Beta Feedback Blues

So late yesterday afternoon I got some feedback on Doleful Creatures from a beta reader I don’t know.

I’m frightened to open it up.

It’s sitting there in my email, unopened (yet acknowledged, I’m no social dummy most of the time).

Why?

A few factors.

We’re leaving on a vacation shortly, and I’m not sure I’ve got the attention span right now to start into a beta feedback reading. Though it’s certainly possible I’ll be taking my Doleful Creatures materials with me as we travel. I always have grandiose visions of getting writing or editing done on vacation, and this time around, it’s no exception.

Also, I’m scared. What if it’s no good?

Yeah, not the best confidence-building role model there.

So I’m taking it with me. When I have a calm moment, I’ll open it up and read it. Hopefully, I’ll find it constructive.

I Hate Waiting

I was fortunate last week to find about half a dozen people willing to beta read the first 25 chapters of Doleful Creatures.

But now I have to wait.

And I hate waiting.

What I should be doing is to continue Revision 15. After all, I’ve got the first 25 chapters re-worked, but there’s some serious work to do to get the rest of the book caught up with the revisions. I have eliminated one plot point that’s been there from the start – meaning aside from characters, this book is NOT what it originally set out to be. Which is what you have to expect with a first novel, especially written by a person who favors starting out and seeing where the story ends up, rather than outlining it from the start. So I have to go through the rest of the book and kill the rest of that plot – not that I’ll be difficult; just the revision of one chapter (revealing how little this certain plot point added to the story, really).

But then there are new plot points I’ve introduced that I have to tie up in the last portion of the book, points meant to give my main characters – Aloysius the badger and Jarrod the magpie – a little hope at the end. No deus ex machina hope, but perhaps a little bit of relief from the pain they’ve had to suffer.

Then there’s the feedback from these beta readers to consider. I’m convinced at least one of them is going to provide some pretty powerful feedback that’ll either help me make this a great book or shatter my spirit to the point I reconsider my lifetime priorities. I don’t know what to expect from the others. I hope they’re all mean, because it is as I told them: I want this to be a good book, not one that gets me a pat on the head.

I also need to make a list of important place names because I want to draw a map that goes with the story. Why? Because I am a big nerd.

 

On Becoming A Finisher

I’ve got to get Doleful Creatures done. Here are the reasons:

• I’ve been stringing this book along since 2013
• Other books – notably The Hermit of Iapetus – are waiting in the wings
• I had a dream over the weekend wherein more ideas for another book came. Though I have to wonder how I’d get a book out of the following:

Rainey Creek, of the Weather-Man

Hermit lives up a creek, is “uncommon strong.” Wears colorful clothing because local homeless shelter gets repeat donations form a theater company. Has one eye missing, lost it in the Navy. Does not have glass eye, brags about holding water in the socket. He did have glass eye but he had a sneezing fit and the eye popped out and fell in the creek. He gets visions of trout and snails and sand and underwater currents and bubbles from it from time to time. There is another hermit living in the same area, his brother. They have not spoken to each other in 43 years. “There is too much time to think” he says. “To think about the present. There is not enough time to remember the past.”

He also builds log dams on the creek, and is always hauling around enormous blocks of wood to plug holes in the dam. He’s a big man, more Andre the Giant in build.

It’s a mess to be sure. But it could be something, if I could get Doleful Creatures finished.

I think I need beta readers again. Certainly for the first 25 chapters of the book – which have been added to, rearranged, and re-written. So if you want to read the, drop me a line.

So beta readers, Step One.

Step Two: The latter portions of the book are, in my humble estimation, good. I just need to get to the point I can bridge beginning and end.

Reasons to be optimistic: The original story I started writing for Doleful Creatures is about 95% gone, and I’m pretty sure with the most current revisions, that percentage will go up to about 99%. And that’s fine. Everywhere I read I hear that the original reason you start writing a book is going to get lost in translation as you continue to think about the story you want to tell and how it gets told.

Reasons to get off my butt and finish this: Becoming a finisher.

There is Hope After All . . .

“I’m becoming intrigued.”

Those three words from a beta reader are both wildly encouraging and – because they came at Chapter 29 – sobering.

Sobering. Because if it’s taken this long for the story to get intriguing, the work I’ve done to speed up the story at the beginning of the book isn’t yet done.

But at least there’s something there to attract attention and interest. And that’s what a writer hopes, for right? ATTENTION.

And the same thing readers want: A good, diverting story.

Or, as Sally Brown puts it so elegantly, restitution:

The reader wants restitution for putting in the time to read. And the writer certainly wants restitution for the time spent writing and editing.

Doleful Creatures is Done -- and Needs Beta Readers

I’m to that point now.

Doleful Creatures, Revision 8, is done.

It’s got to be a better story now. It’s got to be. But I’m going to have to let my beta readers judge that.

What’s next?

Well, I’m excited to move on to The Hermit of Iapetus. I’ve got a lot of ideas cooking for that one, and it’s been on the backburner long enough  I ought to be able to figure out what’s wrong with it (plenty, probably) and how to fix it (we’ll see if my fixing works good enough once my beta readers get back to me on Doleful Creatures).

Just don’t let me get to this point with my writing:

Beta Read ALL THE THINGS!

I have said this before on this blog, but I’m going to say it again: If you want to be a better writer, beta read someone else’s writing. Lots of it. Now.

I have the privilege of beta reading another book by a good friend right now. It’s illuminating. I see him do things that I wish I could do – and I see him do things I know I do that I know the both of us have got to stop doing now.

Cliches, for one. They really do stand out like sore thumbs. And complicated verb appendegary. The powerful present-tense verb is clearly the better way to write.

And the passive voice is ugly, folks. It’s ugly.

They’re easy to catch when you’re reading material you haven’t written, these mistakes. And others. So I hope after I finish beta reading this book I can go back to Doleful Creatures – my own creation – with clear eyes with which to see its beauty and its flaws.

What Stephen King says is true: “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” And I think that applies to beta reading for others as well as reading published works. Read books. Read a lot of books in a lot of different styles by a lot of different authors.

Run out of space to put your books. I’m getting more like Terry Pratchett, who said : “If you have enough book space, I don’t want to talk to you.”

Find authors you admire and read everything they’ve written – especially the early stuff. Concentrate on the early stuff. You’ll see them making the same mistakes, the same progression as you. I’ve seen that in the likes of C.S. Lewis, P.G. Wodehouse, and Clark Ashton Smith. Read. Just read. Then read some more.