#thats bc i was 14 and it was ABSOLUTELY awful writing but! i've rly moved up in the world

[thegeminisage]

question to Miss Experienced Professional Fic Author Liz—do you have your betas read your fic from the beginning, as soon as you start writing it? like i know you mentioned cathy and emily (?) have access to the doc. is that standard procedure? i'm curious because I've never written fic myself but I was drafting something today and my friend's gonna beta once i'm done but I was wondering if I should have her beta thorughout the whole process.

HI sorry i saved your ask for last bc i didn’t want it to get buried <3 and then it got so late that i didn’t know if you’d see it if i answered <3 this was extremely professional behavior <3 so i’m...................scheduling it to go up when people are awake. sorry again lol

anyway ok so the SHORT answer to this is: if you don’t know that your friend is willing to look over your fic multiple times, get your thing as polished and close to done as possible before letting anyone else beta it. that way, your second pair of eyes is able to do the maximum amount of good! if it’s a longer fic, you may be able to do this in sections - you can finish chapter 1 and then have your friend look at chapter 1, then chapter 2, etc, since nobody can beta a multichapter fic in one sitting. it depends v much on what you and your friend feel like! 

the looooong answer is: my “betas” are also just my friends! same hat! so more often than not they just want to see what i’m doing. so if i mention what i’m working on they’re like “oh can i see” and i’m like “yeah” and then they come in and look. like, as far as standard procedure goes, it’s all very casual. if it’s too rough for proofreading i’ll usually wind up giving a heads up that it may change a lot later in case they don’t want to read it multiple times, but usually they do anyway (so in my case it winds up being a mix of both “edit now” and “edit at the end”). i’m really very lucky to have so many extremely smart and cool people willing to do that kind of thing for me <3

that said, imo there are different ways to edit and things to edit for - it’s not as complex and awful as it sounds, for me different people wind up helping me with different things. it really depends on what stage your writing is at/what your friend is helping you edit for. i categorize them as follows:

cheerleading - this is what i was talking about above...this is just someone reading as you write (sometimes checking in daily, sometimes literally WHILE YOU TYPE IT, my friends have done this lol) and encouraging you. i’m not particularly shy about letting my buddies just kinda hang out in there, it’s like my little house 🙏 it’s also fun to have people read as i go (it helps keep me excited). doesn’t exactly count as editing/betaing imo (so you don’t necessarily need a writing-savvy friend to do it), but it’s still a level of support <3

plot soundboarding - this is stuff like... “how do i get dean and cas to talk about x thing,” “where should i end this chapter,” “if i change this thing in chapter 1 that leaves a huge plothole in chapter 3, how do i fix it?” this is for the plot, not the prose itself, so you can do this when the fic is very rough, maybe even before it’s written, when it’s still in the planning stages

“regular betaing” - this is what most people think of when they say beta - this is a general readthru where they’ll point out inconsistencies or anything that sticks out to them (good or bad). “this sentence is worded awkwardly,” “you said mary had a cup of coffee here but earlier in the scene she had tea,” “you used the same word four times in one paragraph.” you want to have the fic written by this point (though again if it’s a long one, it doesn’t necessarily have to be complete - more on this in a sec)

final typo check - you want to save the LAST typo check for after everything else is perfect and not going to be changed at all. my friend coralie is checking my fic for typos and i asked her not to read unedited scenes yet - because of course if edit them, and my edits have typos, and she’s already read those parts, i’d have typos in the checked bits, which would defeat the entire purpose

so it really depends on what you want your friend to most help with - if you want plot help, obviously you’d come in early, but if it’s just typo help, come in late. and of course how much help she’s up for giving you - reading what you write daily might be more time-intensive than just checking it one time and sending it back. 

as for whether or not it’s better to have “regular beta” stuff done on your writing as you write it or after it’s all finished, there’s pros and cons to both situations

reasons to edit as you go: a long fic divided into sections can seem more manageable, your pal gets to know your your project as it’s being written, you get someone to be excited with, you get immediate feedback on potential mistakes that might save you from having to do more editing later, editing as you go will DEFINITELY save you from a huge slog later, sometimes when you’re not up to writing it’s nice to have something to edit so at least you get to do a little work on it

reasons to edit after it’s finished: less time-intensive, when you can see the whole fic at once you’re less prone to forgetting what happened in the beginning, when you see it all at once you can also see the way things come together (or fail to come together), you're less likely to have to look over the same section multiple times, you get to polish it up before anyone else sees it (good if you’re shy), sometimes it’s nice to let things sit awhile before coming back to edit because breaks can help you see more clearly

and like i said, i usually wind up doing a mix of this. the important thing though is there’s really no wrong way to do it as long you and the person helping you are on the same page. just like everybody has a different writing process, everybody has a different editing process, yk? just try it whatever way seems most appealing and sensible to you, and eventually you’ll hit your groove. i hope that helps, sorry if it was a way longer answer than you were bargaining for lol