April 29, 2017

In Honour of Beta Readers

I have been making many changes to A Beautiful End. The credit for many of these changes goes to other people. They say it takes a village to raise a child. It also takes a village to raise a novel. I birthed the novel, but it’s the feedback from beta readers that is helping to make the novel into the story it needs to be.

I have had some very helpful input from three readers so far. Countless mistakes have been pointed out. I had no idea there were so many, although as a percentage of the total words, it’s probably not that much. But what really amazes me is the ideas and questions I have received from them that help me to make really important changes to the story. They knew just what information to give me, what questions to ask, and each of them had their own contributions.

One of the comments I received propelled me to consider adding some to a section of the novel. I spent most of April writing poetry instead of working on revisions, by participating in Camp NaNoWriMo (campnanowrimo.org). I used it to set my own goal for the number of lines of poetry. I wrote an amazing 1208 lines, which was a total of 42 poems. Out of those, eight poems that could possibly be used in my novel. I expect to choose five or six of them. I can’t tell you how I will use them, because that would spoil the fun of reading it. I do believe they will enhance the story and be more than just “filler”. The good news is that the first readers enjoyed my story enough that I can ask them to reread the part with the poems so they can confirm for me whether the story is improved by them.

I am now working on my third revision of A Beautiful End. This revision will include changes suggested by my third beta reader as well as the work needed to incorporate the poems. There are more readers who have comments coming, so I expect further revisions.

I am so looking forward to completing the process and having my novel ready to share with the world!

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