Glad to hear things are working out. Sounds like you’ve got it down.
That’s my understanding as well. I’m in a review group that was set up as part of a class. We were specifically instructed not to comment on spelling or grammar, but to concentrate on “I like this”, “I hate this”, “this is confusing”, and identifying the arc. We get to comment as much as we like about why something is liked, hated, confusing, or working with/working against/missing from the arc. But we’re supposed to assume that the writer will fix the spelling and grammar on their own later.
The author didn’t ask for anything; I volunteered to SPaG-check it because I liked the story. Beta was my term; I thought it just meant someone who checks over your story in any capacity.
SPaG was all I was going to do, but the first chapter had a lot of run-on sentences, and a lot of subsequent sentence flow problems that bothered me as much as the spelling mistakes did. There were too many run-ons to fix to fix them all, so I pointed out the worst ones and asked the writer to try writing less of them in the first place.
Lo and behold, by the second chapter the writer had made great strides on reducing those run-ons. And now I had the time and energy to point out almost all of them, and to tackle awkward phrasing, too. And the occasional minor canonical error (or in the case of the ASoIaF stuff, things that might be errors- it’s been a year or two since I read the books). And that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing- SPaG, sentence structure, phrasing, fact-checking. I did point out one OOC scene, but that’s pretty much it as far as high-level stuff goes.
One-year update: it has, in fact, been one year! And ten chapters!
It’s pretty hilarious now to look back at my panicked flailing. Especially because I was so adamant at the time that I was going to do spelling and grammar, and only spelling and grammar. If I could have seen a vision of myself tearing up a chapter with the Editorial Machete and sending it back for rewrites, I think I would have hid under my desk. And yet, I’m here, I’m still at it, and I’ve expanded to practically full-on beta duties. The latest chapter, for instance, went back and forth about three times because there were scenes that went too long, mood-killing moments, and an attempt to fix an improbable situation that just made the character look stupid. And I was able to provide good enough advice that most of the problems were worked out. I could never have imagined doing this at the start.
Who knows, by next year I might be able to explain exactly why something is bad in one instance and good in another.
And there will be another year, because there’s going to be at least four books and about fifteen chapters for each. And the chapters are getting longer, too. But now at least I know I can handle it.
PS. I’m writing this late at night while kinda tired, so if there aren’t spelling and/or grammar errors here then the Irony Gods aren’t doing their jobs properly. But I’m a decent editor when I’m fully awake.
My usual online fiction group (sorry, can’t say) hosts 99.99% amateurs and a few who have been trained and paid to report, analyze, write, edit, teach, etc. Writing happily for fun is self-gratification. Writing clearly for others is work. Good orthography - spelling, punctuation, grammar - is vital but insufficient. Does the writer know what they want to say? Did they read the text aloud while sober to see if they comprehend it?
Amateurs plying software can pass the first orthography scans. Amateur beta-readers may see certain glitches and possibilities. Collaborators can fix-up, for better or worse. Editors may But even professional editors screw up. Mainstream literature and typos - I’ve caught typos in major works enduring scads of editions.
My last writing followed extensive eye surgeries. I had to examine words REAL CLOSE to be sure they were intended. I didn’t screw up too badly.
To write is human; to edit, divine; to be paid, awesome!
(Several, not just the one Tolkien Female. :D)