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30 questions fic meme, day 24: a little help from my friends
24 – Betaing – How many betas do you like to use to make sure there aren't any major flaws in your fic? Do you have a Beta horror story or dream story?
It depends on the story. For short things I usually manage to limit myself to one. Usually. Missing Persons went through at least nine, over the course of three years, and I would have been happy to have more if I had known more people I could inflict it on in good conscience. Everything That You Can Keep had four, which put me about at the limit of the amount of simultaneous input I could absorb, although as I say that I realize What to Do After Firing had five--it required no drastic rewriting, though, and beta comments are easier to take in inverse proportion to the amount of work they require of me. *g*
...Not that I can ever recall a beta trying to get me to keep anything shorter than I wanted to, except maybe![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
iulia for the sake of my own mental health. Anyway.
I remember, back in 2003, wondering when I would be good enough as a writer not to need a beta, and I look back at that now and laugh. But that was beforeiulia had started betaing for me, and having a beta who understands me and (the vast majority of the time) the stories I was trying to tell changed pretty much everything. Iulia once looked up from a story I'd given her--we were living together at the time, sitting side by side on the couch with our laptops--and said, "This is boring. Start over." And she was right, and I didn't even want to curl up and die, I just started over.
Generally when I have another beta other than Iulia it's because I feel like someone needs to see the story who didn't share my brain while the whole thing unfolded from idea into writing. The more betas I seek out, the more uncertain I am about the story--betas are, as someone or other once described it to me, the friend who makes sure you don't leave the house with spinach in your teeth! Or wearing something unflattering. Or wearing anything less than the very most flattering possible thing in your wardrobe. Or without knowing exactly where you're going and that there is enough gas in the car to get there.
Betas are awesome, is I think what I am trying to say. Iulia is busy this morning or I would make her read this before I posted it.
My worst beta experience was probably my very first one. The first long story I wrote in Buffy fandom, I knew I wanted betas for it but I didn't know anyone in the fandom--I was just barely interacting with people via mailing lists, and Iulia, a hardcore Buffy/Angel shipper, really did not want to read my weird Spike/Angel thing, or at least so I assumed--so I put out a call on a mailing list and got a couple of volunteers, both of whom checked my commas and told me to go for it. With a 30,000-word story. On which I had, in fact, written the ending thematically totally backward from what it should have been, but neither of them noticed because we never talked about what the hell I was trying to do with the story.
The one person who did notice wrote a multi-page footnoted SCREED, demolishing said story on the BetterBuffyFics mailing list. To this day I treasure it as my favorite piece of feedback--I mean, it was an entire ESSAY about my story! And she was right about a bunch of the things she hated! And the things she was wrong about, eh, I knew she was wrong. I had every intention of trying to track this woman down and get her to beta the sequel, but then I fell into another fandom before I ever got around to writing the sequel, so the point became moot. Still: person who so eloquently and extensively hated on my story in 2003 on BetterBuffyFics, I think maybe your name was Laura, ILU.
I think my favorite beta experience to date--I mean, they're all awesome in their own way! I love all my betas forver!--but the one that remains my mental archetype of the smoothest and easiest and most fun getting betaed can be was the year I spent writing Hawks and Hands, getting each scene betaed as I wrote it byiulia and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
brooklinegirl, so that by the time the whole monster was written it was nearly all in final-draft shape and just had to be run by somebody who hadn't read the whole thing to see if it was actually shaped like a story when you read it all in one go. katallison said it was, and so off it went to get posted, just weeks after I finished writing.
This is a thing about the way I write, I've come to understand--I need to be constantly telling the story to someone, and--unless the feedback is along the lines of "there is no way to make this story work the way you're telling it," which I think has happened exactly once, in terms of a story that I was seriously trying to write--I don't mind getting feedback on a story as I'm writing it. I prefer it, really, because being told I'm going down a blind alley while I'm still in the process of going is much easier to correct than writing an entire story down a blind alley and then having to go back and rewrite later. For me. Other people's writing-brains, I am reliably informed, work very differently.
It depends on the story. For short things I usually manage to limit myself to one. Usually. Missing Persons went through at least nine, over the course of three years, and I would have been happy to have more if I had known more people I could inflict it on in good conscience. Everything That You Can Keep had four, which put me about at the limit of the amount of simultaneous input I could absorb, although as I say that I realize What to Do After Firing had five--it required no drastic rewriting, though, and beta comments are easier to take in inverse proportion to the amount of work they require of me. *g*
...Not that I can ever recall a beta trying to get me to keep anything shorter than I wanted to, except maybe
iulia for the sake of my own mental health. Anyway.I remember, back in 2003, wondering when I would be good enough as a writer not to need a beta, and I look back at that now and laugh. But that was before
iulia had started betaing for me, and having a beta who understands me and (the vast majority of the time) the stories I was trying to tell changed pretty much everything. Iulia once looked up from a story I'd given her--we were living together at the time, sitting side by side on the couch with our laptops--and said, "This is boring. Start over." And she was right, and I didn't even want to curl up and die, I just started over. Generally when I have another beta other than Iulia it's because I feel like someone needs to see the story who didn't share my brain while the whole thing unfolded from idea into writing. The more betas I seek out, the more uncertain I am about the story--betas are, as someone or other once described it to me, the friend who makes sure you don't leave the house with spinach in your teeth! Or wearing something unflattering. Or wearing anything less than the very most flattering possible thing in your wardrobe. Or without knowing exactly where you're going and that there is enough gas in the car to get there.
Betas are awesome, is I think what I am trying to say. Iulia is busy this morning or I would make her read this before I posted it.
My worst beta experience was probably my very first one. The first long story I wrote in Buffy fandom, I knew I wanted betas for it but I didn't know anyone in the fandom--I was just barely interacting with people via mailing lists, and Iulia, a hardcore Buffy/Angel shipper, really did not want to read my weird Spike/Angel thing, or at least so I assumed--so I put out a call on a mailing list and got a couple of volunteers, both of whom checked my commas and told me to go for it. With a 30,000-word story. On which I had, in fact, written the ending thematically totally backward from what it should have been, but neither of them noticed because we never talked about what the hell I was trying to do with the story.
The one person who did notice wrote a multi-page footnoted SCREED, demolishing said story on the BetterBuffyFics mailing list. To this day I treasure it as my favorite piece of feedback--I mean, it was an entire ESSAY about my story! And she was right about a bunch of the things she hated! And the things she was wrong about, eh, I knew she was wrong. I had every intention of trying to track this woman down and get her to beta the sequel, but then I fell into another fandom before I ever got around to writing the sequel, so the point became moot. Still: person who so eloquently and extensively hated on my story in 2003 on BetterBuffyFics, I think maybe your name was Laura, ILU.
I think my favorite beta experience to date--I mean, they're all awesome in their own way! I love all my betas forver!--but the one that remains my mental archetype of the smoothest and easiest and most fun getting betaed can be was the year I spent writing Hawks and Hands, getting each scene betaed as I wrote it by
iulia and brooklinegirl, so that by the time the whole monster was written it was nearly all in final-draft shape and just had to be run by somebody who hadn't read the whole thing to see if it was actually shaped like a story when you read it all in one go. katallison said it was, and so off it went to get posted, just weeks after I finished writing. This is a thing about the way I write, I've come to understand--I need to be constantly telling the story to someone, and--unless the feedback is along the lines of "there is no way to make this story work the way you're telling it," which I think has happened exactly once, in terms of a story that I was seriously trying to write--I don't mind getting feedback on a story as I'm writing it. I prefer it, really, because being told I'm going down a blind alley while I'm still in the process of going is much easier to correct than writing an entire story down a blind alley and then having to go back and rewrite later. For me. Other people's writing-brains, I am reliably informed, work very differently.