Can I ask how you became a beta? I've never heard of this before and I think it's really interesting. Is it just a hobby or something you actually do for money?
Hiya
little,
It's just a hobby, fan fiction is by definition a copyright infringement, so everyone is very careful not to make it a money making venture.
But I am trying to get into regular writing/editing for a living.
I fell into beta by accident. I was on a forum, reading the fanfics there, and I followed a few authors, liking their work and styles and offering comments and another fan was there who was trying to post her stuff and she liked my comments so much, thought they were insightful and very useful, so she asked to me beta her work and it just started from there via word of mouth.
The regular way I am told is that one joins a forum fanfiction listing and offers services as a beta. Some writers are very picky about who betas their work, I'm sure, but others usually go begging for people to proofread their work.
It can be extremely time-consuming. This one I'm currently working on for example. Like I said, the author is talented, but lazy. She'll send me her work - basically an outline of a manuscript with some sofa covers thrown on it - so I have to literally go line by line, offering up suggestions, expansions, descriptives, corrections and she'll respond with 'Oh I know, I just didn't want to bother with the details right then'.
Which meant I spent all my time doing something she should have done in the first place. Literally at times, rewriting her story for her.
And then sometimes there are artistic differences. Sometimes I think something won't fly and say so several times, but she will leave it in. [shrug]
Del, if you manage to turn that pig's ear into a silk purse, you should be a candidate for writers' and editors' secular sainthood!
Jeff,What can I say? I'm a miracle worker. She might be able to pull this one out of her @ss, but IMO this last story is pretty crappy in concept. If you ever saw the movie 'Throw Momma from the Train"? Billy Crystal teaches a writing class and there is one writer there, an older woman, who writes a short story about submariners while knowing nothing about the subject. Her characters just 'press a button' when torpedoes are launched or the submarine is manuevered, etc.
This manuscript is full of things like that.