How becoming a beta has changed how I read stories.

The thing that most surprises me when I think back to before my beta “career” is how I changed how I would approach a story. I remember how I used to read story after story, fanfic after fanfic, only caring about certain tropes I liked, if the characters I like were well used, how the world was developed, and if the plot made sense on the most basic level.

I rarely (and that’s a strong euphemism) cared enough to dissect or analyze a story beyond the bare minimum, which would be if the characters made decisions that made sense within their own parameters, or if there weren’t any major plot holes. It was all about pleasure and getting that next rush from completing a story and reaching its climax. Only about “how many words have I read today” or if the characters acted in a way I liked, and if they didn’t? I would drop the story faster than I can say ‘Girl’ (that is a tough word for me, don’t judge) and never look back. Mark it as a “bad” story and ignore everything else inside it. I used to never try and understand what the author was trying to accomplish with their character.

And honestly? If you do that, it’s a perfectly acceptable way of enjoying yourself.

But as I started doing beta, I actually had to think about what was going on, if the characters should be doing X instead of Y, if something happened, what would Z’s reaction to it be, or if even something is well described, because it needs a certain level of detail to allude to something in the future. And why is that? How else would I be able to assist my authors with anything beyond a simple “comma-checker” or “word-dropper”, if I couldn’t even provide them a decent, honest, and constructive feedback? So this meant I had to learn, somehow, to get my skills up to a level that would help them, even if a little bit

But this didn’t actually happen consciously. I was never, at any point that I can remember, actively working towards it. It’s just something that happened over time, with a lot of practice and testing the waters with each new author I ended up working with. I learned what each of them wanted from me, how they preferred to work, the way how each of them had their quirks, but most importantly, I think, was that every single one of them was actually looking forward to my feedback, and I couldn’t just be coy and say “Looks good” like some people do. This pushed me into writing better feedbacks (even if I forget to sometimes, sorry Rosie). And this manifested in the form of “reading better”. 

Again, this wasn’t conscious at all. Also wasn’t instantaneous, and took me a long time to even notice I was doing it. But I, essentially, was actively reading a story and always trying to ‘correct’ it. I kept seeing mistakes, from grammar to typos, to poorly worded sentences, to blocky paragraphs, or inaccurate in-story logic, contradictions, pacing, inconsistent decisions and so, so, so much more. And this ended up changing even how I would read stories that were just for pure enjoyment. 

Now, after over a year of doing this, more than 20 different authors I’ve worked with, 30+ stories I actually peeked behind the curtains of, I think, and this could change easily, that I’ve settled down into 3 different ‘styles of reading’. The first and what I use purely for pleasure reading, let’s call it Easy mode (I’m a nerd, sue me), then Normal, which is for when someone asked feedback just for specific things. It’s what I do the most, and third and final, the Beta mode (cliche, but I like it), where I’ll try to dissect everything that was said, why, how, when, if it should’ve, all that jazz.

The Easy mode is basically most people’s ‘inner grammar nazi’ mode. Where you’ll spot issues in typos, better ways of phrasing certain things, but you just don’t care enough to point it out, so you blast through and try to ignore it, up until it becomes unbearable on a spiritual level. This is how I read most of the stories that I don’t work on, that serve only one function for me, to entertain me. Which is likely what happens to a lot of you.

The Normal mode is how I actually do most of my beta work for fanfiction. I’ll just go along, cleaning up anything that needs cleaning, reading each sentence at least twice (so it ends up taking a lot longer to read 10k words), where I pay attention to a lot of the fine details, grammar, and punctuation, but don’t care much about anything else that wasn’t requested by the author. And that could mean anything, from concerns about pacing, a specific scene, how a character is acting, if there’s a way to improve something in particular. 

Now, the ‘Beta mode’ is a bit more thorough. Those I have only done for a few fanfictions, though never writing down proper reviews for them, and mostly for paid beta service for original works. Where I’ll write a whole separate document, outlining everything that I liked, things that I wanted more of, things that I hated; a complete breakdown of each major and minor character, what they seemed like, my impressions as a reader of the pacing, worldbuilding, character development, if there’s any foreshadowing that needs to be done, if there’s too much foreshadowing, how the structure of each scene could be improved (if at all), if their style is actually hindering the story or not, and then I offer suggestions based on what was requested of me, always trying to improve their work while retaining their identity.

I certainly didn’t expect to change how I read anything. It’s not unwelcome either, but it can be annoying at times, where I just want to shut my brain and enjoy a story like it was a sitcom to play in the background while chatting, or like comfort food on an off-day. But it is one of those things that really show how much we change over the years, and when I realized that, it actually made me want to improve even more in how I could review and provide feedback better; so I guess we take the lemons(NOT OJ) we are given and make lemonade with them.