Editing Tips: Getting Your Book Ready For A Beta Reader

A few weeks ago, we talked about getting your manuscript ready for an alpha reader, and today, we’re covering betas!

While sending a work in progress to others is scary, you can make the job easier on your little writer’s heart by giving your beta the kind of copy that will make their feedback job as easy as possible, and these tips will show you how!

Editing Tips: Getting Your Book Ready For A Beta Reader

Now, how complete your beta draft is depends on the type of writer you are and when you need your feedback.

Some writers are comfortable sending a half-finished draft to betas, while some won’t show anyone anything that isn’t query or publishing-level ready.

While a beta reader draft doesn’t have to be perfect, to get the best feedback, it needs to make sense. Before sending anything to betas, you should have been through the draft a few times yourself, and have most of the plot sorted.

It’s okay to not have every little detail ironed out and on the page, but make your beta aware of what you haven’t completed yet so they can keep that in mind while reading.

Once you have your WIP at that stage, apply these final touches…

Grammar Program Run

Let’s start with a run through a grammar program. ProWritingAid, Grammarly, Word, or whatever your grammar checker of choice is, is a good place to start.

At this stage, you’ll probably still find typos, and these programs are good at alerting you to missing words and passive text. Just remember, however, they’re not a replacement for human editing, and some of their suggestions can be incorrect. Always go with what will make your sentences clear and readable, and trust your own instincts.

Character POV Edit

If your story is written from the POV of multiple characters, you’ll want any scene or chapter from each character to be consistent.

To ensure it is, select each character and do a POV edit.

This walks you through how they speak, act, and what they know. These are elements that are easy to get wrong or overlook when writing, so a concentrated POV edit is a must. For more details on how to pull one off, see the blog post: Writing A Book: Character Point Of View Edit.

Dialogue Punctuation Check

Despite your beta draft not needing to be flawless, you don’t want it full of simple errors that are going to pull the beta out of the story when you need them to be immersed in it.

Even something like the wrong punctuation in your dialogue can do this, so make it clear by enlisting the help of one of our favorite editing functions, the “Search/Find” option!

Use it to check…

?”
.”
,”
!”

This will allow you to zero in on your dialogue and make sure you’ve used a comma for speech, and a period/full stop for action.

Correct examples:

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
“Let’s get out of here.” He took her arm.

“Do you want to get out of here?” he asked.
“Do you want to get out of here?” He took her arm.

“Let’s get out of here!” he said.
“Let’s get out of here!” He took her arm.

It might feel like overkill to make sure your punctuation is correct when the MS is still in the working/editing stages, but getting this right now will save you time down the line and give your beta a confusion-free read.

A Listen Out Loud

Rather than another read-through, which at this point you’ve likely done a million times, try listening to your book out loud.

Use a program that reads off the screen, or compile your book into an ebook and use an app to read it back with headphones on so that your words have your total attention.

A listen of your MS will pick up typos (yep, they’ll still be there) and is excellent for flagging longer sentences that might be fine when your eyes are in charge, but will come across differently when your ears hear how lengthy/awkward the sentence is.

Use your listen out loud to experience your book from the perspective of a reader and not as its writer, and reap the benefits.

Writing Style Consistently

Whether writing this manuscript happened in weeks, months, or years, you weren’t writing it first sentence to last in one go. That means your writing style is likely to be inconsistent.

The first few chapters are probably more tell than show as you raced through them to get things moving. There could be three chapters in the middle where you were totally on a roll and every sentence is beautiful, lyrical prose. Or your paragraphs could only be described as boringly uninspired because this was when you got stuck on a plot point for a month.

The final chapters could be where you found your writing groove for this book. Or it could be one character above all others that flowed right out and the read of their scenes is exactly how you want the rest of the book to be.

Now is the time to look at each chapter, flag any sentences that don’t sound how you want on the first read (and listen to your inner writer here, because it’s telling you what you know is true), and highlight them.

Color code what needs changing, and in a different color, highlight what is working so you know what to aim for. Refer to the highlighted parts that work, and rewrite the bits that don’t to get them to that same standard.

Organize Some Asks

When you have your MS ready and it’s time to send it on, consider asking your betas to be on the lookout for certain things when reading.

It may be if the villain reveal was a surprise, or if the discovery of the MC’s true heritage was the jaw-dropper you wanted it to be.

Organize all the things you want to know into a list to give to your betas, either ahead of time so they see it before reading (obviously don’t do this if your asks are spoilers), or a list they can go through after reading the whole MS.

Giving them asks not only allows your betas to be as helpful as they can be but will provide you with the feedback you know will make a difference in the next round of edits, which is a win for everyone.

Wordiness And Typos

While picking up wordy sentences and typos is one of your jobs as the first editor of your MS, they’re also what your eyes slip over as the only person who has read your sentences so many times.

Luckily, your beta won’t have that problem. Reading your sentences for the first time gives them the special ability to see those errors. With that advantage, kindly ask them to highlight anything they come across so you can fix/edit/address them.

While these tips might seem like a lot for a draft that isn’t the final version, getting your book this ready for a beta reader will pay off in the long run.

Applying these checks now means betas get a clean draft, which results in a quicker read/feedback turnaround for them, and less editing for you after you’ve received their notes.

If you’ve nailed the major elements of the story, and your betas only suggest minor tweaks and clarifications, the fact that you’ve run your words through a deep grammar and spell check, character POV edit, a dialogue punctuation edit, checked for writing style consistency, and fixed typos and wordy sentences, means there are very little edits left on your end.

That also means that the next step for your MS, whether it’s to self-publish, enter a competition, or send your MS off to the query trenches, is closer than you think. All thanks to some extra steps when getting your book ready for a beta reader!

— K.M. Allan

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