ask them to quote for a developmental overview of the novel, commenting on characterisation, pacing and flow, structure, clarity, psychological consistency and any recurring errors. That should come in at a price in the lower hundreds, rather than mid-to-upper, and you could learn enough from the overview to tighten your novel, and then have it beta-read and proofed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/p>\n
Join the Borg<\/strong><\/p>\nYep, this section is about hive minds and crowd-sourcing your feedback. Writing groups, both live and online, can be worth their weight in gold. You can use Reddit, Facebook, Literotica, Dirty Discourse and a number of social platforms to get a readership going, and to get feedback on your work as it proceeds. ERWA has its own critiquing workshop, Storytime, for this exact purpose.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll get a range of opinions, and it\u2019s useful to know where a lot of feedback overlaps. For example, your dialogue might impress several people, but your opening scene doesn\u2019t appear to have the strong hook that you hoped for. It\u2019s all grist to the mill, as they say, and acquiring a sort of consensus on your strong and weak points can help you see your writing with fresh eyes.<\/p>\n
ERWA\u2019s Storytime is one of the friendliest and most constructive places to share your work. However, to get the best out of a hive-mind scenario, here are some gentle caveats:<\/p>\n
\n- Hive minds tend to be a great source of feedback for short stories and novellas, but don\u2019t be disheartened if people don\u2019t want to follow an entire novel this way. It is difficult to keep track of one chapter a week purely because of the longevity and the distraction of life between instalments. However, you can get feedback on particular scenes that have been bugging you. Getting group opinions on first chapters can also be wonderful for assessing the power of your opening hook.<\/li>\n
- You would need to invest the time to provide the level and manner of critiquing you\u2019d like to receive yourself. Virtuous circles help everyone (and you might acquire some out-of-group alpha and beta readers along the way)<\/li>\n
- Think about what kind of feedback you want, and spend those extra few minutes in a foreword explaining any useful background to the material you\u2019re offering to share, and what sort of critiquing you would appreciate. It is fine to say that you\u2019re not looking for grammar or spelling guidance at this stage, for example.<\/li>\n
- Despite claiming to be writers in full command of language, some people still have very little in the way of bedside manner, and seem to enjoy injecting all their life stresses into being abrupt on the internet. Do not let this derail you.<\/li>\n
- You do not <\/em>have to take all the advice given to you. You\u2019re seeking some positive reinforcement and getting a majority vote on tricky sections; you\u2019re not trying to write a story by committee. Thank people for their time and the point they\u2019ve raised that will help you, and then use what\u2019s useful for you.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
<\/p>\n
Close-up and personal<\/strong><\/p>\nYou can use alpha and beta readers to get feedback on the delivery and shape of your novel. Alpha readers are involved throughout composition, giving feedback on a section-\/chapter-by-chapter basis. It\u2019s rather like having a free editor who only operates on a developmental-editing basis, but who will apply that level of oversight as your story unfolds.<\/p>\n
A beta reader will give you an overview of the whole once completed. There are some paid betas out there (and they will cost considerably less than an editor), but seek them out based on the recommendation of people you trust, and find out in advance how quickly they\u2019ve responded to others. To get the best out of a beta-reader, prepare a list of questions which will answer all and any concerns that you have. Don\u2019t be shy about asking them to tell you about the good bits, too. It\u2019s important to know what to do more of, as well as what needs repairing or adjusting.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
All by myself\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\nOkay, there\u2019s just you. You\u2019ve been burned by toxic feedback in the past, and you have very, very little money indeed. In which case, your priority should be to focus on your story skills, not on your technical writing skills.<\/em><\/p>\nWith the very little money you do have, borrow books on writing techniques, shaping your novel (within your genre) and which address the structure of your story as a whole. Use this resource for countless borrowings on books about dialogue, characterisation and plot movement.<\/p>\n
There are hundreds of websites devoted to grammar rules, and you can get that<\/em> advice for free, or through your local library or bargain basement books.<\/p>\nWork on your other skills (formatting, covers, blurb-writing, synopsis-writing) in the background to your creative work, and you might be able to arrange a peer swap to have the final product of your work proof-read in fair exchange for some assistance of your own.<\/p>\n
So, that\u2019s a fairly full range of options for getting an extra set of eyes on your work from the capacity to shell out cash (and what to look for), to how to make the best of your very, very tiny pennies. I hope you find it helpful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When you\u2019re a writer looking for an editor, and you really don\u2019t have much cash to throw around, it can be hard to know where to invest your money. As vital as editing is to the publication process, it is a big outlay for authors, whether they\u2019re self-publishing or hoping to be taken under the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2632],"tags":[1328,1286,1294],"coauthors":[2728],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/erotica-readers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12669"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/erotica-readers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/erotica-readers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erotica-readers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erotica-readers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12669"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/erotica-readers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12674,"href":"https:\/\/erotica-readers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12669\/revisions\/12674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/erotica-readers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erotica-readers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erotica-readers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12669"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erotica-readers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}