OK, so I now had a good first draft…what next? I knew that I needed more pairs of eyes on the manuscript, after all, I had written the damn thing and I was bound to miss things like plot-holes, etc. I considered carefully and decided that there were a few things that needed to happen.
Beta Readers
Having no professional resources for this because I still hadn’t/haven’t joined any writers groups I decided to leverage people I knew. A few friends and family members all volunteered to take on this task, and after I had briefed them on what I was looking for, each was provided with a copy of the draft book.
And I waited…and I waited…and I waited. Only one person provided any feedback at all, and that was fairly limited (but appreciated). It’s obvious that no great sense of urgency had been imparted to these volunteers, or perhaps other life-related time-sinks had taken precedence. Fair enough. Still, I desperately needed the feed-back and insights that would allow me to better the story. Needless to say, I cannot recommend this method to any aspiring authors out there, and in retrospect it probably wasn’t a good idea anyway.
Where did this leave me? I reached out to the most opinionated person I know (thanks Aimee!) and am awaiting her no doubt scathing review and any associated short-comings she discovered as she waded through my manuscript. At the very least this will give me something to work on as I try to determine my next steps, and hopefully her insights will help make the book that much better. Continue reading “How not to write your first novel, Part 2”