Are You A…. Crit Partner or Beta Reader

Which One Are You?

(Please note, this is a repost from our very first sponsor posts of the challenge, Crit Partner or Beta Reader: Which One Are You by Susan Bischoff from March 14, 2011.)

As we near the end of ROW80, I thought I’d give you a post about editing. Here are some things that won’t be covered: proofreading, line-editing, copy-editing. These are all basically the same thing, and are a final phase that comes after the real editing has been completed. The lesson in this paragraph: proofreading does not equal editing.

So now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk crits and betas. A lot of times you’ll see these terms used interchangeably. I’m not sure there are official definitions or if there’s an actual difference, but in my head I definitely make a distinction between these two characters, and that’s what I’m going to talk about today. The difference between beta and crit in the mind of Susan, and how it applies to you.

To me, beta reading is a kindler, gentler art than critique. Beta readers are a small pool of readers with slightly varying tastes and life experiences (because our own life experience often plays into our enjoyment of fiction) who are going to give your book a read-through to see if they like it. While some are more critical than others, beta readers basically want to like your book and generally will. When you send things out to beta readers, you’re often looking for general impressions:

* Did it make sense?
* Did you enjoy the story? How was the pacing?
* Did you like my characters, esp. the mains? Were they relate-able, could you connect?
* Did you feel like there were holes? Was anything confusing?

These are all important things to know. Naturally, you think you’ve handled all this before you let anyone else see the book, but it’s good to get confirmation from fresh eyes and different brains.

Beta reading usually doesn’t take much longer than any other kind of reading, and, while some betas may note some typos for you, ask a few questions, or write a bunch of LOLs within your text, what you usually get back are a few paragraphs with general impressions.

Critique implies criticism, or at least critical thinking. Someone who is critiquing your work is not casual about their reading. They’re thinking like an editor. Unlike the beta who gives you a read-through, wanting to like your work, a crit partner combs your text, line by line, wanting to make sure as many people like it as possible. They’re looking for more than “Do I like this?” I guess the easiest way to describe reading for critique, in the way I think of it, is that a crit partner is looking for things to be wrong.

Which is why finding a good critique partner or editor is really hard. Because not everyone is good at looking for problems objectively, from the mindset of Genre-Reader X. Some people who go looking for mistakes do so because they get personal satisfaction in finding mistakes and pointing them out rather than the in the editorial process itself. Some people involve ego in their crits. Some people aren’t able to step out of their own voice and style and objectively evaluate work that is different from the way they would have written it.

Good critique involves, amongst other things, understanding the voice and style of the author you’re working for, and understanding the genre you’re reading. Because as a crit partner, you’re placing yourself in the character of Genre-Reader X, a picky reader who would be happy to write a scathing, 1-star review on Amazon. You’re undercover as Genre-Reader X, looking for anything that might confuse or pull the reader out of the story, when, in reality, you’re really the person who stands between your author and that 1-star review.

As a crit partner, even though you’re in there looking for mistakes, it’s not because you want to tear your partner down, it’s because your job is to serve and protect your author by helping to find weak spots and flaws that she was too close to see. It’s then up to her to decide, hopefully with the same amount of objectively you brought to the job, whether and how to make changes. You might provide thoughts, guidance, suggestions, but the work is hers, and so are the decisions.

Now you have some understanding of how I think of these two different terms and we can get to my real question: In your own work, are you doing beta or crit?

I see this a lot: “Whew! I finally finished the first draft. Huzzah! Now a quick pass for typos and then it’s off to the betas!”

I’m here to suggest, based on what I’ve seen in rough drafts over the past few years, that you do more than a quick pass for typos. When you’re writing your first draft, it’s important for many people to just write through and not go back and edit the work as you go. There’s value in that. But your readers, even the pre-release readers on your team, deserve more than a pass for typos. In fact, they probably don’t much care about the typos (proof-reading being an entirely DIFFERENT event that comes after this phase).

But, more importantly, part of growing as a writer is learning to be better evaluators of fiction, including our own. It may be especially true for indies, many of whom won’t have the benefit of professional editorial services, or will have to pay for those by the hour, that learning to put yourself in that Genre-Reader X suit and to look at your work objectively will be an invaluable skill. I think that the more you’re able to do this after your draft is written, the more you’ll be able to internalize what works and what doesn’t, and the stronger your first drafts will be going forward.

So what I’m suggesting in this post is to consider becoming a critiquer, as opposed to a beta, of your own work, before anyone else ever sees it. Rather than giving it a quick read-through, and one in which you want to love everything you’ve written, learn to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and evaluate. Think critically and learn to find your own weak points.

Editing, whether it’s for yourself or a fellow writer, is a skill all its own. Few people are naturally good at all aspects of writing. Learning to analyze what works and what doesn’t in fiction and in your genre, learning to be objective about your work–these things can take time. Probably the hardest thing is learning to see what’s actually on the page, rather than what’s in your head that you meant to be on the page.

Keep practicing your editorial skills, on your own work, and on work you critique for your peers, and they’ll improve like any other skill set in your Writer Arsenal of DOOM.

~*~

Susan Bischoff

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