So you finished your novel and you want to make it really, really good.
What to do.
One of the key parts of revising your novel is actually getting
beta readers on it. Now what's a beta reader?
It's somebody who reads your novel before you send it off to publishers
and gives you feedback about what works, what doesn't,
what could be improved and what they liked about the book.
Today I'm going to share with you some top tips for working with beta readers
and how to find them,
because sometimes it's hard to find people to read your work. I'm Kat Clay.
I'm a writer from Melbourne Australia,
and I love sharing my writing journey with you. So please hit subscribe,
hit the bell icon and stay tuned for more writing videos.
One of my biggest tips is to get quality beta readers. So yes,
it's great to get your family to read the story if they're interested in it.
But for the most part,
quality beta readers are people who either read widely in that genre
or are writers themselves.
And you want a mix of both because you don't want just writers on your books.
You want people who are going to read the books who buy that kind of genre.
So it's important to get both.
So say your book deals with something that's rather specific like nuclear
physics or classical music.
It's really helpful to get an expert in that field to read your book,
to check for anything that's inaccurate.
The other thing to say is that only send your book to beta readers.
You trust and know it's not good to send your book to any old
random you've met on the internet to find out that they've published it as an
e-book under their own name.
So make sure you trust the people you're sending your book to.
One of the most important things for working with beta readers is to set
expectations about the kind of feedback you want to get from them.
So I have some basic questions that I will always ask my beta readers to look
for upfront.
And the most important one for me is did you find anything confusing
or things that didn't make sense?
Because that flags to me immediately where our reader will get bulked down
in the story or get confused and turn off the story.
I also get them to mark up things that they liked things they didn't like,
things they found inconsistent. Another question to ask your beta readers,
that's specific to crime and mystery authors and perhaps horror authors as well,
is when did you solve the crime?
So you don't want a mystery book where your readers know who the killer is on
the first page, unless that's exactly how you wrote it. Likewise,
you don't want them so surprised at the ending that it's not consistent with the
rest of the story.
So that's really helpful to get feedback on for crime and thriller writers.
It's really important to agree to say a to six week timeline for getting
feedback on the book.
If your beta readers don't have time to read the whole book,
get them to do a hard run on the first three chapters.
Now those first three chapters are the chapters which really sell your book.
So they have to be perfectly polished.
When I was longlisted for the Debut Dagger competition,
I got four of my friends who are all writers,
crime writers to read that first chapter over and over again and
provide valuable feedback on it.
And it allowed me to place in the top 10 entries.
And part of that reason was because I had so much feedback on that first
chapter.
Now this next step is a little bit hard sometimes for all of us,
but you need to be open to listening to feedback.
When you get beta reader feedback,
it might be hard to hear that this character wasn't appreciated as much as
you'd love them, or this part was confusing.
You need to be open to receive that criticism as hard as that is,
and don't take it out on your beta readers. Feedback is subjective.
So you need to take it with a grain of salt because you know your book best,
but if multiple beta readers flag a specific piece of feedback,
then it's a clear sign that that probably needs to be fixed. Finally,
another thing,
if you're getting people to read your book and their writers as well,
make sure you return the favour.
It's really important that it's not a one-way street,
reading a book and providing critique on it is a quite a long exercise
and takes a lot of time.
So it's really important that you return that favour to other writers when
you have the opportunity. I absolutely love my beta readers.
I met a lot of them through writing courses and the writers center in
Melbourne and through writing conventions as well.
So it's really important to cultivate those friends and networks around
you. They can help both support and provide valuable feedback on your work.
So I highly recommend getting beta readers on your books
before you send them out to agents and publishers.
I hope this video has helped you today. If you have any questions,
hit me up in the comments. Thanks so much for watching.