Midnight Rant of a Beta

[JennyC]

I have to say that I am really intrigued to find out which fandom the story is based in.  Hmmm…sounds like "King Arthur", but do they have bomb at the time?

Don’t tell us.  Just leave more bread crumb for us to follow, and maybe one of these days we can crack the code .

[delalluvia]

I have to say that I am really intrigued to find out which fandom the story is based in.  Hmmm…sounds like "King Arthur", but do they have bomb at the time?

Don’t tell us.  Just leave more bread crumb for us to follow, and maybe one of these days we can crack the code .

Never let a certain time period restrict you in your writing.  After all, in the movie 'The Two Towers' (from Lord of the Rings), Saruman most certainly came up with gunpowder and a bomb. 

Jeff

[BIG sigh]  I want to just stop, ship this garbage back to her and tell her a) to start over or b) that a two part story is perfectly fine, she doesn't have to make it a trilogy. 

[delalluvia]

Oh my God....I wonder if this is why I never heard back from MY beta after that third story....

hey, at least I kept mine SHORT...a few paragraphs...and I have had nothing but good comments...but maybe I drove her nuts too!!!

Heh...no telling.     Just kidding, if you got good comments from your beta and the readers of your story didn't kill it with their reviews, I'm sure your writing was just fine.

I finished beta'ing the story by my writer's deadline and sent it back to her, dripping red, prefacing the document with a 'I hope you're not too discouraged..." comment.  She wrote back that it took her a day to get the courage to open up the document. 

A few days later she wrote to ask if I thought she should continue. 

I was pretty torn about answering her because this 3rd manuscript was pretty much garbage...but she's pulled some pretty bad stuff out before and I know I would be the one to beta it, so I told her the truth, pretty much suggested a compression of many plotlines and to go back to the drawing board.

She's a young mother and was depressed this story had taken her 3 years to write, but I reminded her that it took Heller 10 years to write his next novel after his first.

Don't think she found that encouraging. 

[Jeff Wrangler]

Fiction is HARD.

It sure is. If I, as a writer, don't believe what I write, no one else will, either.

[Jeff Wrangler]

So if you are not writing fanfic but just reg where would you find a beta??

Aren't they called "editors" elsewhere?

PS WRANGLER, sweetie, dear heart, POST something somewhere!! you are at 666 not supposed to stop there it is unlucky!!

... Maybe that's why I didn't get laid last night. ...

[delalluvia]

Doggone it.  It took 5 years, but that girl tracked me down again and asked me to beta the latest rewrite of part 3 of her story.

*sigh*

She's STILL SUCH a lazy writer, leaving out major details that I have to comment on, lest she think I find it acceptable, so much so that it takes me the better part of 2 hours to do 4 chapters and she's sent me 23 chapters.

The latest ridiculousness - a detective is searching in the "country" for a missing girl.  He's riding a "scooter" and it takes him from sun-up to sun-down to get to the first settlement.  He asks locals about where a local boy was kidnapped.  They reply "not far" and then tell him it will take him the better part of a day to get there on his scooter.  Now this is a story in the future but I have to remind the writer that even if this future warrior detective was riding a Vespa scooter, in a day he would travel nearly 500 miles.  That's nowhere near "close" by any description and basically he would be looking for a child missing from New York City by driving to the state of Virginia.