A “story midwife” is someone whose insightful feedback helps
the writer to make the story more fully what it is intended to be. A
while ago, I wrote about Trusted Readers, the unsung heroes of this
process. Sometimes they receive thanks in the Acknowledgements page of a novel,
but rarely for a short story. Now let’s talk about more visible helpers: beta
readers and critiquers.
Most of the time, there is little functional difference
between beta readers and critiquers. Both read a story in draft form and
respond with comments and analysis. Unlike a Trusted Reader, a beta reader or
critiquer is usually either a writer or someone knowledgeable about the
internal workings of fiction, like a professional editor. So the feedback may
go more along the lines of technical criticism and less a generalized “this
didn’t work for me.” A beta reader acts
like a Trusted Reader-with-expertise, whereas a critiquer focuses on
pinpointing weaknesses and often suggesting solutions, many times in a workshop
or other group setting. For this blog post, however, I’ll use the terms
interchangeably.
Critiques often take place in a structured setting, such as
a workshop. My first experiences with exchanging critiques were done through
the Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop, a by-mail-with-newsletter forum run
by Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury (back in the 1970-90s or a little beyond, if I
remember correctly). I’ve also attended ongoing face-to-face workshops, as well
as weekend groups at conventions. All have involved both giving and receiving
critiques. Like many writers, I have cultivated a small group of “go-to” beta
readers. Although it’s often not stated explicitly, the understanding is that
over the course of time, each of us will critique a story from the other.
For me, and for many other writers, a workshop format is
invaluable, especially at the beginning of our writing careers. (Workshops also
have pitfalls, which is a whole other topic in itself.) For those of us who
have difficulty seeing the faults in our work or understanding writing
principles from books, having a patient, sympathetic fellow writer “to explain
things in words of one syllable” can boost our insights and progress
tremendously. Learning how to look critically at someone else’s work trains our
“editorial eye” and helps us to see our own stories more objectively. Finally,
workshops foster camaraderie and offer crucial support along the lonely road to
publication. Many of those other beginning writers from SF & FW have gone
on to notable careers – we “came along” together, learning from one another.
Yet another thing that distinguishes critiquers is the
granularity of the comments. Sure, you sometimes get sweeping “this character
never worked for me” but you are more likely to get a detailed list of all the
inconsistencies in motivation that caused a lack of connection for that character
and how that affected other aspects of the story. Depending on where the writer
and critique are in their careers, comments may come in the form of shorthand,
relying on the shared jargon of the craft. A Trusted Reader might say, “I got
pulled out of the character’s head,” and a critique might abbreviate the same
observation as “POV bobble.” (See The
Turkey City Lexicon for useful and occasionally humorous examples – Idiot Plot,
Handwaving, and Infodump, for example.) Such shorthand is more than a
convenience, for it assumes the writer understands the principles of
storytelling and prose craft and knows
how to fix them.
A beta reader may or may not make suggestions as to how to
improve a story’s weaknesses. Much depends on the relationship between writer
and reader, as well as how the request of a critique was framed. Many writers
strongly object to such suggestions, seeing them as attempts to rewrite the
story according to the beta reader’s taste and vision (not their own). Others
feel that even the best-intentioned suggestions impair their own creative
solutions. Some go so far as to eliminate a suggested change, no matter how
good it is, just because it came from someone else. Yet other writers are happy
to see possibilities other than the one that didn’t work.
Beta readers offer a “second pair of (knowledgeable) eyes”
that furnish feedback before a story is submitted to a publisher. Sometimes
editors freelance; that is, they do not acquire books, but they work with a
manuscript as if they were preparing
it for publication. This is a fairly recent phenomenon, one that has arisen
partly with advent of self-publishing, partly from the increasingly competitive
market in traditional publishing (and the need to fine-tune and polish a
manuscript to present the most professional presentation possible). Such
editors may do much of the work of a publisher’s book editor, but they do it before the sale, not after the publisher
is committed to the book. They are one of the few legitimate examples of a
writer paying money before publication (the antithesis of Yog’s Law: “Money
flows to the author.”) For all the
benefits of hiring a freelance editor, there are drawbacks: they cost money;
they may envision the project in a different way than the acquiring or book
editor; they may teach or mentor but they do not offer the opportunity for the
author to practice critiquing skills herself. Still, many of them have superb
professional editing credentials and are worth every penny under the right
circumstances.
If you’ve detected a bias here, it’s real. Because I learned
writing craft from in-person workshops and by exchanging critiques with writers
of about the same skill level, I think in terms of learning to see and to do at
the same time, and I value the fellowship of a peer group of writers. Other
than running your story off on a mimeo machine (which tells you how long I’ve
been at this) or paying a printer or vanity press, there wasn’t any
self-publishing. If you wanted your story professionally published, you had to
sell it to a publisher, who hired editors and (most of the time, anyway)
hammered your prose into shape (and handled cover art, marketing, etc.) Now that
we have both electronic and Print On Demand formats, I believe the need for
critical feedback is even greater than before. It’s all too easy to take a
rough draft with plot holes you could drive a tractor through, format it, and
slap it up on an ebook site. It’s up to us, the writers, to make sure that
whichever route we take, we do not compromise on quality. Since I’m as blind as
the next one about my own work, I cherish my beta readers (and send them
virtual roses and chocolate, not to mention praises in the Acknowledgements
page of the published book!)
The painting is by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797
No comments:
Post a Comment