Beta Testing: When's the Right Time to Bring in Outside Readers?

The most current draft of Secernere has been re-written three times, then line edited twice, and I’ve read the entire thing out loud to myself. But I know it’s not quite done yet. I can feel it. I also know I am too close to the manuscript at this point to see the flaws a fresh reader will catch immediately. That’s why I enlisted beta readers—and why you should too. But it’s essential to bring them in at the right point in the process.

My first betas were ill-chosen. Do not ask your nearest and dearest to read the novel you’ve been slaving over for years. Don’t give it to your mother or significant other. One of three things will happen: 1) They will fall in love with it—and you won’t get any helpful feedback as they gush about how great you are. 2) They will find problems with it, and you will try to take it as constructive criticism, but your feelings will secretly be hurt and you will resent them. 3) They will be too busy to read it but will accept anyway out of guilt, and it will make you both feel awkward and resentful.

An ideal beta reader is someone with whom you are acquainted—or even friends with—but who also has an expertise that will help you improve your writing. This could be someone from your creative writing group, a friend who happens to be a professional editor, or someone who reads extensively in your genre. After my ill-advised first beta round, I chose wisely for my second: three friends who are, respectively, a fellow writer, a professional editor, and a filmmaker.

A couple days ago I got the first comments back, these from my writer friend, Jes. Jes is much like me in that she is very well educated in creative writing technique and she is also a structuralist. She’s a recent convert of the Save the Cat! techniques and has been showing me the ropes. In her email, she let slip that she had taken 20 pages of notes as she’d read Secernere, but thankfully she distilled her final “book report” into just 8 pages. 8 pages still panicked me. But I printed the pages out, took them, home and carefully read every word.

Reading a detailed account of someone else’s reading of my work caused in me some of the strangest feelings I think I’ve ever had. Suddenly, the characters, the plot, the setting were no longer wholly mine. It was as if Pandora’s box opened and everything in my book is now free in the universe, existing alongside other fictional characters into whom life has been imbued by readers. It all feels so much more real.

Jes’ comments were absolutely stunning in how helpful they will be as I work through my revision. She didn’t point out (as I thought betas would) character names she didn’t like, or anachronistic foods, or other details that are rather inconsequential at this stage of revision. Instead, she identified my thematic arc and sub-themes, described the major characters’ traits, and discussed her impression of the time, setting, and backdrop of war. Then she indicated ways in which I could strengthen theme, character, plot, setting, by leveraging ideas already in the book. She didn’t point out weaknesses, but pointed out existing strengths that could be made more poignant with small changes.

I was ecstatic. I had imagined I would be greeted with comments of everything that was wrong, and I would be forced to make hard decisions that would adversely affect other passages, domino-like. I had imagined tearing it all apart, then having to scrap the whole thing because I couldn’t put it back together. Instead, my friend has created for me a plan of action that will turn a good book into a great book.

So my conclusion is to choose your betas wisely, and only bring them in after you have done your due diligence of rewriting and revising. It’s not fair to ask someone to read your first draft. Ask them to read when you’ve solved all the problems you can identify yourself, when you know something’s still lacking, but you need the help in figuring out what. Your betas are not there to help you make a rough draft into a decent draft. They should help you make a good book into a great book.

I’ll be writing more about my revision strategy soon. Hint: it involves index cards and an enormous spreadsheet…