What’s A Beta Reader For?

Remember when your teacher would give you a writing assignment to be done in class, then after enough time had passed she would tell you to turn to someone near you and have them “peer edit” your paper? Yeah, that’s a bunch of BS. And I say that as a teacher.

First of all, why is someone who currently has a D in English PEER EDITING YOUR PAPER?

Second, you know full-well that you immediately made eye contact with your best friend and you two swapped papers, even if it meant climbing over the heads of unsuspecting freshmen to get to each other.

Finally, what was this person supposed to do to your paper? Was she grading it with a red pen that she keeps in her backpack for moments just like this one?

Without clear guidelines and a good bit of talent/dedication/interest, having someone do a first-read of your writing isn’t going to be all that helpful. Take a look at the first problem up above. A person with a barely passing grade in English might not be academically equipped to help you notice and correct grammatical errors. In the second situation, is your best friend SERIOUSLY going to tell you that it took too long to get into the story or that your plot premise is completely unbelievably? NO, she’s going to tell you how awesome you are as a human being for even thinking of this story. And last, what high school student is going to attack a first draft with the vehemence it requires? As a general rule, first drafts of EVERYTHING are pretty bad. Heck, the first draft of my GROCERY LIST is a bunch of crap.

When you pick someone to seriously read your first draft and give you feedback, it has to be someone who will be honest but helpful, but more importantly, it has to be someone who has some kind of working knowledge of both writing and your genre. It would be like me asking Stephen King to read the manuscript of a Victorian romance novel. Make sure that when you seek out honest feedback on your writing, you will actually get some.