I definitely need a beta. I've gone back to reread my own stories and I see now all the mistakes. Most are stupid typos, there's one huge error in one of my stories (calling a female doctor "him" when I first introduced her...continuity, oops) and run ons. My worst habbit is going back after something's written to change a sentence, and not fully deleting the old sentence. I do that all the time. And I clearly need to work on the OOCness. I now have 3 betas lined up, so hopefully I'm all set. I really appreciate the feedback here! Love this site :-)

Awesome carrie. I went back and looked over my first House fic, and had done a similar thing when I changed a character name. And, I later changed demographics of one in another story. Both cases I now wish I had started with a beta outright.

I never use a beta but I have a wonderful f-list and they are always happy to spot errors or style problems. I try to give each story a few days on my LJ before posting to the communities but sometimes I get impatient. I do have one particular person on my f-list who's indispensible, and I have an informal rule that I won't post to the communities till she's read and commented. I suppose she's the closest thing to a beta reader that I have. For totally inexplicable reasons, I'm repelled by the term 'beta.' I think it's silly. The rest of the world uses the term 'editor.' In my opinion, using this made-up term furthers the common perception that all fanfics are written by 13-year-old girls with an exaggerated sense of their own importance. We all know that's not true; many professional writers write fanfic. Also, the term doesn't make sense to me. It should be 'alpha' reader, because in the world of software development, beta testers are not the first people other than the programmers to test the program. The in-house quality assurance testers are the first ones to test it. Beta users aren't part of the team, they're part of the general population, the public, who have agreed to be early adopters in order to provide feedback with the ultimate result of a better piece of software. So it hardly seems accurate to describe the first person to read a work of fiction as a 'beta' reader. But I really can't explain why I hate the term so much. It just rubs me the wrong way. Regarding drawing names and characters from real life - in my conventional fiction, I used to call all my characters by the same name. Every story was about Jack and Jane; short, easy-to-remember, somewhat generic names. Finally I started getting more creative and I now try to let the characters name themselves when I'm thinking of the story. I draw characterization from real life and I suspect all writers do. It's one of the perils of being friends with a writer! It can be a burden to be a tireless observer of human nature. I once worked with a girl with the most fascinating nervous tics. She'd rip up little pieces of paper and stack them into minature towers; assemble paper clips into weirdly modern sculptures, and also make these little bundles of rubber bands and ripped-up pieces of paper. I spent hours listening to her talk about her rather uninteresting life, just to observe her habits, which I naturally used in my story. A mystery, actually, in which one character realizes that the other has broken into her house and camped out there because she sees these little ripped-up pieces of paper on her kitchen table. The other downfall of being a writer is more dangerous. When people are interesting, I feel compelled to spend time with them, even when their morals are questionable. Not everyone who's interesting is good, and stories need unsympathetic characters, too. Because I'm curious about human nature, I sometimes end up with people that I should avoid, walking through neighborhoods that aren't particularly safe, or otherwise having a sort of 'adventure' that is entirely spurred by my curiousity about human nature. I am never not thinking about writing and sometimes I observe when I ought to interact. It is problably my loneliest hobby. If I'm writing and my long-lost friend telephones, I'm annoyed. I hate to be disturbed while writing. Nothing seems more important to me when I'm engaged in writing. No-one can help, and anyone who's nearby is merely a distraction. Of course, the upside of being a writer far outweighs the downside. (By 'being a writer' I merely mean that I like to write. I am not a professional writer but I think I have a similar temperament and inclinations as people who write fiction for a living.)

My experience with a "beta" is... different. I hesitate to ask anyone to beta my work, because I tend to jump fandoms, and I feel guilty about establishing a strong relationship with a beta in one fandom, and then abandoning them, in a sense. I really believe that the best beta’s need to have some familiarity with the characters and canon, otherwise how do they know if you’ve gone seriously off track? Luckily, I have a sort of built in “beta” in my sister, who tends to follow the same fandoms I do, and who quite enjoys reading my fiction. She is fantastic about catching most things, but sometimes I wish for another point of view because we are so similar in temperament; we might both miss the same problematic areas. Unfortunately, my experiences with other “beta” work has been somewhat disappointing My first experience with a beta was rather negative and probably soured me on the whole thing to some extent. She literally chopped one of my stories to bits, marking it up so profusely with her red pen that it looked like evidence at a brutal crime scene. In short, she did not like my “style” and was attempting to have me re-write the whole thing using “her” voice. She had a very Spartan style herself, and my ‘gratuitous’ use of detail drove her nuts. But use of detail is one of the hallmarks of my work. In my opinion, a beta is not meant to try and change your actual ‘voice’. One’s voice is what makes one’s writing one’s own! Another beta seemed to miss the whole point of a piece I wrote, and assured me no one would like it. However, making the changes she suggested would have removed a great deal of depth from the piece. She wanted unquestionable clarity in a piece that was about layers of meaning. I just couldn’t bring myself to make those changes. Yet another first reader wanted more “romance” and a nice fluffy, happy ending. Um… I don’t DO romance and fluffy endings. I was the kid reading Heinlein when everyone else was reading Harlequin. I generally avoid reading fluff and romance, let alone writing it. Another wanted “hawt sex”! I also don’t do “hawt sex”… I can read it just fine, but I am very uncomfortable writing it, and my attempts to do so are correspondingly awkward. She was convinced a lot of “hawt sex” would improve my piece 100%, and could not understand why that might be difficult for me. Maybe she was right, and a few intense sex scenes would have spiced the story up, but writing sex scenes is totally unnatural for me. I can tackle just about anything else, but heavy sex scenes are ever going to be something I can manage convincingly. So, all in all, I just have not found the right match for me as a writer. Admittedly, part of it could be that I am pretty stubborn about my work. Aside from grammatical errors, it takes someone with a well-founded argument to convince me to change anything. The fact that something might not suit your tastes is not enough. I am not against betas in practice, but I have learned to trust my own instincts when it comes to my writing. I have yet to find someone (besides my sister) who I trust as deeply. Sheesh. I sound picky, don’t I? In my defense, I guess I can only say that most of my readers seem to really like my work, despite my reluctance to use a beta other than my sister.

I've had various betas, and their approaches have run the full range from picking every sentence apart with a red pen, right through to nothing but a quick comment at the end. Although the former can be very soul destroying to find initially, I have never been too proud to edit and re-edit my work, and have always taken every scrap of concrit on board that I possibly can: and there's no doubt in my mind that I have become a MUCH better writer over the last year, thanks to the efforts of such people who have so generously given me their time and energy like this. And I don't just mean in fanfic, either: the non creative writing I've done for work & for my PhD has also definitely improved. YMMV, naturally...

I definitely agree about becoming a much better writer overall - I'm not sure how fan fiction helps me see APA format more clearly, but it seems to do the trick. I can't say I've ever had a bad experience with a beta. I usually only ask someone to beta if I like their writing in the first place, and if our styles seem compatible to me. I generally like picky betas, since I'm one of those people who tends to write things in my first draft which make perfect sense to me, but which won't necessarily make sense to anyone not living in my brain. ("CLARIFY" was always written on my papers in high school. Heh.) I do have one friend who I will ask to screen my stuff before posting it when I don't have a beta within fandom yet. We tend to follow the same stuff, and because she's seen my work over multiple fandoms, she can tell me if I'm bleeding in characterization from a similar character in some other universe that doesn't really belong there. 8)

Working with people who have radically different styles can also be interesting. I've worked with a person whose writing I adore, and who writes gorgeous, lyrical prose, very different from my choppy sentences. She would point out things like 'nice dialogue, but could you please show me where these people are, just a little bit?', and I would realise that I've written a dialogue-only story, even though I had no intention of doing so. But she would never ask me to change my voice. I enjoy arguing with my betas. Defending my choices and questioning them - it leads to wonderful discussions.

Who do you let read your writing? The first one? My mom and a friend read the intro to the very first fanfic I wrote. After that, I switched to a beta about four or five fics in. Now, it's just my beta and people online. I try not to mention fandom stuff too much. However, that friend has read some short stories I wrote and helped edit them a bit (she actually worked at a magazine as an editor and did graphics as well for awhile, so it's really cool).

I think I've let only one actual, real-life friend read any of my stories ever, and while I was interested in what she had to say, it was also weird. I don't write p0rn, but the subject of sex usually does come up, and I tend to edit characters' language to what it would be if they were actual people -- little grittier. I also don't use a beta, although I probably should. Not that my grammar is off, but as I came to the fandom a bit late, I started writing before I saw every episode. Therefore, there are a few canon errors and some things are a bit more OOC than I would want them to be, and I don't have enough time to go back and fix them. However, before I post a story, I meticulously go through and edit. In my mind, it's very hard to take a story and its author seriously if the narrative is riddled with errors. Hell, I go through and edit these posts before I hit submit. I may not understand what I'm talking about, but dammit, you'll be able to read it. On the other hand, I do beta for others, and when I do that, I go for grammar first, style later. Actually, the story I'm editing now is written by a non-native English speaker, so I spend most of my time correcting idiomatic errors. As for proper grammar, I enforce it more in the exposition than in the dialogue. Of course the grammar in the dialogue is going to be wrong; we as English speakers can't get it right to save our lives. However, when a writer is describing what's going on, it's just better to write correctly and occasionally damn the awkwardness. I personally find it awkward if sentences are too often ended on prepositions. Perhaps it's a YMMV sort of thing. If something seems OOC or just plain off to me, I won't say that they have to change it, but I will ask questions of the writer to see if they can defend a character's actions -- was it vital to the story that they should do this? Are you going to make a point of saying somewhere within the story that you're aware this is out of the ordinary, and that's the whole point? Things like that. And if the writer doesn't want to take any of my criticism, then so be it; it's their story in the first place. In general, it's hard writing fanfic for a visual medium. Everything we associate with House we can see, not read. While a lot of what happens in the background of the show is ambiguous and open to interpretation, but you can't argue the facts of what you see. Transferring those facts into written word is much more complicated, and it takes a skilled writer to pull it off successfully. Eventually, you just have to let the reader use their imagination for what they think a character is doing; that's the joy of reading in the first place. At some point, you the writer just have to trust the reader to understand that of course Cuddy is rolling her eyes and Wilson has his hands on hips; it's just in the nature of the characters to do so as we watch them.

I'm always happy when it comes time to edit a chapter. It means I've made through the storm, the battle to set down the main ideas and work from there. I think I have more fun with the rewrites, even though they are ultimately more difficult. How does this word sound as opposed to that? Would that character really act that way? Strike that, add this. It's a process, like molding clay. I enjoy it. My reader is also a wonderful writer, whom I met when she began leaving me insightful, thought provoking reviews. Before I post anything, I send it along to her. I find her comments extremely helpful in prodding me to 'see' things I may not have before. How many times do I read my work over before posting? At least ten, if I had to guess. I try to let the work 'breathe' after reading it over a couple of times. That way I might pick up on something I might have missed earlier. And though reading over a chapter multiple times is worthwhile, there is that danger of being too careful and losing something cool, something you might have gotten right the first time. This is a case where an excellent first reader might come in to tell you so.