How important are beta readers for authors?
RachelsFiction.com
Beta Readers are Crucial to Writing (and How to Get One)
People often ask about the need for beta readers and how to get them. Yes, most writers need them. Yes, your friends and family can be beta readers (if capable of breaking your little heart for your own good. I mean, being honest.) Yes, you can find beta readers by being friendly and reciprocal in writing groups or in a trusted online space. Please share your thoughts below (or on my Facebook if that’s your thing) on the importance of beta readers. Tomorrow the focus shifts to readers: Why you should be a beta reader.
If my books are quality, I owe a lot to my beta readers—readers who slogged through rough drafts and revisions. They made suggestions, even it was only to say, “What the hell does this mean?”
Authors need readers before their work heads out to live in the real world, the world full of purchasers readers.
How else would a writer know that something has made it from their mind onto the page in a way those readers understand, relate to, or enjoy? In a way that resonates (there’s a word I swore I wouldn’t use in this. Pretty much a cliché!)
Imagine this, to take an instance from my own life: Deep in the night, Alfie’s purring vibrates my suddenly full bladder. To his annoyance, I get up. Returning to bed from the bathroom I check the time on my phone, something my husband strictly forbids but the phone’s burrowed under the comforter. That wakens me a bit more.
A seductively brilliant collection of words worms its way into my mind. That never comes in the day when there are too many distractions. I send myself an email with the words, planning to find a spot for it in some writing in the morning when I open my laptop, crack my knuckles, and get to work.
But will that brilliance make it onto the page? The mind is a funny thing. It tends to reassure itself. Especially creative minds.
Enter the beta reader. “What the hell does this mean?”
It would take days for me to realize—stunning as those words were—they have no place in the story. Or to realize a certain character wouldn’t say or do what the words imply. Or the tense has changed. Or the point of view.
Unless my aspiration really is to write for myself and ONLY myself, I need other eyes.
Oh, yeah, sometimes I know it’s good even if no one else feels that way. And then I file it under “Crap I Love But No One Else Ever Will.” I read that file from time to time while dipping toast in tea to soften, musing on how unique I am. It could be titled “The Smug File of Crap” instead.
Beta readers are crucial, for me, at least. I happen to have a great one.
If you’d prefer not to muck around with unfinished manuscripts, you may prefer to join a reader team. That’s is a list of people who get free books if they are willing to write a review. My publicist insists that I end this with a link to sign up for my reader team. There you can get free review copies of my books, as well as that of other authors when I happen upon them. I’ll also let you know if my books are on sale, a perfect choice for those who just wants to keep their opinions to themselves.
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