Author Confession

[keiramarcos]

My name is Keira and I'm fed up with the beta process.

Don't get me wrong, I totally love my betas. They're great. I just hate the process itself.  

I have to ask myself, who in fandom decided that beta was a thing? Who thought -- oh, I'm getting free stuff to read but this author really should do a bunch of extra work to make sure my free entertainment doesn't have any typos!

I'm currently in beta for my QB fic. I mean, like I'm on part 2 of 6 in that process. I just finished Darkly Loyal and it's twice the length of my QB. If I actually put that in beta -- it wouldn't be ready to post until probably April. Fuck that noise.

BAH.

Comments

[darkjediqueen]

I don't know.

I think that four months for a 181,000-word story seems like a short time based on the process that my beta and I have going and how long it took her to beta my 170,000-word story. The betas have a life of their own. And if they can only do a chapter a week, you have to multiply the chapters by the weeks and then have two betas will double that time. Breaking down a 181k story into 5k average chapters is 36 chapters. I have no clue if Darkly Loyal is like that, but it's a good starting point. Even with one beta and a chapter a week that's 36 weeks. That's nine months. I'm sure that some betas can do quicker, but that's a good break down. Even three chapters a week is still three months.

And splitting a story into parts and have each section only gone over by one beta is asking for continuity errors and plot hole errors.

Betaing short stories is easy, and it's easy to keep track of things, it's a not a simple it takes an hour to beta a 5k story so it'll take 5 hours to beta a 25k story. Sometimes adding more words means doubling even tripling time because of keeping all of the parts in order in the beta's head.

[esteefee]

I have separate continuity/pacing betas from my line edit betas, which obviously simplifies things. They just fell into the different skill sets naturally. So divvying up the line edit beta on larger works (still nothing like 180K though, yow!) gives my betas a bit of a break. But it's all a personal preference, obvsly.