Deep Feedback from Beta Readers

My remarks in the last two posts explain how a writer can make the best of their early readers. But some of those readers may have even more to offer. You may have writers who work in your genre among your beta readers. Or perhaps readers who are self-declared experts in your genre because they consume almost every book published. If you have people like this, whose knowledge and judgement you trust, they may be eager to go deeper and offer more specific critique, generally looking at two sides off each writing issue. For example:
What characters did you best connect with?
What characters need to be better developed?
Which lines, or scenes, that you particularly liked.
Which bits did you dislike, and why?
As you read, what did you meet that confused you or wasn’t clear?
What should I have elaborated on more?
What section did you want to skip over?
Where in the book did you think it was a good place to put the book down?
One last point: If you follow this plan you may get a lot of valuable feedback. You will need to consider it all, but not reflexively accept it. If you get any recommendations that you just can’t agree with, ignore them. But if a comment is repeated by more than a couple people, seriously consider it.
After reviewing the suggestions it’s time to get down to serious rewriting. And be sure to thank those people whose input was most helpful.