(This post was inspired by the incredible writers at the 2018 Fic Writers’ Retreat, which has just wrapped, and especially by @shamelessmash and @nautilicious. I love you awesome nerds!)
I have a confession to make: for a long time, I thought I was a writer who could not receive feedback. In an effort to hone my craft, I attended workshops and took classes where critique circles were part of the deal, hoping that some insight that my crit partners offered would help me get better, and better. This, I thought, was what I needed: another flail, in addition to the ones I applied to my work myself.
You know this kind of workshop, and this kind of attitude. Maybe you are holding onto it yourself: good writers are forged in Hell Places where All Mistakes Must Be Pointed Out and Eliminated and If You Can’t Take the Heat Get Out of the Kitchen. I was told that my use of commas was annoying. I was told that my choice of subgenre was untimely. I was red penned into a stupor.
Despite the fact that I was able to edit myself to the point where I got a few pieces accepted for publication, crit never, ever worked for me. I emerged from these experiences both pissed off and self-flagellating. I couldn’t see through the multiple and often contradictory corrections offered by my fellow critters, or the instructor, when I was taking a course.
Any piece I exposed to someone else’s crit, I always trunked, totally convinced that the problems with it were intractable, and that there was no point in trying to fix it. Worse yet, I felt like somehow I’d failed as a writer: I couldn’t take the heat. Perhaps it was time for me to exit the kitchen.
After a few failed attempts to find a crit circumstance that worked for me, and a really long bout of writer’s block, I managed to recover myself enough that I could write, by convincing myself that maybe I was just not a crit sort of a writer. I limited myself to troubleshooting my plots with my partner, who is great at reworking plots. As for making my craft better, I decided to go it alone.
Then I met @shamelessmash, and everything changed, because she changed the way I look at the act of beta reading, and the way I do it.
Way back when (uh, at 2017’s Fic Writer’s Retreat?), Mash and I were both working on longish projects, and, in part because I had a hand in helping her develop the idea for her lovely Sherlock fic A Case of Identity–The Musical, we agreed to trade beta.
(I can admit now that I hoped that she would accept beta from me and then like, forget that she’d offered to beta my fic in return.)
When she first asked me to read a chapter of ACOI, she specified that she wanted squee only: just positive feedback on what was working so far. I’d never had anyone ask that before, so I had no idea what was going to happen next. (Spoiler: really great things.)
At first, I thought, no problem! The fic was in the early stages of development, and we all want a little bit of encouragement along the way. As I read, and I thought, oh, there’s a comma here, a verb that could verb in a verbier way over there, I was tempted to mention it, but then I remembered her request and I refrained. I try, when I can, not to be a shitty friend. I also try not to be a shitty beta, which, hey you guys, means respecting the writer’s right to ask for the kind of feedback they want, and trying your best to offer it.
At the same time, the part of me that wants to be useful was squirming. How could 100% positive feedback possibly help someone hone their work into something better?
Boy was I about to find out. You will too, under the cut.
Keep reading
i haven’t ever managed to write this post but even though i’m primarily a spag (spelling punctuation and grammar) beta by instinct, i feel so passionately that the primary duty of a beta is to help their writer *flourish*. i use parenting tips like “always sandwich a criticism between two pieces of encouragement / squee” to make sure i’m not discouraging my writers. the worst thing you can do as a beta, a fundamental betrayal of your own craft, is to make your writer want to stop writing. and yet it’s so common! :P
(your writer will not necessarily *tell* you “your feedback was too harsh / inconsiderate / brusque and made me want to stop writing”. so you have to keep an eye on yourself. even if you’re correcting the thousandth misused semicolon in a spag beta, you *cannot* get snippy or snarky unless you know for 100% sure that your writer will find that amusing and not hurtful.)
another thing i do, another rule i try to follow as a beta to make sure i’m supporting my author, is whenever i point out a problem, i try to offer a solution. sometimes i don’t have one! sometimes it’s “this word order feels clunky but i’m not sure what else to do with it, what do you think?” but i try to always offer a solution or open a dialogue or both. sometimes it’s “how about we move this phrase over here”, sometimes it’s like “does that make him feel like this, or that, or more like the other thing”, sometimes it’s “is he still sitting down or did he stand up?” sometimes just checking on what an author meant to do is enough to help them realize they didn’t do it.
and like op said, don’t be afraid to squee. even when i’m doing a straight-up spag beta, i’ll wind up throwing in a few “i love this turn of phrase”, “this moment is adorkable and amazing and perfect”, “PRECIOUS DINGBAT”, because if you like something, why not say so? and if you don’t like anything your author is doing, why the fuck are you betaing for them?
