I’m still pretty torn on whether I want to have discussions about writing with people on the internet. I really liked the freedom of writing my first book in “secret”. I’m confident that my plots, characters and grasp of the English language are very good.
Still, I think it would be fun to have a place to do an occasional character clinic or to show off a scene I’m proud of. I’d also like to read other short pieces by writers who are literate and talented, and watch other people critique them.
Most message boards for writers are pretty dead. The liveliest one I’ve found hasn’t generated a single comment on a short piece I posted yesterday, and nobody has posted a character clinic to it in a month.
Is there a Dope for writers? Or do the good/serious ones keep to themselves?
There are apparently at least a few published writers here. I don’t doubt there are more than we think. Why not start an ongoing thread, or set of threads, on this board that meets your needs? It won’t keep you from searching for a separate outlet on another board.
On the subject of writers, I was friends, for a while, with a very famous science fiction writer. When I asked him how you make the step from unknown to “published by a major company”, he said, “You need a good literary agent. But you can’t get a good one unless you already are published by a good publisher.” I asked how to solve that “Catch 22.” He answered, “I can’t tell you.”
I still don’t know if he meant, “I don’t actually know myself” or, “I’m not telling you.” I suspect it’s the latter.
Seems like it would be unwieldy to do that in a single thread. Myself, I checked out Absolute Write and it appears massive in scope and pretty well-trafficked.
It does seem like a huge single thread, and would be too many individual threads. Most people who come to the Dope aren’t interested in amateur fiction.
I’ll check out the suggestions. It’s so hard to find a place that’s juuuuuust right…
The problem with an on-going thread here on the Dope is that it’s accessible to anyone doing a Google search. A lot of potential buyers will regard anything posted in a thread here as already published and never touch it. You need a place with a closed membership where you can retain your publishing rights and ability to sell your work.
For science fiction, horror, and fantasy writers I recommend critters.org both for learning how to critique fiction and for getting your own work reviewed. Sattua, while you have a book under your belt now every writer, including yourself, benefits from having others provide feedback.
It’s scary to reveal one’s own real name (or writing name) on boards where you might also have just called someone out for foolish opinions on some other subject of heated debate. I’d be afraid of vindictive behavior.
(I know someone who was targeted this way. They said something critical of someone else’s favorite singer :eek: and got swamped with hostile emails and also round-the-clock phone calls. Worse, their own recordings were aggressively attacked. The enemies organized to post hundreds of one-star reviews on Amazon, etc.)
I wasn’t even thinking of it as a replacement, just as a nice single thread where writing Dopers can gripe or kvetch or brag on ourselves as openly or anonymously as we wished.
Unless one of us got published by a major house doing a major work, it should be pretty easy to stay anon even if you did say something like ‘I got an offer for my short story’ or ‘my book got optioned for movie rights!’ or whatever.
If people wanted specific advice or beta readers, other identified-as-writers would be more likely to want to participate and be honest and critical about it. PMs are private, and it still takes roughly half a minute to set up a throwaway email to contact people with.
Not saying it has to happen, just that none of the concerns so far would prevent a thread from being a nice thing to have in addition to finding and using a whole entire writing-focused message board.
There are questions I would ask the Dope or specific people here because I feel more comfortable around you guys than on another message board that’s new and unfamiliar.
How does beta reading work? I have a friend who is published with an indie house and she offered to read my manuscript before I published it. Then I thought real hard. I know her but she isn’t really a close friend; she’s unemployed and desperately short on cash; her last five manuscripts have been rejected by her publisher. Not really somebody I want to hand my book to.
I think you’ll find all boards end up being pretty much the same thing: a forum for simian shit slinging. Probably better just to spend your time writing.
I actually have a ‘mentor’ that I work with online to workshop my stuff with. It’s a paid relationship with a published author. I’ve seen and admired their work, and it’s congruent with what I want to be publishing when I get there. It’s not the same thing as a beta reader, but I know who they are, and I know they won’t steal my work or offer bad advice.
True ‘beta readers’ are people like your friend, but whose taste you trust. A good option for a lot of people would be an acquaintance that you know their reading preferences and you know they’re intelligent and critical thinkers, and you’re not close enough to them (or they are hard-nosed enough) to not soften the blow when your work needs real criticizing.
I don’t have many real world ‘acquaintances’ and I don’t want my close friends and family to be involved with my process, so I went online for beta readers. I found a mentor instead.
I have beta read other people’s work. It is hard for me, because I can be very critical of work, but I hate to be critical of people.
I’ve been participating in a writing game over at LiveJournal for the past 7 or 8 years. The last couple of years we’ve had a few already-published writers join. A few people who don’t play anymore have gone on to start their own indie presses. A couple of them edit anthologies for those presses.
ANYWAY, anybody who’s playing the writing game can beta anyone else’s piece for the week. Basically you both decide on a timeline and what you want your beta reader to look for in your piece. You email your piece to the beta reader, who reads it and emails you back with his/her impressions, suggestions, etc. You rewrite the piece with those suggestions in mind, post the piece to the game thread (we have a different prompt every week), and others read, comment, and ultimately vote on it at the end of the week.
A beta reader is somebody who has no emotional investment in your work; ergo, s/he can read it with a critical eye. In my experience, someone whose writing I admire for whatever reason(s) makes a good beta reader. You just have to make sure you’re both on the same page schedule-wise.