusiastic writers broke my isolation and revved my creativity. I have been part of the writing community in Doylestown ever since, and I look forward to many more years of feedback, encouragement and camaraderie.

Even now, six years on from losing Donna, my new writing process is evolving. I still like a lot of feedback, and I still am very comfortable in collaborative projects. The middle grade novel I am currently shopping, The Egyptian Enigma, is a collaboration with two other authors. I also know I ask people to read and give me feedback on very early drafts of my other works, probably much earlier than most writers do. I am, however, becoming more confident in my own decisions, my own instincts, and my own writing.

I have never found another writing buddy who fills Donna’s role. For a long time, that frustrated me. I searched for someone to fit into that gaping wound, and it is a futile search. I can no more find a perfect match for my writing partner than I can for the best friend I lost. But I’m okay with that now. I have grown past needing that symbiotic relationship.

I have evolved, my writing process has evolved, and my writing is miles beyond what Donna and I ever accomplished together. But sometimes, in moments of need, I find myself asking the golden question: What would Donna do?

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