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! 

To Beta or not to Beta: That is the Question!

 

I've been working on a big research and writing project throughout Covid - a piece of narrative non-fiction that seems like a companion book to A Proper Person to be Detained. 

The Last Lancer is about the Polish side of my family, especially the grandfather I never knew - his background, his milieu and what became of him. It's a good story but it was probably the most difficult thing I have ever had to research and write. I now have a draft that I can send to my publisher. It will need more work, but I'm at the stage where I've done a lot of revision, but I don't know whether it's good or bad or indifferent. What I need now is time and distance and a fresh pair of eyes. 

Eyes I trust. 

When I was chatting about this on Facebook, somebody asked if I didn't use some kind of market research and let other people read it at this stage to judge the response. It's a fair question, because I know a number of writers who do just that and find it very useful. They call them Beta Readers, a select group of people who will give feedback on a reasonably early draft. 

The term originates with Beta Testers in the video games industry, although it's worth pointing out that Beta Testers aren't there to shape or question the essential idea and structure of the game, nor even its development. That is done by teams of professionals. They are there to discover annoying glitches in the almost ready project, and their parallel in the world of publishing is probably a copy editor - somebody who spots all your silly mistakes, the punctuation glitches, the names that change, the infelicities, the repeated words and so on. 

My gut response to that perfectly reasonable question was 'Noooo!' It surprised me that I had such a visceral reaction, but like many writers, I can hardly bear to talk in any detail about what I'm writing while I'm writing it, let alone allow anyone to read it. If I do that too soon, it so often melts away, like snow in sunshine, leaving a little puddle behind. I don't  even let my supportive husband read it at this stage. Not even when I've written it and done some revisions and have a decent early draft.  

All the same, you reach a point where you are too close to the wood to see the trees. At that stage you need to hand the manuscript over to some trusted individual, an editor, a publisher, an agent if you have one. 

I have many friends who are great readers, but I wouldn't want any of them to read an early draft of a book. 

Beta Readers may work well and if they work for you, that's fine. Every writer is different. But they're not for me. Partly it may be that I've taught creative writing to mixed groups who critiqued each other. Often, with the best will in the world, and often without knowing they're doing it, people will critique a piece of work according to the way they would have written it themselves, and that isn't always what's needed. Sometimes, too, a reader and a book are just not a good fit. Nothing wrong with the reader but nothing wrong with the book either. 

The other difficulty is that at this stage, too many different opinions may be problematic. One or two trusted professionals - that's fine. But even then, I've experienced two different agents reading the same novel and recommending that I remove a third of it. One was certain it should be the first third and one the last third. (I did neither although there were significant edits!) On another occasion, a young intern at an agency read a book called The Physic Garden, later beautifully published by Saraband, and said that it was 'just an old man telling his story'! I don't blame her. It simply wasn't for her. And it is a bit of a Marmite of a book. When people love it they really love it, but a few readers dislike the narrator (the old man telling his story) and tell me so. That's fine. He's crabbit. I'm very fond of him. 

Then there was an early experience of a play developed over several weeks of rehearsal, about which - after a very successful production  - the director pointed out that I had been 'far too accommodating' with editorial suggestions. I should have fought more, he said and I think he was right. 

I wouldn't use Beta Readers myself, although I would use an experienced editor, one who would ask all the right questions. But I'm old and wise enough (I hope) to  know what works for me. 

Essentially, whatever works for you is good, but remember that not everyone will like your book or your characters. That doesn't necessarily mean that there's anything wrong with them. 

Finally there is one bit of advice that may be useful. Beware of anyone attempting to rewrite for you. The best editors or directors or producers - in fact anyone who comments on your work - will never attempt to do this, although they may point out sentences or even paragraphs that are unclear or don't work effectively. What they will do is query and question you intensively, these days using Track Changes software, so that you can have an online conversation about the manuscript. The best editors will look at structural problems if there are any. Then they will hone in on those parts of the book or play that you have been most uncertain about - and there will be many uncertainties, if you're honest with yourself. He or she will ask the right difficult questions and in finding the answers to these questions, you'll make the piece of work better.  

This is a difficult, professional job. Choose your help wisely. 

Telling Tales

All my writing life, people have been giving me advice. Some of it was solicited, and some of it wasn't. Some was useful and some wasn't.  I once asked an established artist friend if people routinely told her that she ought to make drastic changes to her work, and she looked at me as though I had gone mad. 'No' she said. 'No, they don't!' 

I don't mean skilled editing. A good editor can help you to see the whole wood when you're obsessing about individual trees. I mean the person who tells you to turn your book into the kind of book they would have written themselves, if only they could write. Two different people once told me to cut a third of a novel. The trouble was that one wanted me to cut the first third and one wanted me to cut the last third. 

Neither of them was right, although the book in question certainly needed a lot of pruning. In fact when I did prune it, here there and everywhere, I probably deleted just as much as they had been recommending. But they had gone for the easy option which said more about them than it did about the book. 

Beta Readers worry me. I don't have them, but I worry about other people's reliance on them. Most (although not all) writers want to be read. We're in the business of communicating. And we often have some hypothetical reader in mind. But most of the time, we're writing the kind of book we want to read ourselves, telling the stories that gnaw at us till we put them into words, the ideas we feel passionate about. 

Which is why when somebody says 'I've got this great idea for a book!' our hearts sink. We may smile politely, but what we're really thinking is, 'well go and write it then.' Other people's ideas for books are just like other people's dreams. Only our own are interesting to us. We may like to chat to our readers once the book is published. I know I do. We may like to hear from them, and answer questions and even debate with them. But I don't want any random reader critiquing my work before the event. 

Which leads me, in this rambling post, to note that I've just finished reading Kingfishers Catch Fire and I'm wondering as I do with all her novels, why it has taken me so long to discover Rumer Godden's work. Why didn't it feature as part of my course work all those years ago when I did a degree in English Language and Literature and when the first two years consisted of a quick gallop through 'the canon'. Mind you, the canon was mostly male, dead and English (even in Edinburgh) so it isn't too surprising. 

If you haven't read it, do. Immediately. It's magical. And very relevant indeed at a time when, as the Covid threat begins to recede a bit, so many people seem to be deciding to move to rural communities in order to 'find themselves' and finding mostly that they don't know how to live in rural communities. Or they make television programmes about 'finding themselves' in rural communities where people have already found themselves, thank-you very much.

Godden tells wonderful tales. And that brings me back to the thorny problem of advice. I'd lay bets that if a beta reader had got their hands on Godden's extraordinary work they would have told her everything that was wrong with it, just because it is so strange and so different from anything they might have read before. 

Then it struck me that the one piece of advice I wish somebody, anybody, had given me when I was just starting out, was this: Tell your story and tell it well. But first and foremost tell it for yourself. If you're bored with it, everyone else will be. If you're engrossed in it, passionate about it, and if you truly know what you're writing about, there will certainly be somebody out there who loves it too.