Editing Tips: Getting Your Book Ready For An Alpha Reader

Congratulations, you’ve done it! You reached a point in your manuscript journey where it’s ready for other eyes.

While this is a significant milestone for any writer, it’s also one of the scariest. Someone else will read the words you’ve painstakingly bled onto the page for months, even years—and yes—they will judge you, because, well, that’s the job of an alpha reader.

If you’ve never used an alpha reader before, it’s the same as using a beta reader, only they will look at your MS when it’s in the very early writing stages, before big edits, and give you feedback to help you work out where to go next.

To make their job, and your future work, easier, the following tips will help you get your book ready for an alpha!

Editing Tips: Getting Your Book Ready For An Alpha Reader

As explained, an alpha reader is someone who will read your manuscript when it’s at an early stage.

Ideally, you would have completed more than one draft, but some alphas will read a first draft hot and fresh from your typing fingers.

If you can get at least two drafts completed before handing the MS over, I’m sure the alpha will appreciate it. Two drafts should mean that the basic story is down. After that, you just need to get your perfectionist/control freak heart on board with giving someone a draft that is far from polished.

Ensure You Have Your Big Picture Stuff In Place

Your first, and biggest step, is making sure most of the story is there—from start to finish.

You don’t have to know every little detail. There might even be some plot twists still missing. Minor things like timeline inconsistencies will be there, and you may have just finalized the details of the hero’s victory in your last pass, so you haven’t had a second look at the changes to ensure they’re solid, but that’s all okay for an alpha read.

As long as the big picture stuff is there, the alpha will take in the overall story and let you know what is working and what isn’t. They will be your crucial fresh eyes without the rose-colored glasses, who can look at what you have objectively and give you feedback.

You may want to ask them to just read and let you know their own feedback, either as comments throughout the MS, or thoughts at the end of the read in a separate document or email. You could even ask them for specific feedback, which brings us to tip #2!

Write Specific Feedback Questions

If your normal feedback process is to take whatever you can get, try to be more specific with your alpha.

Since they’re reading something that’s still first-drafty, it’s okay to ask them to pay attention to certain things straight off. At this stage, there will be specific information you’ll need to know to make progress on your next draft.

That could be knowing if you pulled off a certain twist, or if the reason the MC quit their job was clear so that you can confirm if what you’ve written passes as understandable or needs fixing.

Gather your specific questions in relation to your unique MS, and/or send them the following general feedback questions.

Is the overall story working?Are there any parts that are confusing?Pacing. Is it too slow in parts? Too fast in others? What is it like as a whole?Characters. What’s your first impression? Can any be cut? Are any missing? Do any do anything (in your opinion) that is out of character with what you expected as you were reading?

Hopefully, your alpha can give you as much usable feedback as they can on all aspects of what you’ve handed over, even if the draft is still far from complete.

If possible, a follow-up face-to-face catch-up or Zoom call with your alpha would be ideal. Talking through the draft should help you both, as your alpha can express their thoughts about what they read, and you can ask direct questions, and discuss what you plan to tackle in the next draft easily in an informal type chat.

If that’s not possible, just regular back-and-forth messages you’re both comfortable with should also do the trick. As your MS isn’t polished, you or your alpha will probably have a lot to cover, so ensure you find an alpha willing to do that, and don’t forget to return the favor for their next WIP.

Do One Read-Through

Before handing over your draft, it’s a good idea to have one start-to-finish read-through.

Even if you’ve been writing or editing solidly for weeks, and you know the story well enough by this point, you probably haven’t read it from the first page to the last in one straight shot for a while.

This check will allow you to see any inconsistencies your editing or last-minute tweaks may have introduced, such as the MC mentioning a plan in an early chapter that was no longer happening by the last.

When doing this read-through, you can still also edit bits and pieces, such as fixing a typo or dropped word, or making a sentence clearer, but don’t go overboard. This isn’t a full edit and doesn’t need to be. Your alpha will expect a draft that isn’t overly polished, and you will do your major editing after they’ve given you their feedback. Anything above and beyond now is possibly polishing whole chapters you’re going to cut, so do the one read-through, and then send it off.

Run A Basic Spell Check

Even if your MS is only a few drafts old, as a common courtesy to your alpha, please run a basic spell check. Nothing interrupts a reading experience more than typos every second sentence, and they can’t judge what’s happening if simple errors are making your paragraphs unclear.

If you’re using Scrivener, it has a built-in spell check that will work as you write. It’s not a grammar checker, however, so let your alpha know that the grammar will be checked more thoroughly in a later draft. If you’re using Word, its built-in spell and grammar checker is good to run through before handover.

You’re still so early in the drafting process, that a deep spelling, grammar, and punctuation check at this point is most likely going to be wasted on words that will be removed in the blink of a delete button press with your next round of edits. Stick to what will give you a clean copy in as little time as possible.

And with that, you now have some tips for getting your book ready for an alpha read!

I hope they help both you and your alpha make the most of your early draft, so it can be the best foundation for your final draft. Good luck!

— K.M. Allan

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