How To Get The Most From Your Beta Readers
Here’s a short beta reading playbook which folks might find useful when asking beta readers to critique your MS final (ahem…) draft. Often betas just read it and wave goodbye or damn it with faint, non-specific praise:
“Wasn’t bad, thanks.”
“Can’t put my finger on why the ending really sucked.”
“No idea what thingummy was doing with that whatsit. Forget what chapter it was.”etc, etc…
This outcome helps neither the MS under scrutiny or the author’s pre-publishing anxiety. It’s also a time-waster for potentially both parties – so use your betas wisely! (said Aldous Huxley never). Instead, use a more structured approach; one which allows you to benefit from the exchange as much as the reader does in having a(nother) free book to peruse.
Obviously, the questions below can be tailored to suit both the reader’s focus/expertise and your requirements, aligned with whatever stage your draft is at. Hope this is useful and feel free to comment with more questions or criteria you already use or can think of!
1. Questions
- Did the story make sense?
- What parts stirred your emotions? (or maybe you just thought were ‘quite good’?)
- Which characters were engaging / you cared about? Any you didn’t?
- Were you bored / did you skip over any sections?
- Were you confused anywhere?
- Did you ever part from the story in disbelief? (e.g. character motivations, action sequences etc)
- Was there anything that felt unsatisfying or incomplete?
- Did it read like a book you might buy?
2. Evaluation Criteria
- Relevance to Story
- Clarity of Writing
- Entertainment Value
3. Scoring
- Score out of 5 or…
- Overall / Per scene / Per chapter section.
P.S. If you do want to go all out on the beta scene, then this guide to a ‘Thought Map’ approach by Dawn Field might be just the ticket.
Thanks, Jonathan. As someone who will be trying to find beta readers in a few weeks’ time, this was helpful advice. Do you have any thoughts on how to find beta readers? The only advice I’ve read basically said to advertise on social media, but as my author accounts are new, my audience is limited.
Hi there. I’m part of a critique group formed after a writers’ event and also have a network of ~4 people who are willing to ready my ‘final’ drafts and get quizzed. But I’ve seen author/reader matching sessions on FB groups (like ProWriting Aid’s) which might help. There’s also a bunch of sites that can do this. Most importantly: don’t pay for this! Real beta readers like to read, they don’t want money, they want the pleasure of a new story. If you feel they’re behaving oddly, then just pull out. I also send mobi files using Email-to-Kindle to control my whole MS distributions to my beta folks, not Word attachments etc via email. Might be overkill but my MS, my rules (at least at that stage 😉 ) . Here’s a resource giving lots of beta advice and more sites you can try out : https://www.tckpublishing.com/complete-guide-to-beta-readers/
Very sound advice, thank you. I’m nowhere near that stage (have to finish that darn zero draft first) but good to know how it works. E-mail to Kindle, never thought of that!
Thank you, Jonathan. This is extremely helpful.