A critter and a beta reader’s job is to honestly tell the author the problems they find in a manuscript, including:
- what they like and do not like in a story or its writing,
- where they lost interest, if they lost interest at all,
- what they think does and doesn’t work.
Their job is NOT to dictate to the author that the story or writing MUST be changed, how the author MUST write it, or when the author MUST write it. That’s an editor’s prerogative when considering a story or novel for publication, and, if those demands are contingent for acceptance for publication, it is the author’s prerogative to comply or refuse.
A few weeks back, I wrote a short story. Putting it before my critique circle for a beta read before submitting it, I expected the group to find certain faults with it. And they did. I adjusted it according to much of their input — a word here, a phrase added there — because I agreed.
One beta reader, however, absolutely insisted that I must not only listen to her objections, but pay attention to her objections…and I did. I didn’t act on them, though, because the changes she wanted went contrary to my desire to use showing almost exclusively throughout the work, with little to no telling involved. So, while I agreed that her suggestions were valid for a typical short story and thanked her for the feedback, I didn’t implement her changes.
I expected that to be the end of it. However, she persisted in reinforcing her perspective and her complaints in post upon follow-up post to such a degree that I felt like she was pounding on me with a hammer, demanding me to address the changes she desired.
I finally did address her complaints, point by point, all the while reinforcing the fact that I did value her opinion, and agreeing that her objections would be salient if I meant for this story to be a typical narrative…which it wasn’t. (It is and was an enactment, not a narrative — strictly showing, never telling.) My efforts, however, “P I S S E D [her] O F F.” She didn’t want to know why I did what I did, nor why I was equally insistent that the work remain as I intended. Her issue? “…The writing, not the story.” The story she “loved.” It was “the writing” with which she took issue. It was as if she felt somehow that I had missed her meaning…which I hadn’t. In turn, I felt that she was demanding I change the work to comply with her ideas of how it should be delivered.
One of the devices of fiction writing is to show something. This allows the reader to decide what is happening and why it is happening. Then, a few lines later, the author will often provide the “tell,” reinforcing for the reader that what they thought or decided happened in the “showing,” was, indeed, true. This show-tell device is extremely effective for stimulating reader participation and for bringing along new questions within the reader’s mind. But, sometimes, especially in a short-short story, it is fun to deliver all of it by “showing” alone, letting the reader come to their own conclusions about “what happened.” If a writer can carry it off, what you have is a short story wherein the reader puzzles together clues and implications that are very similar to the way we humans puzzle together any incident that comes to our attention in life…like when we witness someone’s cousin visiting at the neighbor’s, her clothes tattered and torn, her face streaked with tears, later to see a police car drive up, an officer get out and go to the door, disappearing inside. We witness, and then we are reduced to conjecture.
In the incident of this short story and critique partner/beta reader, things were getting repetative. In fact, the posts were beyond reiterative, and I kept expecting that it would level off. It was, after all, a simple short-short story of a meer 770 words, and, between the two of us, we had already written more concerning her objections with the writing of the story than the story had words. Leaving the thread overnight, I was surprised to see even more hammering along with some rather harsh suggestions that I have a low comprehension and reading ability.
I suppose I should have simply let it be. Instead, I again explained how much I valued her opinion, her perspective, and her effort on my behalf. Then I stated outright that I wasn’t going to change the story, so she needed to deal with that fact and get off the subject.
That did not sit well. At all. In fact, she flounced off, taking her close friend, another long-term member, with her. Since then, the circle has had no activity at all, which leads me to believe that it’s dead or they’ve moved themselves, one and all, to another venue, all over 770 words and one woman’s opinion about those 770 words.
When I look back on this, I still find it very odd. This woman and I go back a very long way, and for such a trite thing to terminate a longtime friendship seems ludicrous and very bizarre. Then I start tallying up some of the changes in her attitude that I’ve seen in other posts since she’s become an editor, paid for her time, and I find telltale signs that something may be more deeply amiss:
- She tells an author that they should change their method of draft to a method she considers best, or she will no longer read on;
- She tells another author that they must not work on their novel after the first draft is complete for X amount of time, or else;
and none of this is done with the obligatory smilie to indicate humor and that she isn’t serious. In fact, she was serious, it seems. And this was not delivered to neophyte wannabe authors in need of guidance, but to professional ones who are successfully published.
Has the fact that this woman is now paid for editing gone to her head? Is she so inflated by this that she has become tantamount to a dictator to all of her peers? Or is her life so very stressful these days that her desperation is enacting itself in an aggressive need to control others in virtual because she has no control over those things which trouble her in real life?
I don’t know. I do know that I am saddened by the circumstances that bring us at odds and to this end, but I am not going to compromise my own work just because she tells me I must. If this means the termination of a long-term friendship along with the productive relationship, so be it. The choice was hers, not mine, and I find it a petty and unfortunate choice.
Recently:
- Moving is Tough on Writing Novels
- Move complete & back online…when the DSL doesn’t falter
- Offline for a week.
- The ‘I’ Proposition
- No, I didn’t get eaten by my novel.
- Scott Heim reads We Disappear at last reading at Chelsea
- Hunger in the World
- What a Beta Reader Can & Cannot Do
- A Gift for Eternity Finds a Home
- Today’s Giggle: SE vs Employee, the Benefits — Not.
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