Beta Readers Are Critical To An Author’s Success

Rachel Callaghan is the author of Under Water, Devils Knob (with its sequel) and the dark comedy Grab the Groom. She hosts the Dark and Outrageous Humor Author Interviews series, coming soon.

People often ask about the need for beta readers and how to get them. Yes, most writers need them. Yes, your friends and family can be beta readers (if capable of breaking your little heart for your own good. I mean, being honest.) Yes, you can find beta readers by being friendly and reciprocal in writing groups or in a trusted online space. Please share your thoughts below (or on my Facebook if that’s your thing) on the importance of beta readers. Tomorrow the focus shifts to readers: Why you should be a beta reader.

If my books are quality, I owe a lot to my beta readers—readers who slogged through rough drafts and revisions. They made suggestions, even it was only to say, “What the hell does this mean?”

Authors need readers before their work heads out to live in the real world, the world full of purchasers readers.

How else would a writer know that something has made it from their mind onto the page in a way those readers understand, relate to, or enjoy? In a way that resonates (there’s a word I swore I wouldn’t use in this. Pretty much a cliché!)

Imagine this, to take an instance from my own life: Deep in the night, Alfie’s purring vibrates my suddenly full bladder. To his annoyance, I get up. Returning to bed from the bathroom I check the time on my phone, something my husband strictly forbids but the phone’s burrowed under the comforter. That wakens me a bit more.

A seductively brilliant collection of words worms its way into my mind. That never comes in the day when there are too many distractions. I send myself an email with the words, planning to find a spot for it in some writing in the morning when I open my laptop, crack my knuckles, and get to work.

But will that brilliance make it onto the page? The mind is a funny thing. It tends to reassure itself. Especially creative minds.

Enter the beta reader. “What the hell does this mean?”

It would take days for me to realize—stunning as those words were—they have no place in the story. Or to realize a certain character wouldn’t say or do what the words imply. Or the tense has changed. Or the point of view.

Unless my aspiration really is to write for myself and ONLY myself, I need other eyes.

Oh, yeah, sometimes I know it’s good even if no one else feels that way. And then I file it under “Crap I Love But No One Else Ever Will.” I read that file from time to time while dipping toast in tea to soften, musing on how unique I am. It could be titled “The Smug File of Crap” instead.

Beta readers are crucial, for me, at least. I happen to have a great one.

Why You Should Be a Beta Reader

Now let’s address the advantages to being a beta reader. No, beta readers don’t often get paid, unless you luck onto a wealthy best-selling author.

Authors that can afford to eat on what they earn are rare as hen’s teeth (cliché! Don’t use that, you just thought, didn’t you? Yay! I wanted to show you’d be a great beta reader!) So get real. Beta reading is often a labor of love. Love for an author, for a developing book, or just for words.

But you can get so much more out of it than that. I often read novels and find things that I’d love to say, “Uh, uh, can’t have that!” or “Change this!” It was addressed in my nit-picking post about using the indefinite article (“a”) to describe something as if it were unique when it isn’t, usually a sensation the writer has turned into a “thing,” a noun. (No, I don’t want to describe it more here. Read the post about small gripes on a great book and if you don’t understand, tell me on Facebook.)

Wouldn’t it be lovely to be able to say to an author something like, “That would never happen in real life,” or “Anachronism!” or “If you used that phrase/word again, I’ll put this book down so fast!” You can do it if you’re a beta reader. Being a beta reader gives that sense of power, instead of paying for a book and then fuming that you bought something that drives you crazy.

It also gives a sense of accomplishment, being the para-writer, the aide-de-camp to the author. YOU help develop the story and make it great. And you can expect gratitude in some form, even if only simple thanks. If you don’t get it, no need to continue reading.

And who knows? Maybe what you get out of beta reading is a feel for how a writer develops a story into a novel or a real-life event into a non-fiction book. Maybe, even if you doubt it now, this could lead to you giving it a try.

I might beta read for you one day…

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Rachel Callaghan, novelist, award-winning essayist, ex-short story writer, author of Under Water, writes from experience about traumatic circumstances and the emotional and psychological damage they cause. Starting Hahnemann Medical College (now part of Drexel University) when only 1/11 students in her class were women, she startled the administration by choosing to have a child her senior year. One teaching physician even ordered Dr. Callaghan from rounds for being visibly pregnant, as that might scare the patients.

Post medical school, she had Internal Medicine, OB-GYN, and ER experience, but her career was cut short by a diagnosis of stage IV lymphoma. A stem-cell transplant was the cure. What followed was a decade of profound fatigue which left her mourning the loss of patients she loved as friends. The treatment for that was writing about people and making them come alive on the page.

Besides writing, she is now a wife, mother, serial home renovator, dog and cat owner, and former traveler who circled the globe at age 21. Dr. Callaghan’s rich life has been instrumental in shaping her fiction.

Find out more about Rachel on her website: https://www.rachelsfiction.com/

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UNDER WATER

“Callaghan’s attention to historical accuracy is impressive throughout… [A]n engaging epic about loss, loneliness, and desire that perfectly encapsulates relatable human struggles.” ~Kirkus Reviews

Submerged beneath layers of history lies a long-ago buried secret.

During the pandemic lockdown, Iris Pearl impulsively relocates her dulling marriage across the country in a bid to revive it. But renovating their Prerevolutionary Pennsylvania homestead gives Iris more than she bargained for when she makes a gruesome discovery, one that hurtles her and Benny’s haunted past to the present.

Iris is desperately consumed by the desire to know what happened on her property over a century and a half earlier. Her search leads her to Irish immigrant Aoife Sprigett, the wife of Union soldier William. The further she digs into the mystery of Aoife’s fate, the deeper she reaches into her own secret history.

While William serves in the Civil War, Aoife struggles to uphold her vow to maintain their livelihood, their farm, during his absence. Aoife’s only companion is their hired help, Thomas Walker, a freeborn black laborer. Aoife and Thomas develop a warm friendship as they toil side by side in the fields. Together, Aoife and Thomas sow deep seeds that bear deep-rooted
consequences, which are now coming to light.

Will unearthing the truth behind Aoife’s tragic past, which so closely parallels Iris’s own, free her and Benny from their marriage’s haunted history, or will revisiting that dark time destroy it?

BUY HERE

GRAB THE GROOM

Hit #12 on Amazon’s “Humorous Dark Comedy” bestseller list!

Mabel DeVine, siren of the silver screen, is having a great time. The reality dating show that invaded her French chateau is imploding, the beautiful contestants dropping faster than influencers at a party with no wifi.

But Mabel is nearly 100 years dead, so there’s no one to share her delight… until she meets the ungainly, unloved child Hortensia.

Meanwhile, little Hortensia’s neglectful father is in a quandary. The weather’s horrendous, the investors are restless, an erotic dancer’s snake is on the loose, and his daughter is always in the way.

But all Brad Hudson—producer and womanizer—knows is: the show must go on!

Grab the Groom is more than a satire of reality TV and the lookism and fat phobia that goes along with it. It’s an art deco ghost story, a dark romance, and a send up of 1920s Hollywood, all rolled into one. Fans of Gloria Swanson inSunset Boulevard will enjoy the nods to Hollywood’s Golden Age while fans of modern reality competition shows will enjoy seeing the cutthroat competition—on and off camera. Any reader who is ready to stick it to the beauty standards imposed by influencers and fashion magazines will relish this raunchy tale of romance…and revenge.

BUY HERE

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing