I&#39;ve got it under control!

I have a degree in English lit and in Theatre. I think I might be a pretty good director and I love to make sure a story flows properly. I'd love to help you if you'd like.

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Yay!

*squishes you*

Okay. How do you go about starting to beta? I mean, you say you love making sure a story flows properly, so does that mean you read through the whole thing once or twice first and then get started, or are you able to tackle the individual level and the whole story at once? Does the theatre thing help, also?

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I read through at least twice, so the story eventually recedes and I can see the structure. I'm terribly excited if I get caught up in the story and forget to "look" at the bits that need fixing. It's like, I guess, willfully imagining that you don't know what's going to happen in Hamlet and let the actors show you their take on it.

Yes, the theatre helps with voice and action flow and sticking a scene end when you find it and not keeping writing out of a sense of obligation (ie, giving people teh sex scene they are slavering for when CLEARLY the strongest end point is at line X. Imagination is a powerful tool; let 'em go use it.

I am musical, and I've spent my life speaking, acting, and teaching people to speak. What the characters say and how they say it is very important to me; important that they ring true.

I make sure, in a romantic scene, that things are actually biologically possible; for instance, I don't think man a can look man b soulfully in the eyes with his tongue up his ass. Maybe if he's got the guy tipped so he's up on his shoulders in a "bicycle position" or something, but not if they're just on the bed. I just don't know. It was jarring and made me suggest to the writer that she go look at some face to face pictures of mens having sex.

I haven't been doing much Beta work lately due to the great card shuffle that is my life, but I most recently helped neevebrody and aesc and ras-elased. Send it if you'd like me to take a look at things.

I'll ask you leading questions about where you want your characters to go, help you feel out what their actions might be...stuff like that.

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The knowing where to end thing is definitely important, and I think I'm getting better at recognising that. I totally respect the ability to make sure things are biologically possible, 'cos I am completely textually oriented and I rarely picture things in my head, so sometimes I get very lost in descriptions and lose track of arms and such. I suspect that's why I'm so awkward about writing sex. See: Sleepless, in which the sex scene is over the phone. XD

Thanks so much for the offer - I might well take you up on it, since I'm kinda stuck in two places, although there seems to be a little movement going on. We shall see, but thankee kindly.

♥

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A yes, but a terribly effective phone sex scene. Mmm hmmm.

I used to also do video, so I get a happy totally brain exprience with them prancing about my head. Try to imagine you building them a room and putting them in it, imagine how their voices would sound. All of Rodney's faces, how the two of them move....lie down and write a whole fantasy/scene in your head. Don't DARE put a pen to paper until both men are sweaty and sated.

How's that sound? Such a hardship. ::wiggles eyebrows::

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*giggles*

In my head at the moment, the sex scene kinda drops off where Rodney is on his knees (in a stable, no less), and picks up again where John's slid down the wall to join him and Rodney nuzzles into the side of his neck and says 'look, just give me a minute, okay? In a minute I'm going to think about what I'm kneeling in...'

I shall have to go imagine it in more detail.

Woe.

XD

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Perhaps they're in a feed stall, with stacks and stack of hay.

Make sure Rodney takes his allergy meds.

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Man. I can help you with that too if you'd like. Srsly, no hardship. :D

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You said you didn't want to see it until it were done!

:D

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This is true. DAMN MY RESOLVE TO GIVE YOU THE BEST BETA EVER.

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It's inching closer, I swear!

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You can do what H did you know. If you feel like my betaing it would be more helpful, you can send it to me with some scenes unfinished and I can give you help with them. Whatever you feel is gonna help you most, bb.

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ashen_key

I wouldn't call myself a GOOD beta, given I've only ever beta'd...well, one thing and am going to do a second, but I can babble if you want?

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Sure, that would be awesome. Anything at all about how you beta, the process you go through, I'd really appreciate it.

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ashen_key

Okay. I read it once through as I normally read things - i.e. I skim it and get the general gist. Then, I read it again, carefully, and repeat while mulling.

And then I go through it and start...well, I used coloured text on

bethan_b_bad's fic - one colour for words/commas I suggested she delete, another for things I wanted to draw her attention to. Both of those, I just changed the colour of the text. I had another for parts where I changed things - in one instance, she was listing something. I thought it could have a better beat if rearranaged the words and broke it up, so in that colour text, I did that for her as I couldn't think of how to explain it. And I also wrote comments in double brakets next too some of the things I used coloured text in, either explaining or asking a question, or to bring up an observation I had from canon.

And that bit took ages, as I'd re-read and reread and reread and mull.

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Yep, sounds pretty similar to my way of betaing, except I use the track changes function so I can add comments and such in bubbles at the side. :D

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ashen_key

SEE, YOU KNOWS HOW TO USE WORD!

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apiphile.livejournal.com

I've been doing very close beta on a fic I was sent a while ago, in parts. If you like I can send you one of the files, which is groaning with marginal comments. You will then be able to see the difference between "Derek betas Nny's writing and really only has to point out the odd typo and tense-shift" and "Derek directs the course of someone's fic". ;) Want it?

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YES PLZ!

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Oh, and.

*TACKLEGLOMPHUGS*

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kimberlyfdr.livejournal.com

I do a full beta everytime because I can't stop myself from noticing little things that might throw a story off. First level is, of course, spelling and grammar and punctuation and sentence structure. Is the story technically correct? The next level is canon adherence. Is there anything in the fic that doesn't go along with the canon we know? And the final level is character involvement. Does the story flow naturally for the characters involved? Is it a natural progression from Part A to Part Z in the story provided? Are all the iffy actions explained as to why the character is acting the way they are?

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See, there's the thing. I tend to do one runthrough and try to get everything done at once. Possibly that's because I frequently beta on a deadline, but. I think most of the time I pick all of those things out, but it could definitely be done more thoroughly.

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kimberlyfdr.livejournal.com

Oh, I definitely do it all at the same time (it's just the way my brain reads things), but I know the consciously I'm doing the beta on three different levels rather than just focusing on one. I've had to beta on fast deadlines for so many years that it's just a natural process for me to do it that way.

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soupytwist.livejournal.com

I dunno if I count as a good beta or not, but I've been doing it for years and love doing it. :)

I think it's kind of all those things - you have to care how stories work, how language works, and anything that helps you think about that is going to be useful. It always sounds like it's very technical, but really, it's a craft: it's you using your knowledge and experience in every aspect of life to try to suggest the right changes to make a story great. I think of it being more like sculpture than anything else, with the beta being the person who makes tiiiny little chips that help smooth down lines or get the angle of a corner right.

I think structural beta is waaaay more difficult than anything else. It requires a lot of work, and people don't want to know if their scene order is all wrong, usually. There's also an issue regarding when a story-edit stops being just advice and becomes an attempt to turn the story into something else. You have to straddle that line, make comments enough that you feel you've helped the story improve while not letting the author feel that you're trying to write their story for them. There's always going to be personal preference, and some of the betas I've seen who didn't allow for that have ended up with angry authors and bad stories.

This is tied to the fact that there's no such thing as a perfect story, either. You can always edit more: you just have to decide whether or not it's worth it to do so. For me that depends on what the author said - if they are on a deadline or otherwise shown that what they really want is to make sure there are no typos or huge glaring errors, then that's what I try to do. Otherwise it's a much longer, more involved process that probably involves discussing the fic 'live'.

Um, does that help? :)

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There's also an issue regarding when a story-edit stops being just advice and becomes an attempt to turn the story into something else.

And right there is the most difficult thing. I have problems with structural beta because I'm massively wary of that line, of screwing up and trying to impress my own writing onto the story I'm reading.

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I don't know if I'm a good beta or not, but I'll give you my two cents anyhow. :)

I've done some professional editing work, and I have a couple of lit degrees, taught a couple freshman writing seminars, etc., but I think that fic betaing is different from editing in either of those fields (though, I mean, I use what I've learned from those things to do fic beta). I think it's different because part of fic betaing is about adherence to a recognized standard: a lot of people like to have their betas check the fic for character consistency, etc., to make sure that John Sheppard feels like John Sheppard, however we conceive of him in fandom. So to me, fic betaing is in part about running your story past a tiny part of the fandom community to make sure that it passes fanon muster - which is very different from editing the characterization of an original story.

I think the most important thing for a beta reader to be able to do is close-read: if you can't read closely, if you're not able to consider all the ramifications of each word individually and as it connects to a larger whole, then you're missing a lot of the story. So a lot of the comments I tend to leave on stories have to do with word choice, sentence construction, theme and metaphor - not just noticing if something is ungrammatical, but also noticing when the sentence doesn't flow properly or when it puts emphasis on the wrong thing. The right word in the right place is crucial, yes? Oh, and it's also really helpful if a beta can spot crutches - things that the writer relies on too heavily or too frequently. We all have turns of phrase that we unthinkingly repeat, or plot devices that we reuse without realising it;

bironic betaed a fic for me a while ago where she was like, "Why do you say 'almost' all the time? Stop it!" which brought me up short, and helped me see my own use of language.

The other important thing, to me, is to be able to spot all of the themes of the piece and to know when one or more of them isn't being written correctly - to be able to say, the thing with Teyla doesn't come across quite right, and needs an extra scene where X happens. Knowing where there are scenes missing and where scenes are superfluous, or where the order of events needs to be rearranged, comes I think out of an ability to take in everything the story is trying to do and know where it falls short.

My process is like this, for a full beta (quick and dirty readovers are a different matter): read through it once, leaving comments as I go (I <3 the Word comment function). The first read-through is important, because after that I'm familiar with the fic; if I don't make comments until the second readthrough, then I won't mark the things that were initially confusing or jarring. That's also when I mark all grammatical/spelling/you-wrote-John-when-you-meant-to-write-Rodney errors, to get them out of the way. Second readthrough tends to be more for theme/mood/plot/characterization: if I suspected on the first readthrough that scene X needed to be expanded to really hit home, then the second readthrough is where I get that suspicion confirmed or denied, since on second readthrough I know the fic a little better. Third readthrough is cleanup (and may not get done with longer fic, especially if I'm going to read another draft further down the line).

But that's just me - different people read differently, so I assume that different people beta differently, but equally successfully.

Anyway, sorry to ramble on! I hope that's helpful.

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neevebrody.livejournal.com

Sorry, to butt in but your description sound exactly what I'm looking for. What really struck me was the difference in and "editor's" view and applying that to fanfiction. I've tried to strictly apply some rules and suggestions from "fiction" into my own writing and find that when I do that, I come out a little stiff and stilted. Fanfiction is more relaxed in some respects and, as you suggest, has it's own rules to follow.

Having said that, are you available as a beta for new writers?

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Yes, I think that fanfiction betaing definitely is its own animal - not quite the same as editing anything else. And, as you say, fanfiction itself is written differently than almost anything else in language - for one thing, it doesn't have the burden that original fiction has of needing to be "publishable."

I'm not comfortable describing myself as "available" - I already beta for a few friends, and with my own writing/vidding and my RL stuff, that takes up about all the time I have, I'm afraid. :( Are you asking for yourself?

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neevebrody.livejournal.com

Yes, for myself. I've been trying to improve my fic writing and one thing that I believe helps with regard to what we were talking about (the different animal) is having a good beta, one that you click with and has a great background in the ways of fanfic. I do, however, understand perfectly about the time issues with your other beta duties (and RL!)... I was just kind of hoping. ;)

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yeah, unfortunately, I don't think it's a good idea right now for me to spread myself any thinner - I'm neglecting things as it is. :( But good luck!

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The other important thing, to me, is to be able to spot all of the themes of the piece and to know when one or more of them isn't being written correctly - to be able to say, the thing with Teyla doesn't come across quite right, and needs an extra scene where X happens. Knowing where there are scenes missing and where scenes are superfluous, or where the order of events needs to be rearranged, comes I think out of an ability to take in everything the story is trying to do and know where it falls short.

This, I think, is where my beta reading skills fall down. I haven't done English lit since I was about 16, and as a result... well I've picked up things here and there, and my understanding is decent, but it's not particularly scholarly. I did a degree in English language studies, and as a result I can absolutely fix grammar, and I have a talent for picking out the word with precisely the right shade of meaning for the situation. When it comes to themes, though, I always feel like I shouldn't comment too much in case I'm misreading authorial intent and projecting too much on the story. Which is kinda ridiculous because all I need to do in that situation is ask questions.

*laughs*

It's probably all a confidence thing again. I don't want to make a nuisance of myself.

Anyway, yes, that was seriously helpful, thank you.

Do you look for the same kind of thing when people beta for you?

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there you go - ask questions! actually, that's a crucial beta service; I love betas who push me by just asking difficult questions and forcing me to think things through. So it'd probably be good on both sides. Not a nuisance at all.

I do look for the same kind of thing when people beta for me, broadly. "does the story do what it's trying to do" is the big question that I always want a second opinion on. But I've had different betas, and they had different ways of getting there. And I'll often also go to them with a problem - I think the resolution is too boring, I think so and so is out of character, I can't figure out how to go from A to B, etc., and ask them to help solve it.

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And when I beta, that kind of thing is awesome. It's nice to know what you ought to be looking out for, since the writer is the one who knows the story best, while simultaneously providing an outsider's view and pointing out what the writer is too wrapped up in the story to realise hasn't actually been explained fully. Because often you have all the details in your head but adding them all into the story would make it tedious, and sometimes that can be cut too ruthlessly.

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genarti

I dunno that I'm a good beta; I think I'm an okay one, but I always wish to be better at picking out the detailed bits that don't work or could work better and why. I hear other people's comments and I think "Oh yeah! That's a good point."

But for what it's worth: I'm pretty good at holding a lot of information at once, and I'm usually very good with trivia. (Beta of spelling and grammar and continuity trivia, that I know I'm good at. It's the wider shape-of-the-fic stuff I feel more hit-or-miss about.) I notice little things, and they stop me in the middle of the story.

What I usually do is read through the story once just as a read-through, normal pace, to get a feel for it and so that I can keep the end in mind when I go back to the beginning. Then I go back and start making notes -- usually with a combination of Word margin-comments for any particularly problematic word or sentence, and notes at the end of the fic for overarching stuff. Usually, I'll go back a third time and reread for anything I missed, and often I'll edit my own comments there to be clearer or with additional ideas. This third time is often when I manage the structural stuff, or the comments on an entire scene rather than just a sentence within it. (Or at least when I manage to be clear about something I was more vague about the first time around.)

If it's a really long fic or I'm having particular trouble with the wider-view stuff, I might print it out and work on it in paper-and-editorial-scribblings form. I find that easier to work with. I don't have a printer at home, though, so I have to be sure the help it might give me is worth the paper and the bother of printing it elsewhere.

It helps me, too, if the author says "I'm especially unsure of this scene" or "I'd love comments on the pacing" or "this is a rough draft, so please don't bother with anything but really egregious grammar/spelling stuff since I'll fix that later."

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It's the wider shape-of-the-fic stuff I feel more hit-or-miss about.

Yup, same, absolutley. I don't want to put beta bootprints all over the fic, for a start, because it's their fic and not mine; but yeah, I often get distracted by the little things and don't even think about the bigger picture until later. I guess I should read through more times, where possible; when I'm beta reading for something other than fest fics again I guess I can do that.

And absolutely yes, guidance from the writer can really help massively with the beta process.

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Dude I had this EXACT problem when looking over H's Big Bang. The only experience I have with an effective edit is my thesis. Every beta I've ever got has been really minimal, and I want to know HOW TO DO IT RIGHT.

HELP FANDOM.

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Yeah, absolutely! I mean, I guess it's flattering to get a minimal beta, because it's nice to know you're awesome to an extent, but there's also the relentlessly self ~~criticising~~ improving part which wants it massively pulled apart.

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neevebrody.livejournal.com

So far, I've mostly beta'd for non-native speakers (velocitygrass, lavvyan and sonadorita), so my process not only includes grammar, but usage of words and sentence structure or how can the words flow better. I also like to talk with the author first and/or know where they're coming from in a story and if they're set on that way of thinking. But I will make suggestions of changes or comments (Word's Track Changes is great) knowing that the author will take or leave as she sees fit. Often there are discussions about why I changed a certain thing or suggested a certain thing. The process: I like to read through once to get a feel, the next round is picking and then I always read through a third or even fourth time (with my changes made) to make sure I haven't left some odd phrase or changed something that's addressed in a later paragraph.

I also think I'm good with character and voices and can tell people when I don't think dialogue is appropriate to that character. I use a lot of dialogue in my own writing and I've studied the characters, so when something's off it really jumps out at me.

Now, what I look for in a beta: I want someone who will challenge me - ask me questions about why I wrote a certain scene a certain way or why I went in this direction. I have a love/hate relationship with the comma and semicolon and have been known to run on a sentence or two, so the grammar aspect is good (not sure why I can't see my own mistakes). But even more than that, I'd like someone who'd (virtually) slap me for getting something wrong or writing something stupid and not just think, well it's her story after all. Also, someone who can see my story and maybe suggest a better way to tell it, different POV, etc. Sometimes we can be very single-minded when we get an idea and not even see a better opportunity staring us in the face.

(sorry to be so long-winded)

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