Yes, that short story was excellent.
That was awesome.
I think I once worked with Dave.
We’ve ALL worked with a Dave.
Something about the name “Dave” is just hilarious to me.
Loved it!
That’s great!
I’ve recently- this year- gotten into writing fiction. I’ve written four short stories, and I’ve got a finished book (which really needs a lot of editing and focused reading). I always thought that the hard part of being an author would be, you know, the actual process of writing.
I was completely wrong. The hardest part is getting people to read what I’ve written. I’m desperate to have family and friends read and give me feedback, but the best I can get (assuming they ever get around to reading it) is “This is good, you should get it published.”
Even my wife will only give me feedback like, “I liked it.” Getting her to tell me what she liked and didn’t like is akin to puling teeth.
And then there’s the gauntlet of getting it published. I’ve sent off a few stories, and the only feedback I’ve gotten in the rejection is “Thanks, but this isn’t what we’re looking for right now.”
I swear, getting published is like a full-time job. I’m in awe of you who’ve managed to get published.
Yeah, unfortunately, it’s incredibly difficult to get readers to be interested in what you are interested in, unless you are writing in a genre or topic that was already something they cared about a lot or was personal to them to begin with.
I have sixteen short stories, all at least as good as the one I’ve linked to; I have made more than 120 submissions, and gotten 3 acceptances and, among just the ones that bothered to write back, 75 rejections. In a few cases they clearly didn’t read it, though that’s unusual. That’s how it is. I work at the submission side of this for at least ten hours a week.
“A few” isn’t gonna do it. Keep a spreadsheet. Use Duotrope to find submission targets.
As to getting people to read your stuff, yeah, it’s hard. I got promises from 10 people to beta read the novel. Four actually did so and one admitted she skimmed it (and her feedback was exactly as good as that would suggest.) Luckily the other three all had solid feedback on one thing or another.
Getting readers on the short stories was an exercise in futility; only my sister would provide critical feedback. Everyone else just said “cool” or in the case of my best friend said the short stories were too long for him.
As you’re looking for beta readers, seek out people who ALREADY read a lot. Paradoxically they are the ones likeliest to find the time to read your book, and hopefully they read the kinds of books you wrote. Ask specific questions too; “What did you think” is broad and hard to answer. I stuck 15 questions at the end of the novel.
I must be lucky, because I had so many people offer to read my novel that I got more feedback than I ever wanted or could use, often from people who didn’t normally read that kind of thing. I sought the feedback too early in the process and it kind of screwed me up in terms of what I wanted to do with the story.
I once got a review that was so all over the place I fell into a complete panic and I asked my editor, “What should I do?” I shared with her all the suggestions for changes, and my editor replied, “How nice. She wants you to write a book for her.”
That was an important lesson in the fact that not all feedback is created equal, and sometimes the reader just wants you to write a totally different book and tell a totally different story. I’m totally open to feedback about how I can tell my story better, but I am not open to feedback about telling a different story.
My husband has always read multiple drafts and given me blunt and thoughtful feedback. For this rewrite, I’ve had three people read it so far, and all of them rubber-stamped it as ready to go. I have some minor changes to work out (mostly resolving continuity issues) and then I’m going to start querying, because my very knowledgeable friend convinced me it can be sold. Can’t wait.
I’m far enough along in terms of confidence in my writing that I really don’t care about most feedback, especially not on this novel, which is done AFAIC. Rather than hammer people with questions, I’m interested in three things:
- Did you finish the book?
- If not, when did you stop reading?
- Is this something you would buy?
I got consistent feedback prior to this revision that it started to drag at X point and when I read through it, I agreed it was dragging. So I made that middle section more interesting and I seem to have resolved this issue. That’s how reader feedback is useful to me. I don’t need detailed instructions about what to change. Often what you get from beta readers is a mix of helpful/not-helpful and I swear one of the hardest parts about this process is learning what to take and what to disregard.
Guess I’m kinda battle-hardened at this point. Ten years of revisions will do that to you.
The other problem with (much) beta reader feedback is also that if one seeks out family and friends, they would hesitate to give the sort of brutal blunt honest feedback an author needs, lest the author be offended.