Fanfic Writing Meme #24
Jul. 20th, 2014 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shivverIn the home stretch! 7 more entries until the end of this meme.
24. Betaing – How many betas do you like to use to make sure there aren't any major flaws in your fic? Do you have a Beta horror story or dream story?
This is a little embarrassing to admit: I don't use betas. I think the main reason for that is I don't really consider myself a serious writer, and I just write what I want. Hm, I'm not sure that makes sense, and it's hard to explain. I'm writing just to write for myself, so I don't feel that consistency is so important that I need someone to read what I write and find problems in it. I would rather just write what I want to write, and if it turns out that people find problems with it, that's fine.
My husband sort of serves as a beta reader, as he reads almost everything that I write before I post it. So far, though, he hasn't pointed out any major errors. Of course, that might be because he often points things out while I'm writing, when I talk to him and ask him for opinions or suggestions. By the time he reads the final draft, he's already helped me work out the kinks.
I'm also personally obsessed with consistency and cause-and-effect, so I spend a lot of time making sure there are no logical holes in what I write. (I'm making no claims on the quality of the writing itself.) I will often write a scene, then read it while moving around in the room, imitating what the characters are doing, to make sure I don't have someone getting up from a chair when he's already standing, and things like that. During The Actor, I drew the schematic of the slave ship so that I knew where all the characters were and what directions they had to turn to get to different parts of the ship. And the ending of that... I diagrammed the temporal path the Doctor took in that story, then researched the show to make sure that I could support the paradoxes with in-canon explanations of them (the Google doc has a comment on it that says, "This is ridiculous, but if Moffat can do it, so can I!"). It's fun, though, to figure all that stuff out.
Meme Master Post
24. Betaing – How many betas do you like to use to make sure there aren't any major flaws in your fic? Do you have a Beta horror story or dream story?
This is a little embarrassing to admit: I don't use betas. I think the main reason for that is I don't really consider myself a serious writer, and I just write what I want. Hm, I'm not sure that makes sense, and it's hard to explain. I'm writing just to write for myself, so I don't feel that consistency is so important that I need someone to read what I write and find problems in it. I would rather just write what I want to write, and if it turns out that people find problems with it, that's fine.
My husband sort of serves as a beta reader, as he reads almost everything that I write before I post it. So far, though, he hasn't pointed out any major errors. Of course, that might be because he often points things out while I'm writing, when I talk to him and ask him for opinions or suggestions. By the time he reads the final draft, he's already helped me work out the kinks.
I'm also personally obsessed with consistency and cause-and-effect, so I spend a lot of time making sure there are no logical holes in what I write. (I'm making no claims on the quality of the writing itself.) I will often write a scene, then read it while moving around in the room, imitating what the characters are doing, to make sure I don't have someone getting up from a chair when he's already standing, and things like that. During The Actor, I drew the schematic of the slave ship so that I knew where all the characters were and what directions they had to turn to get to different parts of the ship. And the ending of that... I diagrammed the temporal path the Doctor took in that story, then researched the show to make sure that I could support the paradoxes with in-canon explanations of them (the Google doc has a comment on it that says, "This is ridiculous, but if Moffat can do it, so can I!"). It's fun, though, to figure all that stuff out.
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