To Beta or not to Beta

A wearisome heap of old
literary magazines in which I had 'stuff'. 

It seems to have become compulsory for all writers, but especially those starting out, to enlist a 'beta reader' or two to vet early drafts and offer helpful suggestions. Theoretically, this should be OK, but is it? 

The term comes from the world of video games, where beta testers are asked to play a game in the later stages of its development, to see where there may be glitches and bugs that have somehow managed to slip through the long, expensive and complicated process of building a game. They are usually enthusiastic and experienced gamers so their opinions matter - but it's a later stage process, whether in games or software development, and I often think it's akin to the work of a good copy editor. 

Copy editing is also a late stage process and involves someone checking your manuscript, not just for grammatical glitches, but for repetitions or general imperfections. For example, something might make complete sense to you, the writer, but it may puzzle the reader. He or she will also pick up inconsistencies, and do a certain amount of fact checking. Or at least will point out to you that you need to do some fact checking yourself. A good copy editor will never tell you what to do, but may ask difficult questions. It's often done on the finished manuscript, using Track Changes (in Word) or similar, so that you can have an online conversation. All this is incredibly useful but it's a professional job, and it's not what beta readers do in the world of writing. 

I used to run a writers' group in Ayrshire. It started out as a Workers Educational Association group, but over the years, funding failed. The council took over, and when the council stopped funding it we just carried on, because by that stage, the group members had become friends. We were a disparate bunch of writers, working on everything from plays to novels, with short stories, poems and articles in between.

 As time went by, the group became a safe space - to use current jargon - where people could comfortably read out some of what they had written and gain feedback. It's the job of the group leader to impose a certain amount of control over all this, making sure that suggestions are just that - not instructions. It's nice, as a writer, to be taken seriously, and it's interesting to be asked questions about your work, because in coming up with the answers, you often make the work better. But nobody should ever feel bullied into making changes that don't feel right. 

The wrong word at the wrong time can damage tender shoots of talent, especially since people in groups sometimes feel that they have to give feedback. One of my colleagues, who later became a celebrated and well published poet, was put off writing for several years by inexplicably damning feedback from an already successful poet tutoring a writing course. 

None of which is to say that work doesn't benefit from good feedback, good editorial input. All the same, looking back on a long switchback of a career, I'm surprised to note that I've had far more bad editorial advice than good. I remember one theatre director musing that I had been much too open to his suggestions. (The question of why, perceiving that, he didn't stop giving them, is something that has puzzled me ever since.) Another editor, this time of an early novel, wrote to me to apologise about the mess she had made of my book. I've been told to delete a third of a novel by two different, allegedly competent, people. The problem was that one wanted the first third gone, while the other had problems with the last third. Both were wrong, although the book in question certainly needed work.

Time is often your friend here. If you've finished the precious first draft of your novel, can I suggest that before you hand it over to anyone else, you let it lie fallow for a while. Write something else. Resist the urge to begin editing immediately or - worse - hand your baby over to a reader or editor of any kind.

 All writers know the horror of someone asking 'what are you working on now?' We tend to fudge the answer by coming up with the most generic, least specific description possible. This is because most of us will have had the experience of pinning a project down, only for it to dissolve before our very eyes. Wait a few weeks or even months* and you'll find that when you go back to your work with a fresh eye, problems - and their solutions - will often leap out at you. Another technique is to print out at this stage, read the words on the page and even physically shuffle things about. 

In my opinion, one of the best books about the craft of writing is still a slim volume called On Writing, by Stephen King. Part memoir, part manual, it should be required reading for anyone contemplating a career as a writer, even though the industry itself has changed since he first wrote it. He advises the aspiring writer to do plenty of reading and writing. It's my belief that many writers who are starting out don't do nearly enough writing. Most of us used to have drawers full of the stuff. Now we have files on old computers or Dropbox stuffed with failed experiments. His advice to go with the story and see where it takes you is both liberating and inspirational for anyone who has ever become bogged down in the need to plot. 

To beta or not to beta - that is the question. Well, if it works for you, go with it. But don't ever forget the observation about the camel being a 'horse designed by a committee'. Not to cast aspersions on camels of course. Collaborations between creative people can work magnificently. But not always. And not without someone keeping the vision of the whole project in mind. 

That someone should be you. 

* I am currently working on a manuscript of a novel I wrote some fifty years ago. Yes, I've been writing that long and even longer. I was very young. I filed it away and forgot about it. But I kept it. It's something of an adventure. It's raw and needs a lot of work, but it's also surprising me with the freshness, the insight, the emotion it contains, before the publishing industry got its claws into me!