so, so fruity

How do you ask for a beta reader? If you have a friend in your fandom, you can ask them if they’d be willing. If you don’t, or if you’re shy about it, you can put up a post here on tumblr and/or add an author’s note to the end of your chapter or fic. Basically, let people know you want a beta and people who are willing will reach out. 

Where/how do you send them work? This is something that you can work out with your beta reader, but a popular method to use is Google docs. It allows you as the author to give the beta suggesting privileges instead of editing privileges, so they can comment and suggest changes but you still have full control over the text. If docs isn’t your style, you can write emails back and forth, share Words docs, hop on a discord server, etc. Whatever works for both of you. 

What should you ask of them? That depends on what kind of help you’re looking for. There are different kinds of beta readers and different skills they’re willing/able to provide. You might end up wanting multiple betas to cover different things. Some things betas can read for are:

spelling, punctuation, and grammar (often referred to as SPAG)

canon compliance

sensitivity (around race, sexuality, gender issues, ableism, etc)

plot structure

As you can see, those are all very different things requiring different skills and knowledge base. You could have a sensitivity reader who has never seen the canon, for example. You could have someone who is an expert in canon who can’t help with SPAG. Etc. 

What can you offer in return as thanks? Very often, all betas want is a shout out in your author’s note. Still, since every person is different, just ask your beta and see what would be appreciated. 

Other advice: Talk to your beta. Talk to them before they start work to let them know what you want them to do, and more importantly what you don’t want them to do. If you want them to focus on plot and save the SPAG stuff til later, make that clear right up front. If something they are doing is making you uncomfortable, tell them. They can’t read your mind, and since they’re trying to help you, you need to tell them if they’re not doing that. You also need to listen to them. If you’re asking them to do something they aren’t comfortable doing, then accept that you’ll need a second beta for that part of it. And if you aren’t a good fit as writer and beta, that’s okay! We all have different styles of writing and communicating. It doesn’t mean you can’t be friends. It just means that this particular writer/beta relationship just doesn’t work. 

Offer or ask for a trigger/squick list.  I find it good practice to put a working tag list up at the top of my document along with a rough summary so my beta has enough information to tap out if they need to.  If I’m in brainstorming mode, I’ll mention where the plot may be going.

We've a role for people who are interested in offering beta help and a channel specifically for people to find someome who is interested in beta'ing their work.

I've dabbled for friends, though I'm not a great option for a beta partner (I'm thorough and thus very slow and I have too many of my own projects to be able to dedicate the time to someone else's that I feel would be necessary). But I do a chapter or half a chapter from time to time.

My advice as you're looking for a beta? Be sure you know what help you want. As a beta, going to someone and asking "what do you want me to focus on?" And being told "just let me know if it's good" is very unhelpful. When I edit my own work, I do rewrites and plot edits as needed and those are a lot of work. If you really want me to go over "everything," then I can and will give you suggestions that will double your writing time if you took them all.

Now, I do not actually do that because I've never met someone who actually wants it. But figuring out a balance has been hard for me. So, my advice, pick out 1-3 things you care about the most - spag, characterization, plot coherence, canon compatibility, etc - and request the beta focus on that.

Don’t use a beta. 

Beta readers aren’t for everyone, and that’s totally okay! The times when I’m recommending it are for people who are unsure about something or are looking for help. If you’re feeling pretty okay about where your story’s at, then there’s no need to stress yourself out at all. 

Betas are great for people who like to collaborate. They’re helpful for people who are writing in a language they’re still learning. They’re a great resource for writers who are exploring characters or situations that they’re personally unfamiliar with. They can help you get past a mental block or check your story for canon consistency. They can even just look for typos. 

If you don’t need that kind of help or if asking for it hurts more than it helps, then please don’t feel like you have to do it. 

My problem with betas isn’t anxiety, it’s impatience. Once I’ve written something, I just want to post it right away. If I have to wait more than maybe 10 minutes, I start to go a little bit nuts. That makes getting a beta almost impossible. I’ve made the conscious decision that I’m okay with typos and spelling mistakes and maybe not being canon compliant because I’m just having fun writing stories about interesting characters.

I had someone offer to beta read mine as a gift, and their extremely correct, no fragments instincts did NOT work with my taste in colloquial teenage dialogue 😆 so I found somebody who would look for what I wanted help with--scenes where lots was happening, to make sure it was clear who was talking/where everyone was/what they were doing

I first created my "Just Girly Things" site skin several years ago, using the Do You Love the Colours of the Sky skin from @ao3skin as inspo.

I was going to post it here today, but when I tested it out to take screenshots I realized that I've learned a lot since I made it years ago and so I spent the evening updating and improving it.

You can find the original skin, as well as the improved version pictured above, over here on github.

I recommend pairing it with @zerafinacss 's Replace the AO3 Icons 2.0 (reversi version). I think their choice of colours works better with this skin than AO3's default.

You don't need to write the story right now, but you need to write a moment.

Forget the plot, the grammar, the spelling...

It doesn't have to be good. It doesn't even have to continue from where you left off previously.

Try writing:

The scene that happens right before it all changes.

The moment before it all goes wrong.

A conversation that starts in the middle that the character's don't finish.

Dialogue they scream at themselves in the mirror, because they couldn't say it out loud to the person that needed it the most.

Write for five minutes without stopping.

Don't fix spelling. Don't reread. Don't delete. If it's messy, it's working.

Fics that I think I scribbled off just to get them out there get the kindest, most rapturous feedback. Fics I slaved over, agonized over, bled my soul into get a couple tepid replies. Fics I thought were me revealing the darkness and weird kink that lives in my brain, scared to even post it for fear of judgement, get, “Aaaw that’s so sweet!” replies. Baffling.

My conclusion? You just never know. You really just can’t know. When I did a workshop with 20 other writers I would try to guess what their critique of my story would be and I was right maybe 1 in 20 times. Only one other writer would have the same critique for my story that I had. And it wasn’t even always the same person.

The encouraging part about this is, if self recrimination, the fear that you know what people won’t like about your story, is holding you back, just say fuck it! You’re almost certainly wrong! All you can do is make it the best story you can for the energy you have. And yeah, sometimes that means scribbling it out in an evening and kicking it out to the void of the internet before you can change your mind or worry about editing it more than once because then you’ll never post it.

The message, therefore, becomes:

Find your story and tell it, and don't allow yourself to be affected by what you think other people will think of it.

Is this tough? OF COURSE IT FUCKING IS. All our damn lives we're taught to second-guess our own narratives with an eye to what other people will make, or think, of them. (And twice as hard if we're women, because of the ruthless socialization to which we're subjected.)

But your vision is the single thing that's the most perfectly yours in the whole world. And when you're writing, the experience of putting down on paper (or in electrons) what you see and feel, your own true take on the world's reality, is the closest to perfect freedom—as you tell the story that is uniquely yours—that you will ever get.

The Deity itself is waiting on you for that story. No one else can tell it. No one else shares the unique psychological and life-experience coordinates, the unique temporospatial spot, from which it's being told. Nothing in this whole physical universe can compare. This whole universe will be lesser without your story, told.

Or, Use It Or Lose It

It's not just that Chat GPT essentially makes my job as a writer and editor obsolete -- if not now then definitely in the future -- although that's probably the reason why I was hesitant to jump into the deep when most people did. I wanted to observe it a bit longer from the outside, like I tend to do with most new technologies.

I see so many people who won't even write their own emails anymore, sit with a problem and come up with a solution, look up a simple fact on Wikipedia, or read their friends' long messages. And AI has just been around for just a few years. Scary.

It frightens me how fast people are willing to give up thinking and how many have surrendered their hard-earned skills in such a short time. I don't think people realize how fast you can lose a skill when you stop using it. (This is coming from my neurology angle. If you want to know more about this, the terms you need to research are "neuroplasticity" and the "use it or lose it" principle for neural circuits.)

It feels like the people who keep doing stuff without AI will be the only ones left with reasonably intact critical thinking skills, writing skills, and deep reading skills, and the rest of the world won't even realize what they have given away. And that's not even taking into account what's left of our attention span after nearly 20 years of social media.

Other reasons why I don't like AI:

It is factually wrong so often, but with such confidence, I don't think people realize it. It promotes misinformation and if AI keeps learning from AI, the problem will only grow.

Interacting with customer service bots almost never answers the questions I have.

I don't like it if a friend mentions they used AI to reply to my text message when they were tired. What the actual fuck? I want to connect with my friend, not with Chat GPT. I'd rather be left unread for days than get an immediate but artificial reply.

As you well know, AI capitalizes on the creative work of actual humans who worked hard to hone their skills.

The spaces where I share my art are flooded with "okay enough" AI slop, making it even harder for me to find and connect with my audience.

As a reader I agree with this tweet by Ian Boudreau: "Why should I bother reading something that nobody could be bothered to write?"

It takes so much electricity and drinkable water to make AI run. That doesn't sit well with me, coming from a generation that's been told a million times to turn off the light when we leave the room or to turn off the tap while we're brushing our teeth. It feels like we're setting the planet on fire for short-term convenience.

I actually like to read and write. I don't want bots to do it for me and I don't want to be forced to let them do so by the programs or apps I use.

🙄 Fixed it.

Like I get that is practical advice, but people should not have to fucking do that. They should not have to train themselves around not sounding like AI, when AI only sounds like that BECAUSE it was trained on them.