Novel Writing Made Less Impossible -- The Care and Handling of Beta Readers

You have a manuscript on your hard drive, or on the cloud. You've edited the darn thing to within an inch of its life. What next?

(By the way, if you followed my instructions from last week, you should have the start of a second book by now. Go ahead and return to least week's entry ... we'll wait.)

Like if you received some bad news from your doctor, you ask for a second opinion. Well, if you've written something that might warrant fresh eyeballs and fresh perspectives, I recommend BETA READERS.

When you want to challenge a computer program to find its bugs, you unleash your beta testers to find nicks in the armor of an "invincible" program. Well, beta readers pick apart your story, looking for inconsistencies, awkward phrasing, and the overall stuff that just doesn't make the tale work.

They also tell you what's RIGHT about your manuscript so you know you're on the right track. In the past, I've used a couple of people who'd go over my manuscript to find any errors and to see if it made any damn sense at all. But after studying the idea of beta reading, I decided to go big on this one for three stories I wrote for my new book, The Haunting Scripts of Bachelors Grove, inspired by the comic book from Silver Phoenix Entertainment.

To recruit beta readers, you can go to any social media. I chose Facebook, putting out the call in my regular newsfeed as well as my Facebook Live show. I hoped to pick up around a dozen people who might want to read three horror stories of mine. I wound up with almost fifty people!!! I wasn't ready for that so I scrambled to catch up with my volunteers. I assembled surveys that they'd use for their replies to me. The questionnaires revolved around the beleivability of the protagonist, the antagonist, and the challenge as well as the plot. I also asked what stood out for them, good or bad, and asked them what I forgot to ask them (an old question I used when I performed interviews back in my journalism days.

(Saying I had fifty volunteers didn't mean I wound up with all of them working. Some never replied when I asked who wanted to read which of the three stories -- two short stories and one novella. Others chose a story, but never asked for their survey. I understand ... life happens and sometimes, interest wanes. And occasionally, someone thinks they'd make a great beta reader and then discovers that it's actually WORK.

But to make up for it, almost half of my volunteers not only commented on one story, but many did two and a few even managed to reply to all three. I am sooooo blessed.)

I will probably print my questionnaire later for you later. I also intend to create one more survey when this process ends (I'm about two weeks away from wrapping this up), but this one will cover how I performed, whether I met their expectations as a taskmaster, and where I could improve. I promise to share the results with you when it's done.

Anyway, I promised anyone who worked on one of the stories that they'd get a copy of the book when it came out. Don't tell them, but I plan to sweeten the reward for those who put in a little more effort.

First thing I did was to create a secret Facebook page and invited all my betas in. HINT: you cannot bring anyone into a secret group who isn't already a friend. So if someone cold contacts you and wants in, you'll need to friend them if you want their participation. For myself and this inaugural practice, I rejected no one, even if I didn't know them. (NOTE: I received four people I didn't know, one via a friend who volunteered ... of those four, only two requested stories and none of them have returned their surveys. This may not be typical, but it shows what awesome friends I have.)

I kept in touch with my readers as much as possible, usually via Facebook PMs, which was one of the reasons I chose that platform. I also used the page's Facebook Live to do quick films, giving my personal thanks and to keep people posted.

And I thank the heck out of them. They could have ignored me. They could have just moved on with their lives. But they stopped, considered what I was asking of them, and took on One More Thing To Do in their lives. These are people with jobs and families and hobbies that fill up their day ... and the fact that they chose to help ME, of all people, humbles me and makes me want to not disappoint them. These are my new heroes.

Of course, once you get the surveys back, what do you do with them? Next week, I'll tell you how I approached my beta readers' criticisms.

NEXT WEEK: How to interpret your beta reader data and what to do with it.

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