On My Beta Readers

I’ve just finished reading the last beta reader’s manuscript on The House That Nobody Built. It was the longest, with over 1.700 comments, and by the end I taped an envelope with the page numbers of each chapter to my computer tower. I crossed them off to encourage myself to continue.

Using six beta readers drew surprise from most of the authors I know. Most only used a couple. Two concerned friends kindly e-mailed me saying they thought more would be too much work for me, and they feared I’d overwhelm myself. After a month of self-imposed deadlines and legitimately fearing for my eyesight, I’m glad I stuck with my six. Here’s why.

470-odd pages look better when broken down.

My six covered more ranges of experience. I get multiple men, multiple women, multiple ethnicities and regions represented. Some were writers and novelists, at least one works in a related craft, and two were simply passionate Genre readers. The professional zoologist knew things my linguist-nut friend didn't, and vice versa.

The bigger the population, the easier it was to discern whether something was actually functional or problematic. One of six beta readers hating a joke was not so bad, but if he’d been one of two, I’d have an exaggerated sense of the importance.

As Stephen King covered in his On Writing, having more betas also let opposing opinions go up against each other. If 1/6 was terrified by a scene and another 1/6 thought it was trite, with the others being neutral, then the tie can go to the runner.

Alternatively, as was usually my approach, I could e-mail the two outliers and find out more about the nature of their reactions, using the answers from one to form probing questions for the other, and figure out broader functionality. With only a couple betas, I’d have less of a chance of catching these instances, and at least three times during the crit such ping-ponging seriously helped balance the plot.

There were smaller boons, too. Only the third beta reader to turn in her copy noticed the following typo.

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One typo’s not so much, but only one of the six pointed out that people were eating the carcass of what had previously been identified as a poisonous creature. Only one caught a reference to Douglas Adams, and had the guts to say it was too bald and, as a fellow fan, it should go. And while I enjoyed their specialties, just as important were their ignorances; what people didn’t know or misbelieved about typical con-men or prisons had to be compensated for every bit as much as my errors.

Then there were the consensuses. When the death of one character left 3/6 readers deeply afraid for the safety of the rest of the cast, I knew I was on to something. That case was particularly relieving because of how hard it’d been for me to kill that character in the first place. There were many reasons for it to happen and I’ll likely write about it another time – but in this case, the reader pool’s reactions let me know the hard choice was the right choice. As much as I trust certain individuals, one out of two people can’t convince the way a majority of a pool can.

This is not disembodied data or focus-tested art. I know these beta readers personally or professionally, trust them, and have corresponded after they turned in their copies. I’m not looking to score 73% approval for a fight scene; I’m comparing human reactions on the page and checking in-depth as to how folks differ in experiencing my work. It may be that I’m too artsy for pure scientism. Whatever you call this, it’s the process that’s yielded my best work in the past. It’s the one I’ve got to rely on now, as I strive to produce the best thing I’ve ever written. Like I tell you every time, my beloved readers, I will not put this out unless it’s worth your time. I’m very grateful to these six for helping me get this far, as I will be to the theta readers next.