In Praise of Beta Readers by Rich Chiappone

In a biography of the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev by V.S. Pritchett, I came across these two sentences about the writing of Turgenev’s novel Rudin.

“The first draft of Rudin was written in seven weeks. The manuscript was later rewritten, after severe criticism by his friends.”

Hah! That made me smile, because the first sentence had stabbed me with the realization that I can’t write a short story in seven weeks, let alone a novel. So, I was greatly heartened to read the second sentence suggesting that Turgenev’s first draft may have been quickly completed, but it must have been a mess. Very reassuring. But the thing that caught my interest were the words “criticism by his friends.” How wonderful to hear that even a great writer like Turgenev needed his trusted beta readers.

Beta readers are generally defined as the people who read your manuscripts before you publish them. For most of us, that means spouses, close friends, and trusted readers/writers with some experience or (hopefully) expertise in writing. Of course, it can also mean teachers and fellow students in writing workshops whether at a university or with a writing organization like, say, 49 Writers.

Workshops are an ideal place to get responses to early drafts of stories, novel chapters, essays, or poems. I say ideal, because the group will almost inevitably be a mix of readers having both more and less experience than you yourself. And, most importantly, in a workshop there is a person at the helm, someone with genuine skills at guiding a discussion of your work.

If organized writing workshops are simply not available in your town, then an ad hoc writing group can also be a great source of feedback. But the key is to find members who are at least as advanced as you are whenever possible. By that I don’t mean as advanced as a writer; I mean as advanced as a critical reader.

A useful writing group is not a book club in which members give a thumbs up or thumbs down, saying whether they “liked” your work or not. Yes, it is great to hear positive responses. But it is far more important to hear them from people who can articulate why they liked your story. And more importantly, why they did not. That is not to say you should expect them to provide you with a fix. Somebody a lot smarter than I am said, “When someone tells you there is something wrong with your story, they’re almost always right. When they tell you how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”

Ideally a beta reader should be as specific as they can possibly be. That means learning to think and read (and comment) like a writer. To say, “This isn’t working for me,” may be honest, but it is not as helpful as saying something like, “I got confused by all the names of all those characters on the first page.” Yes, it’s a complaint leveled at many great writers (nearly all the Russians) but at least the author can ask themselves to consider whether all those names are needed, or whether that reader is just impatient. The author can choose to change that if they see fit. Or not. You can’t expect your readers to fix every problem. But at least you should hear about the problems and decide for yourself.

Unfortunately, various readers will give you conflicting, sometimes completely opposite responses to something. I’d love to say this brings up the question of which readers to choose to listen to and which you might want to ignore. However, there is no easy way to know that.

For example, I’ve had two very erudite and impeccably credentialed readers give me almost precisely opposite responses to the ending of a story. The first reader is a famous writer, one of the best alive today. He told me the ending seemed bleak and out of character with the narrator’s sometimes comedic tone throughout the telling of the story. I could see what he meant. So, I revised, adding a possibility of a brighter future into the ending. When I heard from the editor of a magazine that he liked the story but was concerned that the ending seemed to equivocate too much, I told him what this famous writer had said to me. The editor said, “Well, X is a great writer, and we’ve published his stories here, but he’s wrong about this and I’m right.” Needless to say, I express mailed the story back with original ending in place once again (this was ages ago before texting or emails). The editor called and said he liked it, that I “had nailed the ending,” and that he was taking the story into a staff meeting with the other editors and was sure they would publish it. It was a very exciting day. This was a national magazine I wanted to place a story in more than just about any other.

That was the last time I heard from them.

The lesson? Beats me—except that you just can’t please everybody. I had two very good readers advising me contrarily, and even with one of them advocating and promoting the story it got killed by committee. It did go on to be published elsewhere, and even included in an anthology. So, it apparently pleased some other readers.  But what do they know?

Richard Chiappone is the author of four collections of short fiction and essays. His debut novel, The Hunger of Crows, was published by Crooked Lane Books in 2021, and his most recent book is Uncommon Weather, a collection of twelve Alaskan short stories, published by the University of Alaska Press.