Post by account_disabled on Jan 2, 2024 5:13:59 GMT
Or, as they are also called, beta readers . Mine is a very short experience, but it was enough to make me understand that beta readers are a huge resource for an author . I'm talking about an author, not a fiction writer, because beta readers are also very useful for those who write non-fiction, manuals and, why not?, screenplays for comics and cinema. My first experience with beta readers, or rather with a single beta reader, dates back to 1994, when I had my girlfriend read and correct my stories - written by hand in a notebook, since I had neither a typewriter nor a computer. She was better at grammar than me, but she also gave me typical editor suggestions.
I remember one related to my novel in diary form: she made me delete a sentence because it clashed with the serious topic of the novel. I had no one else to read those first attempts at creative writing and I was too ashamed to ask any friends. Why does an author need beta readers? In his autobiography On Writing Stephen King wrote about Special Data having his wife read his manuscripts. But he is not the only famous author to do so. Every now and then, in the final acknowledgments of some novels, authors thank their wife or husband for previewing their manuscript and giving valuable advice. But why do we authors need beta readers? Are they our proofreaders? Or our editors? Neither one nor the other. They are, in fact, beta readers . They do not proofread , although they can – and must – point out typos and grammatical errors.
They don't do editing, because maybe they aren't editors. But then what do they do? They have some features that prove useful to the author. They offer different points of view : we, as authors, read from our point of view, beta readers from theirs. 4 eyes see better than 2, right? The author is too inside the story, and too fond of it, to be able to see it with detachment. The beta reader can instead m***acre her as he wants. They have a different literary curriculum : each of us has our own readings, some coincide, obviously, but otherwise each reader is different from the others. So what? So beta readers can discover the lack of originality in a story or perhaps find enormous potential in it. They may be more knowledgeable about literature than us. However, they are potential readers : they therefore give us direct proof of their appreciation of the story.
I remember one related to my novel in diary form: she made me delete a sentence because it clashed with the serious topic of the novel. I had no one else to read those first attempts at creative writing and I was too ashamed to ask any friends. Why does an author need beta readers? In his autobiography On Writing Stephen King wrote about Special Data having his wife read his manuscripts. But he is not the only famous author to do so. Every now and then, in the final acknowledgments of some novels, authors thank their wife or husband for previewing their manuscript and giving valuable advice. But why do we authors need beta readers? Are they our proofreaders? Or our editors? Neither one nor the other. They are, in fact, beta readers . They do not proofread , although they can – and must – point out typos and grammatical errors.
They don't do editing, because maybe they aren't editors. But then what do they do? They have some features that prove useful to the author. They offer different points of view : we, as authors, read from our point of view, beta readers from theirs. 4 eyes see better than 2, right? The author is too inside the story, and too fond of it, to be able to see it with detachment. The beta reader can instead m***acre her as he wants. They have a different literary curriculum : each of us has our own readings, some coincide, obviously, but otherwise each reader is different from the others. So what? So beta readers can discover the lack of originality in a story or perhaps find enormous potential in it. They may be more knowledgeable about literature than us. However, they are potential readers : they therefore give us direct proof of their appreciation of the story.