Betas

[louiselux]

A comment in snowballjane's journal got me thinking - how many betas do people like to use?

Two is about the right number for me, any more than that and I tend to get a bit swamped with other people's opinions. Basically, I get confused and distracted, especially if people tell me conflicting things. Making objective decisions about what works and what doesn't in my own fiction is very difficult. It's so much easier with other people's!

But I've seen people thanking whole strings of people for beta'ing and wonder how they manage the process. I can see that having betas for different things makes sense, not only because it splits the work down into smaller chunks for them, but also because I can attempt to mentally parcel things off, as in 'these are grammar comments, these are plot comments, etc'. Not that things ever work that smoothly, really.

Also, the length of the story seems to make a difference to me. Shorter things I tend not to bother getting checked. If you choose not to get something beta'd, what's your reason?
[Poll #330108]

Comments

[fivil.livejournal.com]

Depends on what type of fic I'm working on - something I'm used to writing can usually be betaed by only one person. Something that I struggle with, new pairing, new characters I've never written before, new fandom - these I usually want looked over more than one person.

Three is the charm.