It's been a long time since I've done a 5 sentence review. I do have two to include later tonight in another post, but the month of April also included reading 4 books that are still in the development stages, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to comment on what beta reading is like, some of the pros and cons, and how you can become involved as a reader or a writer.

What is beta reading?
Beta reading, like "beta testing" anything, involves reading something that is pretty well developed but not quite ready for publication, in order to give the writer feedback. A beta read is not the same as an ARC (Advance Reader Copy) of a book that will more or less remain unchanged. ARCs are for reviewers and booksellers to make a judgment on, for the sake of other potential readers. Beta-reading is for readers to become part of the editing process, to help the author ensure their characters are well-developed, plot holes are filled and kinks are ironed out. 

Nor is it the same as a first draft critique. Books often go through dozens of drafts before they're put in a reader's hands. For me, I have a team of writers who read along chapter-by-chapter each week and offer me feedback as I'm developing the story. This is when the drafts are rough, bits of earlier chapters change (affecting the plot) as they're reading based on their advice, and spelling/punctuation/grammar mistakes and typos haven't been caught. That team puts up with a lot of sludge; they're angels. Then there's an "alpha read" where the reader will get a finished draft, but books still need a lot of work. Alpha readers find what works and what doesn't, what's worth keeping and what can be cut out. They give big picture feedback on content, characters and themes.

When a book is semi-polished and has run through a few clean-ups, it's ready for a beta read. There, readers catch mistakes or places where it still doesn't quite "work"; they tell the author whether their book is ready to be submitted (to agents, publishers or self-publishing) or if there's something that stands out and really needs to be fixed soon. 

Back in 2012, before I knew much about submitting to literary magazines, I sent a piece off to Spark, which at the time was brand new and tiny. When I got the inevitable rejection – seriously, that story was not ready to be sent anywhere - the email included the following line:

If you are not already a member of a writing group, we highly recommend Scribophile (http://scribophile.com) as an excellent place to build relationships with other writers and get high-quality constructive feedback. 

It was almost two years before I took the advice. In that time I finished writing the early drafts of my novel, sent it to a few friends, attended an editing workshop at the Sydney Writer’s Festival and thought “yep, it’s pretty much ready to go”. I sent it off to an editor for a manuscript assessment as a sort of last minute sweep through. While I was waiting for her to read it and get back to me, I pulled up some of my old short stories and thought about submitting them again, but I wasn’t sure where to start. That’s when I found the old email from Brian Lewis, editor-in-chief of Spark.

I joined Scribophile.

That was August 2014. In the 9 months since, I have:

• received 27 constructive critiques on the first chapter of my novel and revised it a further 8 times.
  
• written over 100 000 words in 159 critiques for other writers. 
  
• received 246 critiques of my own writing, across 36 works (short stories, novel chapters, a query letter and synopsis). 
  
• befriended writers from all over the world. 
  
• chatted with professional copy editors, an agent and 5 editors-in-chief of different literary journals. 
• learnt where to submit my work, how to format it, and what to look out for in scams that target writers. 
  

I’ve been just as productive (if not more so) than when I was doing my Masters.

There are plenty of others who have not found Scrib as useful, which is understandable – not every group is right for every person. But in an attempt to break down what makes it so effective, I’ll share what worked for me.

The Philosophy

Scribophile works on a currency they call "karma", where you earn karma by critiquing others and you spend it by posting your own work for critique. You have to earn karma before you can post your own work, which is probably the most common aspect of Scrib that I read complaints about. I love it, because it weeds out any writers who want feedback but are unwilling to spend their own time helping others to improve – i.e. you’re expected to give to the community, not just take from it.

Karma is earned on a word-count basis, but those words should be useful – what worked, what didn’t, places where the story lagged, characters who seemed inconsistent, settings that could be better described, phrases that really struck a chord, as well as any spelling/grammar/punctuation errors. This scares some people off, because they’re not sure if they’ll have anything useful to say. That’s okay. There’s an article on how to write a critique, and the function to report a “bad critique” is only used when it’s obvious that the writer was trying to pad out their word count (e.g. by copying and pasting) or not making a genuine effort to be helpful. Scrib is also full of writers who recognise that critiquing, like writing, improves over time.

Over the course of my life I’ve received feedback from all kinds of places – teachers in high school and at university, fellow writing students, family, colleagues, friends, and a professional editor. I don’t regret getting a single piece of feedback, even the bits that hurt at the time. Most of the time, what I want from a critique is simple: how did you, as a reader, react to this part and what did you like or dislike?

The Spotlight

Scribophile is structured so that you earn more karma by critiquing works in a “spotlight” than other works. Works don’t stay in a spotlight for a certain amount of time; they stay there until they’ve received a certain number of critiques. With a basic membership, every work you post is guaranteed at least three critiques. As I’ve spent more time on Scrib and built working relationships with individual writers, the spotlight has meant less to me and I’ve got an oversupply of karma. That’s okay – it still serves as a useful tool for jumping in to the site, getting your first critiques and building those relationships in the first place.

The Groups

There are hundreds of groups on Scrib, some more active than others. Several sound wonderful but I don’t have the time to join them. Others are specific to a purpose that doesn’t meet my needs – memoir, or fantasy writers, or poets. These are the three that I use most often.

One-for-One
This group works as the title suggests – trading critiques one-for-one. Every couple of weeks there’s a thread in the group forums where members post a couple of lines about what their work is and what kinds of works they’d be interesting or willing to critique in return. People match up with one another and can make as many “deals” as they have the time and effort to do. You don’t have to commit to anything on a week where you won’t have time, and on a productive week you can get dozens of people reading your work as long as you read theirs.

The Ubergroup
The Ubergroup is really a series of smaller groups, with its own subset of group moderators. It’s run by Jerry Quinn, who outlines the whats and whys on his blog. This group exists for novel writers. You’re assigned to a “team” of people – usually between 3 and 8, but each team decides for themselves how many writers they can handle – and everyone on your team commits to reading and critiquing each other’s novels. It’s like a long-term one-for-one commitment. The best part of the Ubergroup is the timing. There’s a group of people who are all reading the same chapter of your book at the same time and they’re talking to each other (and you) in the forums – that round table discussion is incredibly useful.

Each team decides for themselves what pace they work at. If you’re writing an early draft, that might be one chapter a week. That means in week 1 you read the first chapter of each of your team members’ books, and they all read chapter one of yours. If you’ve got a finished, edited, late draft or polished book ready to go, there’s the “beta team” and a few other similarly styled teams where team members read and critique at a much faster pace, focusing on one book at a time and devoting a week or two to each book. Regardless of pace, all Ubergroup teams read each others’ novels from beginning to end so you get that all-important big picture feedback.

The 100 Credits Club
The goal of the 100 Credits Club is to help each other get publication credits. Where the Ubergroup is best suited to novel writers, 100CC is best suited to writers of shorter works who still want to see their name in print. This is where I learnt all about literary journals – what’s out there, what kinds of writing they take, how long to expect a response, if they give feedback or not, if they pay or not etc. Some of the members of 100CC run their own literary journals, and there's something strangely encouraging about the fact that they get rejection letters too. The members congratulate each other over every acceptance or publication. They help each other to pick up and resubmit elsewhere after a rejection. If you’re having trouble finding a home for a piece of writing, they’ll suggest likely markets. And, of course, they critique each other’s work to ensure it’s the best it can be before sending it out.


As I said before, Scribophile isn’t going to be perfect for every writer. If you are lucky enough to have a productive real-life writing group, the idea of an internet group might not appeal at all. But if you’re desperate for more feedback on your writing and can’t find a decent group, I strongly encourage you to check it out. I’m glad I did.

Science-fiction definitely isn't my area of expertise, but as a writer the situation with the Hugo Awards hasn't escaped my attention. Vox Day and his homophobic, sexist, racist agenda has complicated the original issue, so I'm just going to leave that part out for now and do a comparison with another popular vote that went wrong earlier this year.

Over here in Australia, we have a radio station called Triple J (JJJ). Every year on Australia Day they have a Hottest 100 countdown where they play the top songs voted by listeners, then produce it as a CD. It's not uncommon for Australia Day to basically consist of "come over to my place and we'll have a BBQ and drink beer and listen to the Hottest 100". Triple J has a long history of giving Australian artists their "big break" and playing a wide range of music, not just mainstream popular stuff, and the Hottest 100 itself often gave exposure to bands that were otherwise barely known. Over recent years the station has become more and more popular amongst those who actively snub mainstream. Consequently, the Hottest 100 has grown to feature (or not feature) particular kinds of music that appeals to that subculture, because it's a popularity contest defined by its own audience.

This year, there was a campaign to get Taylor Swift voted #1. The regular listeners argued that her brand of pop doesn't fit the JJJ audience or the "spirit" of the competition, being to provide exposure for underdog and non-mainstream artists. Those voting for her argued that she's popular and it's a popular competition, that it was a class war between "high" and "low" culture and that the votes should be tallied fairly no matter whose nose gets out of joint with the result. Eventually the radio station disqualified her from the list, claiming that the whole campaign was to "prod hipsters for the lulz" and that it had gone too far when KFC started giving out free food to people who voted for her.

A week or two later, people stopped talking about it and everyone went on listening to whatever music they wanted.

The situation in the science fiction writing industry at the moment seems similar. The Hugo awards began with a purpose (recognising authors in a genre that was often looked down upon by the mainstream) and over time came to have their own distinctive flavour. They are, and long have been, awarded based on a public nomination and voting system, but as their audience changes, the votes reflect that. A group of writers (Sad Puppies) became upset with the flavour of writing that has dominated in recent years (what they call "message fiction", where story is claimed to be secondary to a lesson or PSA from a particular political perspective) and decided that the answer was to get more people voting for the kinds of books that they felt were more worthy and more popular. Their campaign has since been co-opted by another, more hateful group (Rabid Puppies, led by Vox Day) which turned things very ugly and political.

We could debate the merits of whether Tayor Swift deserved to be disqualified from the Hottest 100 or not, but the far more interesting question, to me anyway, is why did these kinds of campaigns start in the first place? The entire competition appeals to a particular audience. The ones voting are also the ones listening and buying the CDs. Likewise, if your book won't appeal to Hugo voters on its own, will having a "Hugo winner!" sticker on the front cover really convince them to read it?

I give you two hypothetical people, let's call them Florence and Alfred. Florence is part of the sub-group that likes so-called "message fiction" and although she's never been part of the voting process, over recent years she's realised that most Hugo winners fit the kind of fiction that she enjoys. So she keeps an eye on the nomination list and takes it to book stores with her. Alfred enjoys sci-fi but dislikes message fiction and has gradually come to realise that he should avoid Hugo winners and instead look at whatever the top 20 best-selling sci-fi writers are.

This year, Florence is going to pick up a Hugo winner that she doesn't like, and Alfred is going to avoid a book that he might have really enjoyed. That's what the Puppies have achieved. They haven't changed the nature of what is considered good writing, because good and bad are subjective terms and always have been.

It's like if I said "well, my book is mainstream literary but romance is a more popular genre, so I'm going to try to get it to the top of Amazon's romance list so that more people will buy it." I'd be forgetting that people are the ones who buy books, read books, review books and vote for books, and people all have their own individual tastes that are loosely grouped around genres, sub-genres and, in this case, awards.

The way I see it, there are 3 possible reasons for these campaigns:

1) Those voting genuinely wanted JJJ listeners to start listening to more Taylor Swift, and failed to acknowledge that you can't change audience tastes by walking into their living room and taking over the speakers. The Sad Puppies somehow thought that by getting these books to win the awards, they'd attract readers who enjoy the previous years' style of writing.

2) Those voting believed that a popular singer like Swift should be acknowledged with a popular-vote award, and rather than starting their own, it was easier/better to use an award that is already well-known. The Sad Puppies wanted these authors to win a Hugo because they feel that these authors deserve to be acknowledged for their popularity and skill, regardless of what other expectations are now attached to Hugo award winners. My guess is that this is where the Sad Puppies campaign began.

3) Trolls are trolling for attention. Those voting were more interested in exposing a flaw in the voting system, undermining any integrity of the award, and getting their name splashed all over blogs and online news media sites. They don't give a poop who wins in the end, because they know that the current audience of the awards aren't interested in what they're trying to sell. But they do know that by generating widespread attention and turning it into something political, they might appear on the radar of other like-minded people who are their target audience. And in the meantime, they get to smash something that they don't like. I suspect this is where the Rabid Puppies came along.

I don't know the views of the authors who might have been nominated and have now missed out. My guess is the attention generated by this saga may end up being positive for them. I don't know the views of authors who have now been nominated, except the couple who have publicly withdrawn their books from consideration. Again, the attention will probably lead to more sales. What I can say, however, and I think most of my writer friends will back me on this, is that it is an honour to know that a reader was touched by something you wrote. All of the writers at the centre of this controversy have the pleasure of knowing that their books are in the hands of readers who are passionate about them and recommending them to other people. Whatever happens to the Hugos from here on out, keep reading books and keep loving them.

Here's the thing about blogging: I find it I have to work up some motivation to do it. Why do something I don't really enjoy? Because I think it's necessary. Mr Salesman explains why in this post.  The real question is why don't I enjoy blogging? I love writing. I'm opinionated (my husband would say too opinionated). I could stand on a soapbox for hours. I could (and do) spend hours and hours on the internet just talking about stuff. When thinking about this, I realised that most of those hours are spent on forums, with a few on Facebook and twitter. The key here is talking to people. I don't enjoy blogging because I don't know who I'm sharing my opinions with or what they think about the matter. I'm inspired to blog when I read someone else's thoughts on a matter and want to share my own.

"Successful" blog posts get page views for two main reasons:
1) They use concise, clear language to say something that many people nod their head at and share with others.
2) They comment on something that is currently at the forefront of people's minds and contribute to a global conversation.

You may notice that this particular blog does neither of those things, but I'm going to write it anyway. This is a plug for twitter. 

I used to scoff at twitter. I thought it was for the kind of people who update their Facebook status every 20 minutes and piss off all their friends. Then I joined twitter and quickly came to realise that a tweet is not a status update. That "followers" are not "friends". Tweets are conversation and 99% of my followers are people I've never met in real life. I don't know the names of their kids. And they don't know the names of mine (because, privacy yo).


Twitter helps with successful blog reason #1 by providing an avenue for people who don't know you to share what you have to say. It helps with successful blog reason #2 by showing you what people are thinking about and where the global conversation is. So, really, today I should have been posting about feminism because this week Julien Blanc got kicked out of my country, some X Factor judge released a song with misogynistic lyrics and Time magazine suggested we ban the word feminism. Sorry about that.

Long story short: if you have a blog, get on twitter. They go hand in hand.