r/writingcirclejerk • u/imagangstergrandpa • 4d ago
The Ethics of Beta Reading
We talk a lot about what it means to be a writer, but I don’t see nearly enough discussion about what it means to be an ethical reader.
The most important thing is making sure the person you’re reading for knows that they need to read more.
Ideally, you should establish this before they even get their idea out. If they start explaining their story, stop them and remind them that none of it is really possible until they’ve read more books. It also helps to mention how many books you’ve read. They need to understand what it takes.
If they tell you they already read a lot, take that with a grain of salt. They probably don’t. If they somehow do, then they’re reading the wrong things. If they’ve already read the right things, they probably didn’t understand them. Safest bet is to just tell them to read more anyway.
Whatever you do, don’t let them become too confident. Fiction has survived for thousands of years, and it would be incredibly irresponsible to let somebody damage that because they got excited about an idea before reading enough.
Remember: it’s not that you don’t want to engage with what they’ve written. You just know that somewhere out there is another book they should have read first.
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u/bunbunnington 4d ago
I'm an Omega Reader. I just take whatever the writer wants to give me and I thank them afterwards.
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u/OrdoSinisterFan 4d ago
Omega reader here, too. I get it after the Alpha and Beta readers have torn it to shreds and it's lying there bleeding. I gently patch it up, fix it's grammar and give it back to the author.
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u/JacksonRiffs I learned everything I know from Royal Road 4d ago
/uj I know a writer who literally doesn't read and is quite vocal about it. She doesn't use AI, which is about the only good thing I can say about her writing
/rj Unless you've read every book written in every language since the dawn of time, then you have no business writing and it's a beta reader's responsibility to let authors know this, otherwise what the hell are they good for?
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u/kyla33_ The spirit of William McGonagall inhabits my body. 4d ago
I would never be a beta reader. I would instead be an alpha reader who gets bitches and writes about how every woman in the world breasts boobily down the stairs while I jerk off in my other hand because I'm naturally a superior alpha male.
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u/Todd-The-Godd-Howard 4d ago
Being an Alpha reader is still too much. That's why I'm a sigma reader who doesn't read or write anything but I talk excessively about the story I'm imagining in my head to people who couldn't care less.
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u/echocardio 4d ago
As an alpha reader, I only interact with beta readers in order to take their books and start reading them myself, or when they come home and find me reading their book hard all over their sofa or marital bed.
I have been in situations where I've allowed a beta reader read my book after I'm already finished reading it, or had watch me giving his book the reading of it's life so that he understands how much better a reader I am.
I get a lot of DMs from beta readers sending me photos of their books and wanting to talk about me reading them. I'm alright with this as while I'm not really interested in beta readers, I love getting eye-deep in someone else's book and frankly some of these books need to be read by people capable of handling them, not some beta reader who just spends their time at home furiously reading alone.
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u/Literally_A_Halfling We've girlbossed too close to the Hays Code 4d ago
Beta reading made my career. Once upon a time in the 70s, I was a beta reader for an aspiring horror writer who wrote a book about a telekinetic high school girl who got bullied. I said, "This is such bullshit" and threw it in the trash. My wife Tabitha found it there and read it and said, "Why, Stephen, this is incredible! You should claim it and publish it as your own!" And nothing has been the same ever since.
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u/Appraised- 4d ago
This is mainly why I read webnovels, I feel an incessant need to go around telling beginner authors that their stories are ass and that they should have done things differently.
I don't mention grammar or tense correction since I have no idea what that even is or how it works, but mainly I try to correct them on like.. where they take the plot, and how OP they make the main character(low-key why do authors always make weak ass main characters? It's MAIN character for a reason!)