Beta Readers Are Superheroes

You've just typed the words “The End”. Your masterpiece—weeks, months, sometimes even years in the making—is finally finished. Sure, it might not be the next Great American Novel, and it may never win any awards, or make it to the number one spot on the New York Times' Best Seller List. But you're enamored of it and you think it has potential.

So what do you do next? Send it out to agents and editors at one of the big five publishing houses? Upload it to Amazon or CreateSpace? Shell out some cash to Lulu or BookBaby?

Nope, nope, and nope.

The next step is to corral some friends—bribe them with chocolate cake or brown butter cookies or a really nice chicken tagine with lots of harissa, if you need to—and offer them the chance to help make history, to become so important that their opinion will alter the course of the world. Ask them to become Beta Readers!

What's a beta reader, you may be asking. A beta reader is an author's bestest, most important friend in the publishing game. Even more important than an agent, an editor, and yes, even more important than the guy who fixes computers. A few good beta readers are the difference between life and death to your book.

You see, they see the manuscript in its rawest form. They see your book naked, in front of one of those dressing room mirrors with that awful lighting that exposes each little flaw, each little bump and curve and divot, and they help decide which parts need liposuction and which parts are perfect just the way The Maker created them.

But how do you find the sort of beta readers who will be honest with you, who are capable of giving you in-depth insight, who can say more than, “I liked it. It was good.” That, my friends, is what I'm here to tell you. I'll share with you the secrets of finding the perfect beta reader.

1. Ask friends who are writers. Most writers are capable of a certain level of deep critique; they know what they like, they know what works and what doesn't, and they're able to express those opinions in a way that is constructive.
2. Ask friends who are heavy readers. I'm talking about that one friend who reads like three or four books a week. They are clearly intelligent people, capable of thought, and probably know whether your protagonist is a rip-off of Jefferson Nighthawk, or if your antagonist is too perfectly evil to be sympathetic with your readers.

Once you've assembled your group of five to seven readers, hand over the manuscript. But don't just give it to them, pat them on their head, and send them off. That's a big mistake. Tell them what you need. If you're looking for help making sure your plot is air-tight, tell them that. If you're looking for ways to ensure your female characters pass the Bechdel test, tell them that, too. Admit to them which parts of your book are weak and ask them how to shore them up. Ask them to tell you which were their favorite characters and the ones that can die in a fire. Ask them to go over your baby with a fine-toothed comb and pick out the nits. And then give them this list of seven questions, designed to sharpen their focus. Feel free to add or take away your own questions, based on your own needs.

Then sit back and relax. Your beta readers have got this. Enjoy the feeling of knowing that you're well on your way to becoming a published author and that you're doing everything you can to ensure your story is the best it can be.

And try not to stress out about finding the perfect editor.

Five Ways to Give Birth: Writing Kids as Characters

So much of childhood isn’t what most of us would consider child-appropriate. A child’s world can be, often is, as dark as an adult’s—or darker. Here are five ways to put breathing children into fiction meant for grown-ups.

1.       Remember that every child is his or her own person.

“My dad can eat six pizzas!”

“Yeah, but my dad is stronger than Superman.”

Like any character, any child is shaped by his or her experience, whether it’s peace and shelter, horrific violence, or anything and everything in between. Make them people first, and little people after.

2.       Think back to your own childhood.

“You’re ruining my life!”

Do you remember that thing you wanted for Christmas so badly? That one thing that would’ve made your life absolutely complete and you’d never ask for anything ever again? Yeah?

You didn’t get it, did you? How intense, how gripping, was that disappointment? The world was ending! Capture that when you write children.

Or maybe you did get it! You lucky cuss. How excited were you? Oh my goodness the world was wonderful! Capture that emotion.

Children feel so deeply and broadly. There’s no end to the well. For the most part, they’re just learning about emotion, their own emotions. Try to bring that to the page.

3.       Talk to some kids.

“Mommy, I doed it!”

“Yes, you did.”

If you’re a parent, you already know this. And if you aren’t, and you’re lucky enough to have kids in your life, have the best conversations you can with them. I’m not advocating asking them questions like “What if you were sold into slavery?” What I mean is, you’ve got to enter into the conversation with the interest of listening, really listening, to them. Hear the different ways they speak and the ways they’re learning language. Hear what they talk about. I promise, they are interesting. You haven’t really lived until you’ve discussed robots with an eight-year-old.

4.       Give them grown-up problems.

“I’ll get us some food.”

This is actually true of kids’ fiction too. Let them deal with things out of their depth—as you would any other character. Challenge them as people. Thank goodness, they aren’t real, though it ought to feel as if they are.

5.       Give them justice.

“The Queen had saved the little Prince. And they loved each other, whatever came after.”

This is truer of some kinds of fiction than it is of others, I suppose, truer of some works than others. But give them as much as you can, for your own peace of mind and your readers’. Poetic justice is always appropriate when writing about children, or so I believe. The world is screwed up and real kids deal with terrible situations every day, often with no recourse, no punishment for the wrongdoers, nothing.

It would be better if no child had to go through anything like what real (and fictional) children go through. At least in fiction you can give every little one a chance.

5 Things to Write When You Don't Know What to Write

Say you’re a new writer. Like me.

And say you never had the bug to write every single day like the “real” writers. Say maybe you even went a few years without writing any fiction at all, because you decided you weren’t good enough. If you were good enough, after all, you’d be finishing stuff. You’d have the instinct and it would come easily.

Then let’s say something happened. A tragedy, perhaps, something that seared your soul shut and you had to find a new way to let things out. And you thought maybe you could write about other things, about stories or poems, about other people’s tragedies until your pain would disappear.

And it did. It worked. You rode the wave of a writing high for a few weeks and words came spurting out of you like bad blood, flushing out pain and sorrow and leaving you feeling thin, dizzy, and light, but deliciously, ecstatically happy.

When the last spurts dry onto the page, you feel some life rushing back into you. You begin to be able to walk straight again. Chin up, eyes bright. Best of all, you have a purpose for your life. This is what you were meant to do.

You are a writer!

One problem.

You have no idea what to write. For a while, you fool around with extending the pain you were writing through, but it falls flat. That’s not who you are anymore, and even when it is, it’s not really getting you anywhere. You want to write something amazing, something to win prizes, earn money, and most importantly, something that you can show to your girlfriend.

But what?

You sit down in front of the keyboard and peck away at a novel. You get fifteen thousand words or so, but it’s not good enough. If Tolkien and Rowling got together and had a baby, and that baby grew up and adopted a cat named Butcher, and then the cat got sick and started hacking hairballs all over the living room, then one of those hairballs was your novel.

What to do? Well, you know what to do. It’s rule one.

Write more. Write every day. Write when you don’t feel like it. Write when you’re short on sleep or when you’re out of coffee or when you had too much coffee. Write when you’re sad or lonely or angry or happy or lustful or tired or bored. Get all those things down on paper. Write a million words and then you’ll be a “real” writer.

But you still don’t know what to write!

First of all, you don’t have writer’s block. That’s not a thing. That thing is banished from the Scriptorium. Writing is always hard, it’s never easy, and there’s no excuse for not doing it.

Here are a few suggestions for things to write.

1. Flash Fiction

This is my go-to for dry days. Pick a topic, a funny idea, a dream, or even a piece of art and sit down to make a brief story out of it. How brief? Well, that’s up to you. I like to aim for 1800 words. This is one of those times when outlines are unnecessary. Just start an idea and see where it takes you. 

You are a sculptor in front of a block of marble. Start chipping away.

For some great examples of Flash Fiction (as well as a popular place to submit one) check out, http://dailysciencefiction.com

2. Six Word Stories

Six word stories: writer’s sleeping pill.

If you’re interested in becoming a word master, six word stories are an excellent exercise. Think of a concept and try to condense it to six words. TRY. Here are some of my favorites.

His flowers were my last goodbye.

Luckily for me, a vegetarian dragon.

This empty page: my only friend.

Temperature rises. Oceans flood. Death awaits.

Wanting to know all, I listen.

3. Backstory Blurbs

If you have a captivating idea for a novel that you can’t get out of your head, but you can’t seem to get it out of your head, try writing backstory blurbs.

Get a blank sheet of paper and write the letters A-Z down one column. Next to each letter, pick a topic relevant to your story. It’s okay to skip Q and Z and X if you like – there’s not going to be a grade. Each day, until you think of something else to do, pick one of those topics and expand it. Pretend you are writing an encyclopedia for your world. If you get all the way through, start over again. This stuff may be useful someday.

4. Narrative Outlines

Another trick for a gummed-up novel-writing pipe is to clear the way with a narrative outline. Pick an unlikely character in your story and tell the whole story from their point of view. Tell it quickly like a bored conversation or tell it slowly with a lot of detail. Make it their dying confession or their interview for the local paper. Anything to help you visualize the story in your head.

5. Bad Poetry

When all else fails, write bad poetry. It’s a required part of the writing process, so you might as well get it out of the way. I’ll close with one of my own bad poems, so you don’t feel embarrassed about yours.

::golem depart::

from earth he came
as strong as steel
but soft as sand
he learned to feel

taught to fight,
he fought to win.
then saw the right
and saw the sin

he saw the blood
that dyed the clay
the blameless girl
who died that day

with tears of mud
and moans of sod
he fell to earth
he flew to God

from earth he came,
no heart or soul,
but learned to feel
and paid the toll

broke bread with men
who broke his heart
to dust returned
Golem Depart

There you go. That was one of mine, written on a day when I had nothing else to write. Now it’s your turn. Go on, pick one of my crazy ideas and run with it. Better yet, make it a blog post and link it here for all of us to enjoy!