Kasper Hviid
Sage
While my ultimate goal is getting published, my current goal post is some sort of intermediate state where I have something moderately readable, some fragment which gives an idea of the final story I'm aiming at. In other words, I want to write towards beta readers.
However, beta readers are a rather tricky audience: They misunderstand the story completely because they’re missing context that was presented in earlier scenes; they incorrectly assume that your novel will continue in a certain way, and writes several pages about this; they don’t like your story, simply because they’re not the right audience; they accuse you of not being a writer, due to your subpar grammar; they fail to get into the novel and instead hold it up to some vanilla writing-advice checklist; they assume that you’re incompetent and lecture you that orcs are an already established fantasy thing; they politely ignore the scene where you inadvertently come of as a total nazi; they come up with a completely different idea for a novel and criticize your novel for not being that.
Not that I experienced all that, but you get the idea. As a writer, you had other people spend their precious time reading your stuff and writing their thoughts down. For nothing. This is decidedly unpleasant.
Yet, beta readers are what makes your writing grow. I really want to be better at showing off my stuff and getting feedback.
I believe the reader is always right. Meaning, I don’t think it is the readers' responsibility to read the story correctly; the responsibility lies solely on the author. This goes for writing towards beta readers too; I want to write so they’re stealthily steered towards the exact kind of feedback I’m after.
My current plan is this:
First, I would aim at creating all the surface stuff that any reader is going to see first: a title, a cover mock-up and a blurb. I also finish just enough of the beginning of the novel to, hopefully, draw the reader in.
I'm Danish, so I'm prone to screw up English grammar. I don't think this weakens the actual writing. I mean, the rhythm and structure are not altered by having English begin with uppercase. However, it is very distracting to readers. So I have to clean out as many errors as possible before letting anyone see it.
I also got to express exactly what kind of feedback I’m after: Do you like the main character? Was there any point where you felt like putting the book down and do something fun instead? Did you guess anything about what would happen next?
And if there are some holes in the story, I need to point them out beforehand, so that the beta readers don’t waste their time rediscovering those.
Now to my question:
How should one write towards beta readers, in your opinion?
However, beta readers are a rather tricky audience: They misunderstand the story completely because they’re missing context that was presented in earlier scenes; they incorrectly assume that your novel will continue in a certain way, and writes several pages about this; they don’t like your story, simply because they’re not the right audience; they accuse you of not being a writer, due to your subpar grammar; they fail to get into the novel and instead hold it up to some vanilla writing-advice checklist; they assume that you’re incompetent and lecture you that orcs are an already established fantasy thing; they politely ignore the scene where you inadvertently come of as a total nazi; they come up with a completely different idea for a novel and criticize your novel for not being that.
Not that I experienced all that, but you get the idea. As a writer, you had other people spend their precious time reading your stuff and writing their thoughts down. For nothing. This is decidedly unpleasant.
Yet, beta readers are what makes your writing grow. I really want to be better at showing off my stuff and getting feedback.
I believe the reader is always right. Meaning, I don’t think it is the readers' responsibility to read the story correctly; the responsibility lies solely on the author. This goes for writing towards beta readers too; I want to write so they’re stealthily steered towards the exact kind of feedback I’m after.
My current plan is this:
First, I would aim at creating all the surface stuff that any reader is going to see first: a title, a cover mock-up and a blurb. I also finish just enough of the beginning of the novel to, hopefully, draw the reader in.
I'm Danish, so I'm prone to screw up English grammar. I don't think this weakens the actual writing. I mean, the rhythm and structure are not altered by having English begin with uppercase. However, it is very distracting to readers. So I have to clean out as many errors as possible before letting anyone see it.
I also got to express exactly what kind of feedback I’m after: Do you like the main character? Was there any point where you felt like putting the book down and do something fun instead? Did you guess anything about what would happen next?
And if there are some holes in the story, I need to point them out beforehand, so that the beta readers don’t waste their time rediscovering those.
Now to my question:
How should one write towards beta readers, in your opinion?