"where ever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out." [1]

[marnanightingale]

[1] I don't actually agree with Johnson about much, and this is no exception. But I would at least say, consider most carefully the bits you think are most brilliant.

So, there have been some good conversations about constructive criticism going around again.

This is not one of those posts. :)

karabair said The issue that really underlies this, for me, is: What is the best culture in which to foster good writers?, and I think she's right about that being what's at stake.

So:

What do I think fosters good writing better than direct criticism on individual stories?

And what am I going to do about it?

Answer number one:

If you know how to do something well, and you want to see others do it better, share what you know. The most efficient way to improve the quality of any activity in fandom is to write up what you know and post it where lots of people can find it when and as they need it.

Answer number two:



First, I both do and do not like the word beta.

I like it, because it's short, snappy, and widely understood.

I dislike it, because it has a number of distinct jobs folded into it, and it's not always clear which beta is meant to be doing what. So I'll talk about the distinct tasks, some but not all of which I've done professionally, and writers and betas can recombine them in whatever way suits them best. So I'm going to talk about readers, editors, copy editors, and proofreaders, and try as much as possible to make it applicable and useful if you have 5 people looking your stuff over and equally applicable and useful if you're doing it all yourself.

(Obligatory disclaimer: I tend to express myself in the imperative.

This does not mean that I think everybody should do what I tell them to. Even if it did, it does not mean that I actually think anybody actually has to do what I tell them to do. It means that I think imperative sentences are shorter, clearer, and more pleasing to read, that I am made uncommon weary by passive voice and endless disclaimers, and that I take it for granted that you all understand that either I am expressing the opinion of someone who I have referenced in the text, or I am expressing my own opinion.

If, however, you for some odd reason feel that you need my permission to ignore any part of this that doesn't actually strike you as helpful, please do consider it given. Also, please tell me what DOES work for you.)

Right. Where was I? Ah, yes...

Reader.

If the story is not done yet, you're not editing it. You are either writing it, or reading it. Having a reader is optional, but it's useful and often fun.

So, what should a reader do?

Big picture. Big, big picture. When I write in IM, as I often do, I make a point to ask people NOT to correct anything smaller than, say, a major narrative or characterisation misstep.

Before it can be edited, it has to be written. If it's getting written, if the words are coming, don't mess with the flow any more than you can help. Fixing agreement errors and typos and other such minor follies is a perfectly harmless way of killing time when your writer is stuck, but if they can be writing instead, this is always preferable. Trying to avoid mistakes before they happen is an excellent thing if you are an engineer; not so good for a writer. You can always take it out later.

Besides, there is no point in getting all the typos out of a first draft. They're only going to come back during edit, and they will probably bring friends.

Useful things for a reader to do: Make squeeing noises. Point out what's working. Watch in mounting horror and amazement as the writer takes off on fourteen insane tangents. Nine of them will vanish without trace before you ever see a draft; five of them will come back later, in different stories. Two of the others will be changed beyond all recognition. Three of them will stay, and one of them will end up being the heart of the story. You don't know which one it is, yet, so don't pull things up short unless it's become really clear that you're headed down a blind alley. let it all come out. Lay down first, clean up after.

Once you have a draft, the writer should probably leave it the heck alone for awhile. (This assumes you have as much time as you need. If you're writing for a challenge or an RPG or something, well. We do what we can, you know? But if you're working alone, try HARD to allow for about two days off at this stage. It's worth it.)

Meanwhile, you need an Editor.

First, read the draft, straight through, keeping the big questions in mind:

Is this story pulling me in? Are the characters alive? Is the plot interesting? Does it make sense? Is it satisfying? When you get to the end, does it feel like the story is told? Is everyone broadly in character? Is there anything that isn't there that would make the story richer? Is there a theme developing that needs to be picked up and made more overt? Do the subplots all wrap up in a satisfying way?

So you take all that back to the writer, and the story gets fixed where it needs it. My drafts tend to be very sparse and bony (as well as set in a sort of black-box theatre set) and they always come back with "unpack, unpack, unpack" metaphorically written all over them in red. The first edit reliably increases the length by a third or more.

This is also where you first discuss editorial latitude. Editorial latitude is how much power the beta has to change, add, remove, demand, or veto things. It's not fair to tell someone you want a thorough, hard beta and then neglect to tell them that the actual plot is set in stone, the characterisation of A is something you have spent a long time thinking about and you're not budging on it, and you are extremely fond of semicolons and will be excessively displeased if they are all removed and replaced with emdashes.

Equally, if you offer to proofread a story for someone and then send them back ten pages of closely reasoned argument about their grasp of the political situation as presented in canon, you have wasted your time and are going to end up with a really crabby writer, especially if you got so distracted that you didn't notice the typos at all.

Establish what you are and are not doing and stick to it, discussing modifications as things progress.

Next round, you look at details of characterisation, voice, imagery, richness, texture, depth... basically, at this stage it's damned good and you want to look for places where you can add or alter something to make it fantastic. Tighten the jokes, crisp up the exposition, look at how the story uses touch, taste, smell, hearing, clear out the cliches ...

You may go through a few of rounds of this sort of big picture editing, but eventually, you've got a story you're basically pleased with.

It is now ready for a Copy Editor.

Copy editing is the nuts and bolts. This is where you start caring about grammar, spelling, fact-checking, continuity, all that.

So you go through again, reading slowly and making notes as you go. Things you are looking for now include:

Continuity:

If food is served, the meal should either be eaten or interrupted. If people have sex, they need to get their pants off, or at least open. After, if they are going somewhere, they need to get dressed again. If a rifle has been loaded, it should either have been fired or unloaded again. If a horse has been saddled and ridden, it should not be left outside in full tack in a snowstorm. Cigarettes which have been lit should be smoked and then put out; the process takes about 5 minutes. Bullets, arrows and cannonballs, once fired, keep going for quite a long time unless they hit something.

The usual human configuration is one head, two arms, two hands, two legs, armspan approximately equivalent to height of person, needs at least two meals and six hours sleep for optimal functioning ... etc. Actions carried out by characters should be compatible with these limitations, or else the exception should have an explanation and plausible set up.

You get the idea. You can elide a lot of these things, in fact you will want to elide most of them, but you do need to register that enough time has passed to allow them to have happened, and avoid making them impossible.

So you go through, noting things that happen and making sure they resolve. Where they don't, you fix it. Or make a note of it and let the writer fix it.

Fact-checking: Obviously, this is fiction, but you don't want to snap people's disbelief into little pieces. Call it verisimilitude testing.

If you fire a cannonball from a 24-pounder, and it's going to hit something, do enough research to know that it's possible and how good of a shot it is. You can stretch it a bit by all means -- everyone in the Hornblower movies is an unnaturally good shot -- but you want to know you're stretching it, and stay within or close to the possible. Equally, if your characters are going to be terribly impressed by a particular feat of strength or cunning or skill, check that said feat is neither impossible nor childishly easy. If someone is going to spout math, make sure the math is correct. If one of your characters is a mathematical genius and you are not, elide. If Mars, Venus or Halley's Comet appears in the sky to mark someone's Moment Of Ultimate Realisation, check your year, time, location, and weather. If it's 1810 and they are eating Turkish Delight, check how available and how expensive it was then.

Anachronism-checking, the albatross of AoS fandom, is actually a subset of fact-checking. Not only the character's clothing and goods, but also their attitudes and beliefs should not be glaringly unusual or just impossible for their period, or if they are, they should be shown to be glaringly unusual -- and that's fine, by the way. Characters are individuals, and they vary. If you want your 1800-era hero or heroine to have feminist leanings, they certainly may have -- just make sure they're quoting Mary Wollstonecraft, not Germaine Greer. And check the spelling on Wollstonecraft.

Canon-checking, which all fanfic needs, and longer original fiction also tends to need, is another subset. How many guns does the Surprise have? What colour are Elizabeth Swann's eyes? The oxygen tanks aboard the Galactica are where? Sharpe's been shot in which leg? How long ago was that?

Next, grammar: I like Strunk and White. Also the Canadian Practical Stylist. That said, I don't pull them out often. When in doubt, read it out loud. If it sounds right, it probably is right. If it sounds wrong, look it up. Remember that dialogue need not be -- even should not be -- perfectly grammatical.

So you check and if necessary fix this stuff, or send it back to the writer to fix. This is a good time to discuss the topic of queries -- which is what all these little notes are.

Be as specific as possible: not "Is this ok?" or "grammar" but "Is the bottle of port from page 12? Wasn't it empty then?" and "comma splice; use conjunction or semicolon?"

Be as clear as possible: if you can't annotate right in the text, quote all or part of what you are querying, don't just write "page 29 -- pronoun agreement?"

Be as polite as possible. As Teresa Neilsen Hayden says, it is in the nature of queries to sound, well, querulous. You don't fully realise this until you have 40 or so of the things lined up to be gone through. If they all say things like "WRONG YEAR!" and "WRONG WORD!", well, it gets harder than it should be to remember that the editor is on your side. Nobody wants to feel as though they are back in Grade Five English.

Style: Words used too often, too close together. Flow; is the narrative voice distinctive and consistent?

Commas. Commas deserve their own section, but briefly, once you get past the common or garden period, punctuation is half art, half science. There are usually at least two correct ways to do anything.

TNH again: there are four kinds of punctuators. Two are fairly simple, one is challenging, and one is a nightmare.

1) (largely) Correct and consistent. Congratulations. You are one happy editor. Fix the fiddly bits.

2) Incorrect and consistent. This is not necessarily too bad. Find the errors they commonly make and fix them so as to bring those bits into line with the rest of their style.

3) (largely) Correct and inconsistent: This person knows the rules, but they punctuate partly by ear; they put commas and semicolons and dashes where they feel right or look right. This is challenging; you have to figure out what their style is, usually by reading several paragraphs aloud, and then look for the punctuation that FEELS off and query it. If you go through and fix every single comma and semicolon and dash to suit your preferred style or some arcane rule you learned in 10th grade Business English, they will never let you near a draft of theirs again, and also you will throw all their basically correct sentences out of whack and drive yourself mad trying to fix THAT. So don't. Please.

4) Incorrect and inconsistent: Have a stiff drink. Then try to figure out what their natural voice is. Then try to bring their punctuation as close to correct as you can get it without flattening that natural voice completely. Then have another drink. Then mail them a copy of Eats Shoots and Leaves, or possibly Strunk and White.

Semicolons, colons, emdashes, endashes, and other small unnatural shapes on the keyboard: see commas. See Strunk and White. See the editor weep.

Spelling; Break your spellchecker ruthlessly to your will. Make sure it has all your character names. Make sure it's set to English or Canadian or USian or whatever you need. Make sure it recognises all the coined words of your canon -- this is especially important in science fiction or fantasy -- and all the specialist words of your canon. Once it has been reduced to your whimpering, terrorised dog -- you still shouldn't trust it. But it will catch most of your typos and such, so do run it.

Then check for wrong words (effect/affect, to/two/too and so forth) and such by eye. When in doubt, check a dictionary. I favour the OED, and by "favour" I mean "have an almost unnatural devotion to", but I understand that Messrs. Merriam and Webster have their defenders.

Avoid the temptation to go over the sections that have been heavily edited more lightly than the rest. Editing usually introduces errors -- especially agreement problems and repeated/extra words, from where a sentence or paragraph has been changed but not 'cleaned up'. Sections that have been rewritten several times are often full of these. They are often full of brand new (thankfully, usually minor) continuity errors, too -- this is why you don't copy edit until you are done editing, and why I've been listing copy editing tasks from big to small.

Okay. You now have an edited document. Take another day off, if at all possible.

(I'm assuming a long story here. For a 5 000 word piece, take an hour or so off. )

And then you're ready for a proofreader.

Proofreaders look for typos, spelling errors, punctuation errors, and formatting errors.

First of all: if you can possibly print the document out to proof it, do so. And not on the economy setting, either; you're going to be looking extremely closely at this; make it crisp and black and easy to see. Mark your changes in red, and then correct your file.

If you can't do that, set your file to about 200 percent zoom. You're not looking at the big picture, you're not reading, you're proofing. You want to see every detail.

First, let your eyes relax and just LOOK at each page. What do you see? Are the paragraphs lined up? Are there any weird gaps? Double spaces? If you don't see anything by just looking at the pages as a whole, you're ready to proofread.

If you're working on paper, grab a ruler. Place it under the first line. Check that line left to right. Then check it right to left. Mark anything you find. Then move the ruler down one line and do it again.

Take a short break (5 minutes) after every five pages. If you get too tired, you miss stuff.

If you're working on a screen, start at the end. Look at every word and sentence backwards before you read it forwards. Don't let yourself start reading; when you read, your mind fills in what you expect to see. When you're proofing, you want to see what's actually there.

Look for typos, punctuation, spacing, italics where appropriate, open-and-close quotes...

Once your file is clean, check your formatting.

Formatting: the easiest way to proof your html is to post it somewhere. I understand there are html editors, but I am a primitive with a bone in her hair, so ... post your story as a private locked lj entry and check how it looks. Find, correct, save, find, correct, save ... look it over backwards again to make sure all of your italics are in the right places, etc. When it's right, cut and paste back into your file, so that you have a copy that is correctly formatted.

Now the story is as clean as you can possibly make it -- not perfect, because let's face it, unless it is a drabble, it will never be perfect, typos are a sign of the Fall Of Man -- and it's ready to post. So post it.

Then pat yourself, your writer, your editor, the other editor, and everyone else you can reach on the back, for you have done a mighty lot of work, and it is Good.



And that is, if not absolutely everything I think I know about editing, at least all I can remember at the moment.

Comments, questions, arguments, additions, anecdotes, and of course the pointing out of the inevitable typos, all welcome.

Comments

[wychwood]

This is a great post. I shall bookmark it so that I may re-read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the contents.

But I just had to giggle at this: What colour are Elizabeth Swann's eyes?
...because, yes, good question :)

[imyril.livejournal.com]

Frankly, I'm in awe. Also in hope - perhaps one day (when I really need it) I'll have someone (or several of them) fulfilling these roles for me. If they followed the guidelines you laid down here, I'd be more than happy. At present, I get goodwill and much encouragement, but can only rely on one person for critical assessment - and he's doing perhaps half of the things you list here. Still, that's an amazing start, and I'm grateful for it.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Glad it's useful!

You might show him this; I think my big point about editing is, there are actually a whole bunch of acquireable skills involved, you can't just apply time and goodwill and automatically get a great editing job out of it, you know? So I figure it is for me to pass on as much as I can ...

[imyril.livejournal.com]

I think the other thing is the flip side - if you do ask someone to fulfil any of the roles, you need to be aware of what that entails and willing to accept the criticism. If all you want is a pat on the head, then best not to ask for feedback at all and send to a friend - they'll mostly give you the encouragement politely and run away if they hate it, or gush if they love it - and you're saved the line by line decimation.

Not that I'm criticism-shy, but I know those that are. Me, I'm looking for punishment these days :)

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

You know, I'm not sure I agree.

I think when you ask someone to edit for you, you have to make sure you define what that entails.

If the whole business is leaving you feeling like crap, change how you're working together or get a different editor.

Putting up with betas that leave you feeling bludgeoned is how people GET criticism-shy. I suspect.

damned_colonial and I are always poking around in each other's fics, we've got a whole lot of editorial latitude with each other, and there are still times when one of us will get all excited and hyper-critical and manager-y and the other will need to say hey, slow down, back up, let me gather my thoughts, and before you give me any more line edits, look, is the overall shape basically working or what?

[dsudis.livejournal.com]

Before it can be edited, it has to be written.

I'm sure this is just your imperative voice making me say hey!, and I know from other arguments in the same vein that I'm in a pretty small minority, but actually my very favorite and best and most productive writing experience ever in life involved being line-edited, scene by scene by scene, as I wrote. I was still handing over discrete chunks of text after I was finished with them, which is maybe what you're driving at here, but the story was far from finished--but then I write to outline when I write long, so I need someone to tell me that I'm not going off on fourteen, or any, tangents, at least not until I've recognized them and decided how to hammer them into my exisiting structure, or hammer my exisiting structure into them.

Clearly, your mileage and most people's varies. *g*

*nod*

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

No, I can see that. In your case, it may not apply at all then, or only in the pre-outline messing about phase.

I don't necessarily do all the steps in order, or seperately, or even at all, and possibly I should note that somehow, but it just felt overwhelming to get any sort of complete list of possible jobs written down at all, you know?

So, good addition, and thank you!

[hafren.livejournal.com]

If it's getting written, if the words are coming, don't mess with the flow any more than you can help. Fixing agreement errors and typos and other such minor follies is a perfectly harmless way of killing time when your writer is stuck, but if they can be writing instead, this is always preferable. Trying to avoid mistakes before they happen is an excellent thing if you are an engineer; not so good for a writer. You can always take it out later.

My big disagreement with this comes from doing student tutorials:

ME: I can't read this; it's full of spelling and punctuation errors.
STUDENT: Oh I know, I'll get those out later. I don't like to stop while I'm going well. I want to know how the story flows.
ME: That's just what I can't tell you, because every time I come across one of these things it breaks the flow for me. Proof it before I read it next time.

I've also found that those who say "I'll get the errors out later" seldom do - and once you finish a draft, you proof it reading what you think you wrote and miss what you really wrote. In my own writing, if I see I've mistyped, I have to stop at once and put it right. If that "breaks the flow", then the flow wasn't up to much to start with.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I guess it's all according. I'd proof anything I was handing in; this is more when I'm actually writing in SEE and Skud or Cat or both are actually watching the cursor move.

If *I* see it, I have to stop and fix it. If I DON'T see it, going back and mucking about because someone else points it out does mess me up, if it happens a few times in a row.

I start thinking about several things at once, and poof.

I fix them when I'm trying to get started the next day, usually. Going back over what I've done so far is generally how I get going again.

But I definitely do fix them later. Or Cat or Skud gets them. It does depend on knowing someone else will, if necessary, find them.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Of course, it is also true that I am mildly dyslexic AND have slightly mucked up hands; some of my fingers are partly numb. IOW, I type direly.

If things are actually going well enough that I am typing as fast as I can think, I leave a lot of typos. I probably clean 3/4 of them up w/o noticing, but still.

[queenitsy.livejournal.com]

Before it can be edited, it has to be written. If it's getting written, if the words are coming, don't mess with the flow any more than you can help. Fixing agreement errors and typos and other such minor follies is a perfectly harmless way of killing time when your writer is stuck, but if they can be writing instead, this is always preferable. Trying to avoid mistakes before they happen is an excellent thing if you are an engineer; not so good for a writer. You can always take it out later.

Unlike, previous commenters, I think this is brilliant and true. Oh, my god.

I have a wonderful friend who's been writing the first five chapters of the same novel for going on six years. She's decided she can't move on until the beginning is perfect, but then she gets frustrated and starts again. I, on the other hand, got bored my last semester at college, and wrote a 35000 word (ish) YA story in three months. She stared at me in awe and asked how I did that.

I never stopped to edit it.

(Of course, I've now been editing it for about eight months, and find that much, much more difficult than the writing ever was.)

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

I may have to add some sort of "your mileage may vary widely" caveat up there. Or possibly just a clarification; I'm not opposed to stopping at the end of a paragraph or section and doing cleanup while I think.

What I DO find really disruptive is having someone stop me in mid sentence (which with IM and SEE and such is now possible) with numerous small things. If I start editing, I start seeing every single flaw and not much else, and can easily drive myself nuts.

Of course, what this also says is, I'm an editor. Stopping Editing is a real challenge for me. At my best, I will restart every sentence three or four times.

So I find I sometimes just have to let myself put crap in, with the understanding that it will come out later.

It may also be that I infamously never really know where I am going until I get there. I have these conversations:

Skud: "Would he do that?"
Me: "Dunno. Let's find out."

*time passes*
*text appears*
Skud: "Apparently, yes."

(Or, equally likely:

*time passes*
*no text appears*

Me: "He declines to do that."
*goes back and starts again, swearing*

[queenitsy.livejournal.com]

*no text appears*
Me: "He declines to do that."
*goes back and starts again, swearing*

*cackles* That happens to me as well. I don't write via IM often, but I do find that I have to take out whole pages where characters do things that make no sense for no apparent reason.

[fungus-files.livejournal.com]

great stuff. and totally agree that this is a constructive and positive way to spread how things can be/are done, rather than get too bogged down in pointing fingers and laughing (though I can be guilty of that myself...).

off to pimp. thanks for putting together such a thoughtful post/primer.

[stultiloquentia.livejournal.com]

This is all kinds of useful. Thanks for taking the time to write out the details.

I got here via metafandom, btw, and then recognized you as a co-writer of last week's Richard II fiasco, and then checked out your userpics and discovered that you're obsessed with The Lady's Not for Burning and Sam West and Fighting Sails. I have NO CHOICE but to friend you. Hi.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Well, then, you realise I shall have to friend you back?

Brace yourself...

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

(also, technically, I am not strictly obsessed with Sam West. I merely have great and abiding admiration for his talent. And wish to depose him. Repeatedly. This is all, I maintain, a perfectly normal, sane and healthy response to the force of nature that is Sam West. not at all obsessed, oh no.

I AM, however, obsessed by TLNFB and The Age Of Sail and theatre and several other things. I'll be babbling in a strange and incoherent fashion about such of them as I haven't already, no doubt.)

Also, I am frequently 12. People should be warned, I feel.

[stultiloquentia.livejournal.com]

not at all obsessed, oh no.

You sound perfectly rational to me. I was studying in Austria the year he did Hamlet, and used him as an excuse to visit England. Or, uh, England as an excuse to visit him.

I AM, however, obsessed by TLNFB and The Age Of Sail and theatre and several other things.

Good, good. I directed TLNFB my senior year at uni, figuring that was the only way I was going to get to see it.

People should be warned, I feel.

Thanks. I'll pack my kazoos.

[furiosity.livejournal.com]

Wow. You pretty much won the whole internet with that one. Thanks so much, this is extremely helpful. *memories*

[jehnt.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for this -- it's awesome! I've added this post to my memories and I foresee rereading it again (and again and again) in the future.

[jadzia7667.livejournal.com]

Valuable and not the slightest bit condescending. Thank you. A lot.

[purple-ladybug1.livejournal.com]

Adding this to memories. Thanks.

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

Based on the above, I am apparantly a lousy editor, a decent copy-editor and a pretty fair proof-reader: v. interesting.

Before it can be edited, it has to be written.

As someone who has *also* writ the same Book Beginning mumble*mumble*mumble A LOT of times... This I must go think upon...

[astartexx.livejournal.com]

Perfect! Adding to memories and thank you for reminding me, that there is a division of work in writing, not everything needs to be perfect in the first draft.

[nellie-darlin.livejournal.com]

This terrified me with its relentless professionalism. And made me feel very very VERY small.

And yet I love it. Completely indispensible advice, especially because I'm considering going into publishing, but also because I'm writing a chaptered fic and need all the help I can get.

*memory'd*

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Oh, do not feel small!

See, everybody basically does all this anyway. I just wanted to break it down a bit to make it more manageable.

beta-ing

[rissabby.livejournal.com]

Thanks for showing us what an incredible amount of work goes into the beta process.

As a new beta I am trying to figure out how to untangle all the different kinds of edits that go into giving pre-posting feedback.

I've been using a five color feedback method.

Red= remove for spelling, punctuation, grammar-type reasons.
Blue= put in for spelling, punctuation, grammar-type reasons.
Fushia= suggest you remove this brief part for clarity or style reasons.
Marroon= suggest you include for clarity or style reasons.
Teal= my notes and queries to writer.
I use long E-mails for big plot queries.

One of the helpful things about your article is the way you have laid out the different steps of beta work in a chronological fashion. I think it will help me to unjam my thinking about a story.

I bookmarked this page because I expect your ideas will also help me in the future as I improve my beta-ing skills.

[rubywisp.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom, and not only am I bookmarking this post, I'm reccing it. Nothing would make me happier than everybody on my friends list reading this!

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

If I tell you that this was sexier than several smut stories I've read recently, will that come off the right way? :D

Well and truly said.

[shihadchick.livejournal.com]

Excellent post, and thank you for having it available to a wider community. I'm bookmarking it myself to reread later, as it's so incredibly SANE that, frankly, I'd forget to do half this stuff without checking back every now and then as a general rule. It also somehow makes the task of thoroughly editing (to use the term as broadly as possible) something seem less threatening, which is a very good thing indeed.

Cheers!

[why-me-why-not.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, this is fantastic! I found you via a rec from app1e_pi. I hope you don't mind if I add this to my memories and rec it? I really like how you've broken it down into the separate steps/stages of the "beta" process. I think too often that betas (even a couple of the ones that I've used, although I love them dearly) either revert to being a "cheerleader" role, which is all well and good in its own right but isn't exactly helpful, or think that they just need to point out what is incorrect with the mechanics, when it's almost more important to me to know that the ideas work and flow together coherently and I'm getting my point across. Anyway, thank you very much!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_sharvie_/]

I so wish you were more involved in the Buffy fandom. Came over from some of those not as pleasant posts about concrit. Saving and possibly pimping if I ever get around to it. Again with the wishing. You know...there's this show. It's got a vampire in it and he's kinda sexy. No dice? *pout*

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

... and it's a) set in the 20th C and b) above a pg 13 violence rating.

No dice, I'm afraid. I'm allergic to things wot jump out at one.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_sharvie_/]

*lol* He does at that. Though you could probably enter into the big AU debate that comes up every once in awhile. Not so 20th C all the time. Gets people all upset we aren't following canon. *shrug*

I liked what you had to say in the previous debate. You expressed a lot of my thoughts and feelings on the issue. Thanks.

[denyce.livejournal.com]

Wow this rocks, just wanted to add my THANKS! Went ahead & added this to my memories to ah study/reference :-)

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

*glom* *memories*

Found you via a torturous route involving Shakespeare... wonderful list full of awesome.

[cmwinters.livejournal.com]

I love you.

I am not even a beta, and I love you.

/memclick