#beta reader rec

Ok everyone, this is me highlighting the amazing work of beta reader @victor-page.

Now with all the AI developments and plagiarism happening on platforms like Tumblr, we're looking for someone reliable and trustworthy. We all worry about work being stolen, fed through ChatGPT, or receiving generic feedback. And worst of all? Being scammed.

I was very plain with Victor from the start. This is for free fanfiction, so there wouldn't be any money involved, and also I write very heavy romance and smut. He agreed to these conditions, and then I received some amazing feedback that had me looking at my own draft with new eyes.

I struggle with grammar and not knowing when something should sit and breathe. He told me precisely where something was too bulky and needed a break. He pointed out where I could use an emdash vs a semicolon to make paragraphs flow smoother.

And my biggest paranoia - dialogue. I am someone who tortures myself over dialogue because I want my stories to have a little buildup before my characters get together and I'm constantly doubting if my humor/flirty lines are being perceived by my readers the way that they do in my head. Victor gave me the biggest reassurance that the conversations flow well, and that there is no confusion about what is being implied with any of the dialogue which was a huge breather for me.

He also gave feedback on the smut scenes and didn't stutter, only gave suggestions that could bring more tension into the writing, which is great since a lot of people kind of get awkward to critique that stuff.

It also feels really good to get another pair of eyes on work that's as long as City of Us, because as writers, we tend to get swamped with details, and we're exhausted by the time we post. Sometimes everything feels like word soup because we've reread the same lines over and over to the point that we don't catch repetition or spelling errors.

Victor did a great job of catching the typos and also showing which parts of the story deserved to have a few extra lines of their own. His feedback was very appreciated and changed City of Us into my first, grammatically correct, typo-free fic.