How to improve as a Beta

When I first started as a beta, for an Eragon fic, I had no clue what to do. My first and only goal was to speed najex’s fic up so I could read more. That’s all I wanted. I had no clue how much I would enjoy it, how much fun it is to read something you enjoy and truly make it a teensy bit better, or how hard it actually was to stop being a ‘reader’ and start ‘looking for errors’ instead of just powering through any typos or wrong tenses.

I only did a couple of chapters before working with Sal (I.E.: being stalked), so I didn’t have much time or opportunity to learn or familiarize myself with the work. And when I joined Sal, I was being essentially thrown in the deep end, trying to keep up with his update rate (which, at the time, was about one chapter a week, sometimes two) and cleaning up, or trying to, his earlier chapters. And I can safely say that I failed at it. A lot. Hard. And I’m not saying this as a dig at Sal’s writing, since he was also starting out, ITT is his ‘firstborn’, and it’s quite messy in the beginning.

When I first did the early chapters, I thought “Well, this isn’t so hard, I managed to clean a lot, had a bunch of stuff done, it’s fine, right?”. Fuck no. Fast-forward a few months, and I went back to them, this time just to do a brush-up with this grammar-checking tool that I’ll get in a bit, and while doing so, in an automatic kind of way, I started noticing things that I’d missed out, or didn’t know at the time, and then I started going manually, and I found that I actually sucked when I first began beta-ing, and how much I actually improved without noticing.

I then started wondering when did that happen. Was it through instant little pieces of knowledge that I accumulated over time? How did that happen? By someone explaining things? By watching someone else do the same work and integrating their techniques to mine? By talking to other betas about how I worked and seeing the differing styles we each had? Or was it by looking up actual grammatical rules from a different language to the one I was raised with? And I came up with the following conclusion: all of the above.

The first instance I remember being taught how to use commas in a creative writing scenario was by my friend Firefawn. She taught me the ins and outs of it, when to use, when not to use it. She explained what fit best in general, but also how there are times where you shouldn’t be too bogged down to the rules, particularly in dialogue, because people don’t speak eloquently or perfectly 100% of the time, so putting that aspect into ‘paper’, into your characters, and defining a tone for them is crucial for better character development. And all that came from a single question of ‘should I use commas here?’.

Another instance where I learned a lot was by watching that goofball of a friend Ruben do his beta-ing for ECOTS’ rework, and by how in-depth his in-line comments were, what he was critiquing, and how he would offer suggestions on how to fix it. Our talks about how languages as a whole worked and were structured based on their original branch; how English was seen by Latin-based natives and how that aspect literally changed our way of thinking.

I also remember when I first found out about the Oxford comma debate(it’s the final comma in a list of things), and how it was presented to me (this is for you, Luq) and how absolutely in love I became with them. Because, you see, Portuguese does not have this debate. It’s 100% wrong to use them. So me using it is like a slap to the face of all my professors(I was a shit Portuguese student, nearly got Fs on it), and that feels so good. And I personally always add them, because it feels much easier to understand, as a reader, the correct list, and leaves no room for doubts.

That tool I mentioned earlier? That one is Grammarly. I don’t remember if it was Sal who showed me this first or if I found out about it and showed it to him, but we both tried together, like a second pair of eyes for typos and silly mistakes. I’m not sure if he still uses it, but I try to use it 100% of the time. Why? Two reasons: synonyms and mistakes’ explanations. The app has a ‘Learn more’ section for each error you make, and it not only explains what’s wrong but it also gives examples of what should and shouldn’t be done. And sometimes, that’s all it takes to make something sink in.

I still am learning though, semi-colons are a nuisance to learn and use correctly; dashes and ellipsis also eludes me, particularly if I see a sentence that should’ve used but didn’t. And idioms. Lord, they are hard for me, I keep asking about them because I never know if I’m being particularly dense about something or if it’s another gap in my vocabulary. I’m also constantly advocating for the removal of ‘There is/are/was/were’ as sentence starters from my author’s vocabulary in general, because I know they’re better than that, and that anything else they come up with will be better without it.

My point is, the way I learned (and continue to do so) how to be a better Beta, was by asking a lot of questions, dedicating hours upon hours of reading through articles and dictionaries, watching more experienced people do the same work more effectively than I was and assimilating that to my skills, and talking about it with like-minded people about the work itself. I’m not saying this will be the end-all-be-all of guides or that there isn’t anything else you need to do. Each person learns and thinks differently, and some things might work better for you than for me, and vice-versa. Just try to do your best and be patient. This isn’t an overnight thing; like anything else in life, it takes time and effort.