30 Days of Fandom Meme: Day 24

[osprey_archer]

24 – Betaing – How many betas do you like to use to make sure there aren't any major flaws in your fic? Do you have a beta horror story or dream story?

That depends. I like to get at least one person to beta my stories (unless a story is very short or so obscure that I don’t know anyone else who knows the fandom); if I’m feeling insecure about a story, particularly for an exchange, I’ll sometimes get up to three, although usually only one of them is doing an indepth beta of the story and the other two are mainly supposed to reassure me that it is in fact coherent.

Also if I frequent a fandom chat - this was particularly true of Sutcliff fandom - sometimes everyone in the chat would end up reading a story before it got posted, because we’d all brainstormed it together so of course everyone deserved a sneak peek at, say, Alexios’s nervous collapse after being forced by vile circumstance to kill his soulmate.

I don’t have a beta horror story. My beta dream story is littlerhymes’ excellent work betaing the Reciprocity series, which is approximately a billion words long (well, 150,000ish at this point), the installments of which she has faithfully, incisively, and punctually betaed for over a year at this point. She’s also helped me brainstorm directions for future installments on a couple of occasions when I got stuck, reassured me that I should go ahead with ideas I was waffling about (should I really make SHIELD all that sketchy? Yes! Yes I should), and generally been a wonderful guiding presence. Thank you, littlerhymes! You are the best.

Comments

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping to send the last installment to you today or tomorrow! We'll see.

And I may write a few other stories in the Reciprocity 'verse in the future if the mood strikes me, but we'll see. I mean, I never did get to write that fondue fic.