Friday, May 03, 2013

Words from Joan!

Joan joins us with some wise words.
As our beloved grunts have remarked upon, online fem/ literature seems to be increasingly hard to find. However, I suppose a lot of writers subscribe to uberetc, so harken to the words of this wise old lady :)

I've said it time and again: Get Yourselves Beta Readers. Ze amended this: get yourselves *good* beta readers! But how do you know that the person willing to be that is actually qualified?

Short answer: if she doesn't drive you to the point where you want to strangle her, she may not be.

I became aware of this when Astrid (http://ylvapublishing.wordpress.com/) agreed to beta one of my stories. Which was, of course, perfect to begin with. Or so I thought. Let me give you an example: The narrator has just taken her latest interest to a bar, and said interest snuggles up to her. Astrid: "I want to experience the bar. What kind of music is being played? Can you feel the bass in your stomach? Are couples using corners that provide privacy? How does Penny (the barkeeper) look?"

Gawd! Interest snuggles up to Narrator, isn't that enough? Well, no. Astrid was right, of course, and I wrote additional words. Now, do this fifty times and you know why I want(ed) to strangle Astrid. It's also why I want her canonised (alive!).

For the next round she is going to take a closer look at character development -- I'm quaking in my boots... (And when we're done with that, she'll hand me over to one of her editors. Here we go again.)

I've dabbled at beta'ing, but I can't hold a candle to Astrid's thoroughness. So I'll sing her praise. Don't consider yourselves lucky if you get to work with such a good beta -- consider yourselves very, *very* lucky!

Joan

Thank you Joan for coming by and rambling. Greatly appreciated. Got something to say, let us know. Go enjoy your updates.

Peace, Health and Happiness.

Elisa

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