So You Want to Be a Good Beta Reader: A How-to

Editing is the part of writing that new writers don’t like to think about: after all, shouldn’t we all be geniuses whose work springs fully-formed from their heads, complete with the helmet of fresh metaphor and the spear of insightful prose?

Except that the birth of Athena is a myth, and writing is more like actual birth—a more painful undertaking than most people want to think about, and one that can’t be accomplished alone. Here then is the beta reader’s manual: a guide to helping your critique group members reach their full writing potential.

Bear in mind the author’s intended audience.

If the author is writing a memoir intended for the grandchildren she’s going to have with that cute barista who works on Thursdays, nobody is going to mind that the word “basically” appears twice in every paragraph. But publishers care, and if your friend is writing fiction that she hopes to sell, you’re not doing her any favors by soft-pedaling your critique. 

Point out what worked well.

It’s always nice to be nice, but the better reason to share the highlights is that writers need to know what not to change. Knowing what works well both outlines the scope of revisions needed and gives a model for what successful revision will look like.

Look for the “why.” 

Why is the story you’re reading important to its characters, to the world it portrays, and to you as a reader? Be prepared for the possibility that what you get out of the story may be different than what the writer had in mind when she wrote it. That’s okay. Both your opinions are valid.

Don’t edit the work yourself. 

“But wait,” I hear you cry. “Isn’t that exactly what my friend wants?” No. What your friend wants is your feedback. Your job is to recognize where a work is not living up to its potential and point those parts out to the writer. It’s the writer’s job to decide how (and even whether) to rewrite the work, incorporating the feedback as he or she sees fit.

Now that you know the rules, here’s how you go about looking at your friend’s work: 

Read the whole work without a pencil in your hand. When you pick up a published book from the shelf, you’re mentally prepared to love it, because someone else has already vouched for it. Give your friend’s work the same benefit of the doubt. Your friend has entrusted you with her work—the fruit of hours of labor. Read it all the way through at least once.
Read it again, this time with that pencil in your hand. Notice where your attention hits snags. Maybe it’s a line of dialogue that doesn’t work, or a sentence that you had to read more than once to understand. Look for the big things as well. Does each scene add to the story as a whole? Are the adjectives and metaphors appropriate? You don’t have to make extensive, MLA-regulation editing notes. Use whatever notation makes sense to you.
Read the piece one more time. Now take a look at the minutiae: mark any misspellings, errors in punctuation, etc. On this final read, you should be making overall notes for your author. Start out with the good stuff in these final notes. Here is where you talk about the overall tone, the plot, characterization, and setting. I often use those headings to keep my comments focused on one thing at a time. When giving critique about the piece as a whole, use quotes from the work itself to illustrate things that are either working well or poorly.  
Have an actual conversation. You can email your friend the notes you’ve made, but I promise you that if you sit down with your friend and begin talking about your observations, things will come up that will help your friend polish up her work. I’ve never had an in-person critiquing session where I didn’t add at least a page or two to the notes I made while reading by myself, and every observation you can give your friend will be helpful.

Remember, be honest. You can fool yourself, you can fool your friend, but you can’t fool a publisher into taking work that’s less than your best.

Lise Quintana is the Editor in Chief of Lunch Ticket, the online journal of Antioch University LA’s MFA program. Her first NaNo-novel, Mitos del Pueblo, won first prize at the East of Eden Writer’s Conference. She lives in California’s Bay Area, mostly out in the woods.

Photo by Flickr user Flylice.