Five members of a critique group look over a familiar fairy tale...
The Language Connoisseur: “Little Red Riding Hood.” That's a great name! Such great imagery, with just a hint of alliteration.
The Character Empath: I loved the twist when the grandma turned out to be the wolf. Holy Cow! But maybe we'd appreciate the surprise more in Red’s point of view instead of the Wolf's?
The Pace Setter: You could stretch out the tension after Red gets swallowed. The woodman shows up too quickly. Milk the drama!
The Plot Critic: Eh, I didn't buy that whole development with the wolf dressing up as the grandma. I mean, is Red really that unobservant? Come on!
The Potty Brain: I dunno about all those references to the woodman's "axe." I mean, this is supposed to be MG! Let's not go there.
What other critique types are there, and what do they say?
Showing posts with label critiquing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label critiquing. Show all posts
An Experimental Psychologist's Take on Beta Reading Part IV: Results and Conclusions
In earlier installments, we discussed finding beta readers, getting them to read while respecting their time, and extracting useful feedback. Today we'll continue the "beta reading as experiment" analogy. The final sections of a research paper are the results and discussion. First I'll share what I learned about my own manuscript, and then I will generalize to some broader lessons. Also, I promised Jake that I’d have charts, and I aim to deliver.
So how did my beta reading experience go? These are the major themes.
What I did well: People kept reading. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of readers who finished in one or two sittings, stayed up late reading, or otherwise deviated from their normal routines. As expected, the closer a reader was to my target audience (young women who enjoy Tamora Pierce), the more she tended to like the manuscript. One definite high point was receiving an e-mail from a beta reader’s sister saying she felt like the book was written just for her. I'm counting that as my first successful word of mouth referral :-)
What needs improvement: I was so focused on trying to keep the plot moving that I sacrificed depth. My readers found room for character development, world building, and scene setting. In my next round of revisions my focus will be on fleshing things out -- developing relationships, backstory, and world details. Much of it is convincing myself that I don't need a cliffhanger ending or knife fight in every chapter to keep the reader engaged.
Most controversial issue: My beta readers were pretty low key, but one particular subject brought out strong opinions of all possible shades. I had a slightly nontraditional romance thread, and here's a sampling of the reactions.
“EWWWWWW… Are you really going to put that in?”
“It was really really awkward.”
“I really liked the tension between those two!”
“F---- Yeah! It made my stomach tingle.”
(And no, it’s not what you think. This is YA, folks. Get your mind out of the gutter. Besides, we’ve established already that my love scenes are very tame.)
Not only were reactions all over the board, but people were very quick to attribute character flaws to fellow beta readers who disagreed with them.. Has anybody else had this experience? And if so, over what kind of passage?
So that was what I learned about my own manuscript. But what did I learn about writing in general?
Actually, it was a lesson I wasn’t expecting. The beta reading process opened my eyes to the reader landscape. I really got to see how personalities and tastes affected someone's reading experience.
If you could represent my view of book quality before I did the experiment, it would've looked something like this.
The y axis represents a book's quality, and the error bars represent subjective differences in opinion.
After the experiment, my understanding is something more like this.
Here, the Z axis represents how much someone enjoys a book, and the X and Y axes represent reader characteristics, anything from their favorite genre, their attention span, their worldview, the number of traumatic childhood experiences they've had involving killer pigeons, etc. All come into play when they read a story.
Now I knew this already, in theory. In fact, I published an essay
that talked at length about what a reader brings to the table. But I didn't really internalize this until I sat down (or e-mailed) with 14 different people and had 14 different conversations about my novel. Hopefully this epiphany will give me some psychological resiliance when I enter the land of queries and bad reviews.
So readers, what lessons have you learned from your beta readers?
To get regular updates from this blog, use one of the subscription options in the left sidebar.
So how did my beta reading experience go? These are the major themes.
What I did well: People kept reading. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of readers who finished in one or two sittings, stayed up late reading, or otherwise deviated from their normal routines. As expected, the closer a reader was to my target audience (young women who enjoy Tamora Pierce), the more she tended to like the manuscript. One definite high point was receiving an e-mail from a beta reader’s sister saying she felt like the book was written just for her. I'm counting that as my first successful word of mouth referral :-)
What needs improvement: I was so focused on trying to keep the plot moving that I sacrificed depth. My readers found room for character development, world building, and scene setting. In my next round of revisions my focus will be on fleshing things out -- developing relationships, backstory, and world details. Much of it is convincing myself that I don't need a cliffhanger ending or knife fight in every chapter to keep the reader engaged.
Most controversial issue: My beta readers were pretty low key, but one particular subject brought out strong opinions of all possible shades. I had a slightly nontraditional romance thread, and here's a sampling of the reactions.
“EWWWWWW… Are you really going to put that in?”
“It was really really awkward.”
“I really liked the tension between those two!”
“F---- Yeah! It made my stomach tingle.”
(And no, it’s not what you think. This is YA, folks. Get your mind out of the gutter. Besides, we’ve established already that my love scenes are very tame.)
Not only were reactions all over the board, but people were very quick to attribute character flaws to fellow beta readers who disagreed with them.. Has anybody else had this experience? And if so, over what kind of passage?
So that was what I learned about my own manuscript. But what did I learn about writing in general?
Actually, it was a lesson I wasn’t expecting. The beta reading process opened my eyes to the reader landscape. I really got to see how personalities and tastes affected someone's reading experience.
If you could represent my view of book quality before I did the experiment, it would've looked something like this.
The y axis represents a book's quality, and the error bars represent subjective differences in opinion.
After the experiment, my understanding is something more like this.
Here, the Z axis represents how much someone enjoys a book, and the X and Y axes represent reader characteristics, anything from their favorite genre, their attention span, their worldview, the number of traumatic childhood experiences they've had involving killer pigeons, etc. All come into play when they read a story.
Now I knew this already, in theory. In fact, I published an essay
that talked at length about what a reader brings to the table. But I didn't really internalize this until I sat down (or e-mailed) with 14 different people and had 14 different conversations about my novel. Hopefully this epiphany will give me some psychological resiliance when I enter the land of queries and bad reviews.So readers, what lessons have you learned from your beta readers?
To get regular updates from this blog, use one of the subscription options in the left sidebar.
An Experimental Psychologist's Take on Beta Reading Part III: Data Collection
So far in this series we've talked about selecting beta readers, recruiting them, and getting them to read. Now is the part we’ve all be waiting for: getting feedback.
There are two challenges to soliciting feedback (especially if the beta readers are not writers themselves). First, readers might not have much to say beyond “It was okay.” Second, even if they do say something, they might just be telling you what you want to hear*. I tried to minimize these problems by doing the following:
There are two challenges to soliciting feedback (especially if the beta readers are not writers themselves). First, readers might not have much to say beyond “It was okay.” Second, even if they do say something, they might just be telling you what you want to hear*. I tried to minimize these problems by doing the following:
An Experimental Psychologist's Take on Beta Reading Part II: Recruiting Betas and Getting Them To Read
This is part two of the series An Experimental Psychologist’s Take on Beta Reading. Read Part I (Subject Pools) here. Again, I'm not claiming that these methods are the best for everyone, but hopefully everyone can find some useful tidbits.
Way back in the day, there was very little oversight for experiments involving human subjects. That era gave us classic studies like the Milgram Shock Experiments and the Stanford Prison Study. These studies revealed new insights about human nature but left many participants emotionally traumatized.
In these more enlightened times, human subject research is closely regulated to ensure that participants are treated fairly and ethically. One of the most important concepts involving human research is that of informed consent. In every study, we make sure the participant understands the risks and benefits involved in the experiment, and we emphasize that the participant may stop the experiment at any time.
Informed consent is extremely important for ethical research, but on a day to day level, it creates a bit of a balancing act for experimenters. We don't want participants to feel forced into something that makes them uncomfortable. But if we word things the wrong way, we sometimes give the false impression that our experiment is just a side thing that they can to join or drop at their convenience. There’s nothing quite like waiting around at lab, 8pm on a weeknight, having booked the scanner for a nonrefundable $1000 slot, and hearing that your test subject won’t be showing up because he decided to go drinking with his buddies.
Recruiting beta readers reminded me of this tightrope walk. On one hand, people have lives and are doing you a favor by reading your novel. On the other, many manuscripts die a lonely death in the depths of a beta reader's email inbox. So how do we maintain a balance between respecting our beta readers’ time and getting feedback in a timely manner?
Way back in the day, there was very little oversight for experiments involving human subjects. That era gave us classic studies like the Milgram Shock Experiments and the Stanford Prison Study. These studies revealed new insights about human nature but left many participants emotionally traumatized.
In these more enlightened times, human subject research is closely regulated to ensure that participants are treated fairly and ethically. One of the most important concepts involving human research is that of informed consent. In every study, we make sure the participant understands the risks and benefits involved in the experiment, and we emphasize that the participant may stop the experiment at any time.
Informed consent is extremely important for ethical research, but on a day to day level, it creates a bit of a balancing act for experimenters. We don't want participants to feel forced into something that makes them uncomfortable. But if we word things the wrong way, we sometimes give the false impression that our experiment is just a side thing that they can to join or drop at their convenience. There’s nothing quite like waiting around at lab, 8pm on a weeknight, having booked the scanner for a nonrefundable $1000 slot, and hearing that your test subject won’t be showing up because he decided to go drinking with his buddies.
Recruiting beta readers reminded me of this tightrope walk. On one hand, people have lives and are doing you a favor by reading your novel. On the other, many manuscripts die a lonely death in the depths of a beta reader's email inbox. So how do we maintain a balance between respecting our beta readers’ time and getting feedback in a timely manner?
An Experimental Psychologist's Take on Beta Reading Part I: Subject Pools
I didn't plan on running my novel critiques like a psych experiment. I just wanted some folks to read the manuscript and recruited/blackmailed some friends accordingly.
A week into the process, I noticed that I was using principles from experimental psychology to ensure better data from my beta readers. Another week after that, I realized that it wasn’t normal to use words like "data" when talking about beta feedback. Then I began emailing my writing group with phrases like "I'm starting to notice clear trends emerging in the responses," and it was all downhill from there.
By now, I’ve embraced the “beta reading as psych experiment” analogy. But nerdy or not, I kinda like the way things turned out. Some writer friends requested that I post about my experience in more detail, and that was the inspiration for this next series: An Experimental Psychologist’s Approach to Beta Reading.
A week into the process, I noticed that I was using principles from experimental psychology to ensure better data from my beta readers. Another week after that, I realized that it wasn’t normal to use words like "data" when talking about beta feedback. Then I began emailing my writing group with phrases like "I'm starting to notice clear trends emerging in the responses," and it was all downhill from there.
By now, I’ve embraced the “beta reading as psych experiment” analogy. But nerdy or not, I kinda like the way things turned out. Some writer friends requested that I post about my experience in more detail, and that was the inspiration for this next series: An Experimental Psychologist’s Approach to Beta Reading.
Three useful pointers from "How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy"
One would be hard pressed to find someone with better credentials for teaching science fiction than 10 gazillion time Hugo and Nebula award winner Orson Scott Card (most well known for Ender's Game
).I recently read his book How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy
Although some portions were too philosophical for me to find immediately helpful, he gives insightful tips on world building and plotting, and the excellent chapter on exposition is itself worth the price of the book. Here are three tips from the book that I found particularly useful.1. The idea net - The idea of making up a whole universe, with peoples, cultures, landscapes, and histories can often seem overwhelming. That's why I liked Card's approach, which is to start with one or two ideas and expand on them by asking questions and following them to their logical conclusion.
He uses Ender's Game as an example. First he started with the idea of kids playing battle games, and then asked questions -- Who are they fighting? What is the goal of their training?
Likewise, if you are making up an alien species, first start with a few characteristics (another of Card's examples -- they communicate by transmitting memories directly via DNA) and then ask questions. For example, how do these characteristics influence their society and government? Why would such characteristics evolve?
Card sometimes runs workshops where the class uses this process -- asking questions, improvising answers, and repeating. The results are almost always workable into a story.
2. Exposition in Science Fiction and Fantasy - A unique challenge of speculative fiction is the need to acquaint the reader with an entire world and all its relevant quirks and details. How do you do that without clunky descriptive paragraphs or artificial explanatory dialogue?
Card addresses this issue by analyzing an example of skillful exposition: the opening of Octavia Butler's Wild Seed
. A summary is no substitute for his actual analysis, but the basic point is that much can be shown through subtle details. For example, referring to a village as a "comfortable mudwalled place" tells the reader not only about the setting (primitive), but also that the point of view (POV) character feels comfortable in rustic surroundings.It is not necessary to break POV and give characters artificial thoughts in order to fill the reader in. In fact, good use of POV will create a deeper and fuller sense of the setting. Details like whether or not the character regards items and events as unusual or commonplace, happy or sad, fair or unfair, will be picked up by your readers and incorporated into their impression of the world.
3. Creating a wise reader - How do you get feedback from friends and family beyond the polite but not very useful "Yeah, I liked it"? Card suggests that the secret isn't to get people to tell you how to fix your writing (Add more description? Bad characterization? Faulty plotting?), but to train your "wise readers" to report their own personal experience while reading. If they can tell you when they felt bored or excited, when they stopped reading, and when they felt something was missing, then you can go back and figure out how to fix things.
Overall verdict: There's lots of good stuff in this book. I'd highly recommend reading it at least once, and I myself will probably read it multiple times.
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