Using Alpha and Beta Readers

It takes a village to raise a child, and it takes almost that many people to shape a story into a best selling work of art. If you open the front pages of any novel, you’re bound to see a list of people to whom the author feels indebted for their assistance in getting his book published. Spouses, parents, children, editors, and agents are among those typically mentioned.

I’d like to discuss two groups of people who probably don’t normally get recognized, but without whom a story would probably never even make it into the hands of the editors and agents in the first place. These are the Alpha and the Beta readers -- those insightful, sensitive individuals who so generously give up their evenings and weekends to read through your manuscript, then lovingly rip your story to shreds! (And just when you thought you were handing them your next best seller...)

“Oh, the pain!” you cry, clutching your heart when you see all that red ink scribbled in the margins and crammed in between the lines. And yet, at the same time, you can’t help but appreciate their feedback, knowing deep down that what they’ve told you is honest and true and probably for your own good, or at least the good of the story.

The problem is this: we can never truly review our own work with a high degree of objectivity. We’re simply too close to our stories, too close to our characters, too close to the settings and all the action. There’s nothing wrong with being so close, but it does severely limit our ability to see all the individual trees through the forest.

Most of the time for me, writing is simply a process of trying to make my fingers type fast enough to keep up with all the action going on inside my head. I see every color. I smell every drop of rain. I feel every wound that’s inflicted and every throat that gets strangled. I taste every morsel of crumbling moldy bread. I hear every laugh and every scream.

I do my best to capture all these experiences and arrange them on the page in exactly the right order using exactly the right words so my readers get to see and smell and feel and taste and hear exactly the same things. But it’s never exactly the same.

After all, it’s my imagination and I’m the one creating it and shaping it and trying to make it all fit together neatly. But what seems so clear to me can often appear vague or ambiguous to anyone who hasn’t shared my experience. Maybe I meant to say one thing, but ended up saying something completely different. Or I might have neglected to include that one tiny detail or snippet of information the reader needs to make an important connection later on.

As hard as we try to get everything just right, its simply impossible for us to keep track of it all and nail every thing every time in every scene. During our first pass edits and proof-reading sessions, we can easily overlook minor flaws and pale descriptions because we’ve already lived it and our memories automatically fill in all the blanks for us.

Not so for our poor first-time readers, who have no such experiences to help them out. That’s why Alpha and Beta readers are a writer’s best resource for finding areas in the story that aren’t working exactly the way we intended. Let’s take a quick look at each type of reader and see how their unique roles can help a writer tell the best story possible.

Alpha Readers
Alpha readers are the triage doctors and nurses, the general practitioners whose patience and experience allow them to take our mangled bleeding manuscript and fairly quickly assess which areas are probably still okay, which ones might need to be cauterized to staunch further loss and, most importantly, which parts may have to be amputated to save the whole body.

What are some of the skills and characteristics that a good Alpha reader needs to possess? For starters, they have to be good communicators with strong interpersonal abilities. The primary role of an Alpha reader is to deliver bad news to the writer in such a way that the writer feels happy to hear it. Not that the Alpha reader has to sugar-coat the bad news or tip-toe around the eggshells of a writer’s personal insecurities -- heck, any good writer should have developed a thick skin by now after all those rejection letters. But it does require a certain amount of tact and skill when discussing a story critique.

Alpha readers also need to possess a good understanding of basic story telling concepts like plotting, tension, character arcs, pacing, point of view, dialogue, and conflict. When Alpha readers receive a manuscript, their job is to look for the big holes and flaws in the story:

1. Which parts of the story seem too rushed? Too slow?
2. Are there areas in the story that seem cliche or that otherwise lack originality?
3. Are the characters and settings intriguing and imaginative?
4. Does the tension seem to rise towards an inevitable climax?
5. Does the ending seem natural and satisfying?
6. Does the narrative elicit appropriate emotional reactions and levels of involvement?
7. Are there parts of the story where the reader is pushed away and reminded that there are better ways of spending her time?
8. Are there any inconsistencies that need to be addressed? (The detective drives a blue Ford Torino in the opening scene that inexplicably turns red in the next.)
9. Does the dialogue between two minor characters serve a purpose, or is it just two people arguing for no apparent reason?
10. Are there too many clues that give away the ending too soon? Are there not enough clues, making the ending feel contrived or requiring a resolution via deus ex machina?

As you can see, good Alpha readers need to be grounded in a broad range of basic story telling concepts. Because of this, and also because of their experience in giving and receiving critical feedback, the best Alpha readers tend to be other writers.

Once the author has had a chance to correct any glaring issues identified by his Alpha readers, he’ll make another round of changes and send the manuscript off to the next group -- the Beta readers. If Alpha readers are the general triage unit, then Beta readers are the specialized cardiac and neuro surgeons.

Beta Readers
Good Beta readers enjoy reading. A lot. In fact, if given the choice, Beta readers would probably choose reading over just about any other activity. Beta readers also tend to be a highly sensitive and emotional group and may even seem to be on the verge of developing OCD tendencies towards the proper use of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. These are the people who will review your manuscript and, with a great air of triumph, point out every typo they found that your twelve gig duo core word processor overlooked. Beta readers will let you know:

1. That you accidentally used the word ‘allude’ when you meant to write ‘elude’.
2. That you use too much passive and not enough active voice.
3. That you have a bad habit of slipping into the past perfect tense.
4. That  you probably meant to write ‘category’  when you typed ‘cat orgy’.
5. That you’re confusing the colon with the semi-colon.
6. How irritating it is that you dangle your participles so much.

When Beta readers return your manuscript, you’ll read through their critique notes, then slap yourself upside the head for the number of times you read that same passage and missed something that glaringly obvious.

But that’s why Alpha and Beta readers are so essential to a writer. Since they’ve never seen your story before, since they’re not emotionally bound to the characters and the settings and the plot, they can spot problems you didn’t even know were there. So the next time you write out your special acknowledgements section, remember to give a shout out to all those brave pre-readers who helped bring your story to life and raise it to be the very best you could make it.