Battle of the Betas

It's that time again! Time for ...

Super thanks to Alicia for "donating" the first page of her ms - PHOENIX RISING, an urban fantasy, to the cause!

And in case you're new to Battle of the Betas, here's the quick deets: 9 writers (listed at the bottom!) have come together in this little monthly experiment to show you how we crit. Hopefully, if you're out there looking for a beta/crit partner, this will help remind you that everyone crits a little differently and no matter what, everyone's experience and styles are a bit different. :)

Keep in mind, this is just one page of a manuscript, so there may be things out of context and what not. My comments are in the italics.

20 Years Ago

Ianos [I hate when I don’t know how to pronounce a character’s name. just my personal thing :)] studied the chimera pride that roamed the foothills outside Timmons for months in search of the runt. [good tension in this opening line] With a pair of large males and several females, it took him longer than he wanted, [ok, I’m confused – maybe just me, but does that mean those chimera were in his way? It can read that way or it can read a little like they were helping him but sometimes get in the way (like those hunting dogs?).] but once discovered, he kept his eye on it. [this sentence ender feels a bit anti-climactic after his super long-many months search. Just saying.] In a final attempt of self-preservation, they [you mean the pride right? Sugg: clarifying that as you flip between talking about the pride and then the runt and then Ianos] abandoned it weeks ago. Each day it grew weaker, languishing without the companionship of the pride. On the fourteenth day [14^th day after finding the runt? Sugg: clarify timeline, could cause confusion. Also, why does he wait for 14 days after finding it?], Ianos executed his oh so easy [should this be hyphenated?] plan. [see, if his plan is so easy, I’m not sure I understand his motivation for tracking for another 2 weeks …]

Armed with nothing other than his knowledge of spells, he made his final trek to the foothills. He was much closer than he’d been in his previous visits to the chimera grounds and never seen anything like the beast before. [but isn’t it just another chimera? What makes this one so different from the others that he’s seen before? –show me what makes this one special please :)] It lay in the sun, with only one head awake, but not alert. The lion head mewled [does this mean it has other type of heads? Like, if this is the lion head-does it also have a tiger head, duck head, horse head?], mourning its fate. Its paper lantern thin wings [great visual!] stretched on the ground while the dragon and goat heads slept. [ok, never mind. You answered my other question.]

It was awing. [this sentence reads weird to me. sugg word choice maybe? It doesn’t feel strong enough to be on its own line. May just be me …]

The lion head despondently watched Ianos’ approach but roared to awaken the other two heads when Ianos crossed some unknown border. [the pacing of this sentence throws off the action sequence. Sugg ending sentence @ approach. Then new sentence beginning with “When Ianos cross… the lion head roared.”] The beast rose to its full height, stretched its wings wide, and bellowed—all three heads created a cacophony [the 2 hard “c” sounds made this line lose some strength for me. sugg: word choice –change one of the c words] of rage.

Ianos snarled and crouched, ready to strike. [is Ianos not human or humanoid? It’s not stated before this and those actions are very animalistic.] Electricity spurted from his palms towards the chimera. It dodged at the last second and ran head-on towards the sorcerer. [Maybe let the reader know that Ianos is a sorcerer before this?] He [the sorcerer or the chimera?] ran into a cave to his right; he’d have better luck surviving the fight if he was able to corner the animal. The beast skidded, turned, and charged again. Ianos leapt onto its back. He held tightly onto the lion’s neck scruff and struggled to pull a lasso out of his jeans. [the way this last line is phrased makes it almost sound like the lasso is in the chimera’s jeans :)]

I really like the tension right at the beginning, how the hunt is what draws us in, but the transition into the action is a bit abrupt. I wanted more tension, more details around the hunt and what was going on with the rest of the pride before the MC discovered the runt.

I wasn’t able to picture where everything is happening. Yes, foothills, but that’s very vague. Maybe some more description of the setting, you could probably weave that in if you showed a bit more of the MC’s search. Also, I had no idea, really what a chimera looked like in your world. The description didn’t come until toward the end and so I didn’t really know what he was searching for until he’d already found it, even though, obviously, he was dealing with the rest of the pride.

Overall, good action, some good descriptions, I just could’ve used a little more … descriptions, tension and setting. Oh, and I had no idea sorcerers wore jeans! I was totally picturing something Merlin or Albus Dumbledore-esque ;)

Thanks again, Alicia, for braving the group and letting us crit your page! It takes guts! J

Take a look at these other beta perspectives on Alicia's manuscript page:

Kate Hart

Meredith Primeau

Sarah Enni

Cory Jackson

Raven Ashley

Battle of the Betas!

Well, I think that blog title may just be teensy bit misleading. It's just ... look at this:

At this point you're probably wondering what I'm even talking about. Well, a few days ago a call went out, or, should I say, a tweet went out from @Kate_Hart...

How do you beta? Anyone else want to participate in a blog activity w/ me, @ImSarahEnni& @kathleenpeacock?11:56 AM Aug 16th via TweetDeck

So now where does that leave us? Well, as part of this little blog activity, we're gonna take a look at how differently everyone's beta style is on the same piece of work. Thanks so much to Sarahfor being brave enough to volunteer her first page for all of us to crit!

This is really something to keep in mind when you're out there looking for crit partners and beta readers. From those of us participating in this little blog experiment, you'll see just how differently our styles are in critting. And because Blogger and Word don't seem to want to talk to each other ... I've had to tweak with how to show my crits:

If Hana Larkhill had her way, her father’s body would be in a sailboat, rope and a flute in his hands, and she would watch him embark one last time toward the unknown at the eternal curve of the earth. [Wow, holy long first sentence… Sugg: cutting it into two?] Instead James Larkhill lay in a sterile metal box at Faraday’s Funeral Home. Someone who did it for a living had caked his face with makeup. [This sentence read awkwardly to me. While it makes sense, it doesn’t flow well as well as it could into the next line. Sugg: combining this with next sentence and determining what is really important to keep.] His delicate freckles were powdered out of existence. An old blue suit bound his body; even the strawberry gold of his curls had faded.

Hana’s mother, Noa Larkhill, hasn’t fought these depressing conventions. But she had insisted on an open casket. James’ [OK, so should this be “James’s?” I’ve seen it both ways showing ownership, but I believe it should be ‘s for singular and s’ for plurals] face and shoulders were in tact and the suit covered his abdomen. But Hana felt the looming specter [while I really like “looming specter,” it makes sentence read a little flower, imo] of his ruined lower body, smashed into irreparable pieces by an anonymous fender. [great visual in this sentence!]

Faraday’s was cold, clean and modern—everything was black or stainless steel. Everything had razor-sharp edges. It was the kind of place that gave Hana the feeling she was being blown through by unseen drafts [LOVE this! Spooky J]. She longed for home. For his family, James had provided [This phrasing takes me out of the moment. If Hana is the narrator, why doesn’t she just talk about the house? All the details given afterwards I really like, but this beginning is distracting. Not sure if this is supposed to be 3^rd party omniscient?] a house with a door that shrunk up in the winter and bloated until it wedged in the door frame in the summer, a house with stairs that had predictable creaks and groans, a house that moved around them like a familiar friend.

James’ death three days earlier had crushed Hana underneath deep, prolonged silence. Her mother, whose loudest expression to this point had always been in the strength of her brush strokes on canvas, rocked and wailed.[I’m totally confused by this line. How did her dad’s death crush her under deep silence if her mother was wailing? Was Hana the one completely silent? Or the atmosphere? Does that make sense?] Hana felt like a ghost, alone and unseen [really like this, visual and descriptive! Nice!!], holding her mother’s tiny shaking limbs [is she holding just her mother’s limbs or her mother’s whole body? Sometimes phrasing can be taken too literally and then it just sounds weird. Just saying.] in a room full of people that, at least today, felt like strangers.

Firstly, thanks so much for sharing your work with us, Sarah! I hope you find my feedback useful. Overall, I really like where the story’s going and am definitely interested in the spooky elements that are so clearly hinting at what’s to come! Great job!

Keep in mind, this is just one page of a manuscript, so there may be things out of context and what not. Hopefully, if you're out there looking for a beta/crit partner, this will help remind you that everyone crits a little differently and no matter what, everyone's experience and styles are a bit different. :)

Take a look at these other beta perspectives on Sarah's manuscript page:

Sarah

Kate

Cory

Meredith

Alicia

Kathleen