beta reading

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Sunday retrospective

steampunk-eye1The middle week of November 2014 was all about the edit.

I posted when I decided to kill one of my favourite characters.

I wrote several posts about editing:

I also wrote a post about heat-ratings. Both more and less sex than people expect seems to upset people. What is an author to do?

And I referred readers to a nice post from Danielle Hanna, about using lists and careful analysis in developing your characters and your plots.

And on the day I finished the draft for the beta readers, I wrote a post on beta readers

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A Baron for Becky is done

I’ve made the final beta reading changes. I’ve sent it off to a couple of trusted readers for their comments. I need to give it one more read through when I’m fresh, and then it goes to the proofreader.

A Baron for Becky is done. It started to be a novella, then a long novella, and now a short novel. But it’s done.

That’s all I wanted to say.

the-beginning

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Beginning to think about edit for Farewell to Kindness

A_Quiet_Read_by_William_Kay_BlacklockI asked those beta-reading my novel to come back with feedback by the end of December, but I’m already beginning to get some responses. What amazing people those beta readers are. I’m getting lots of affirmation, but also some really useful advice. Thank you so much, you wonderful people.

If I’m to have Farewell to Kindness up by 1 March for pre-orders, I have a great deal to do in January and February–and I just worked out yesterday that Encouraging Prudence will need to go to beta readers in mid-May to give the same kind of timeline. So the pressure is on, and the excellent feedback from the beta readers is going to be really useful in helping me focus my attention in the final edit.

Because I work in a writing business where everything must be peer reviewed before it goes to clients, and because my commercial writing is for people who ‘own’ the content, I’m used to accepting reviews. But serving the criticisms with a healthy dollop of praise certainly helps!

I absolutely love that each reader so far has become engaged enough with the characters to discuss their motivations. And every single one has commented on the death of one of my hero’s buddies in the final showdown.

K.M. Weillard has written a useful post for beta readers and authors. My beta readers so far have not needed any of her tips, bless them, but I’ll certainly follow her pointers for authors.