Searching for Beta Reader for YA #Ownvoices Mystery (Will Swap!)

I didn't offer my feedback for your first chapter at SYW after you ignored multiple requests to insert blank lines between paragraphs to make a readable post. That it didn't seem worth your effort to post a readable excerpt didn't bode well.

I did scan other people's criticisms and saw many to be the sort of thing you could not possibly have addressed in the time between their posts and this request for a beta. So I must respectfully disagree with your statement that you "have reached the point to where I don't know how to improve it any longer." Does it still have dry exposition? Have you changed the content to make it open during a more eventful moment? Is it still overwritten? Have you run a grammar check and fixed the comma gaffes? Have you rephrased your dialogue attributes? Did you remove redundancy and repetition?

I don't say these things to embarrass you, but to note that you probably are not ready for a beta reader, the very last reader before a work is submitted to agents or publishers or is self-published. The work a beta reader goes over is totally ready to go. I don't think you've had time to make the needed changes to put your novel in that class.

I'd advise you to slow down. Take the time to absorb the feedback you got on your first chapter, and carefully apply it to the rest of the novel. You might benefit from forming critique partnerships with other writers here.

Maryn, knowing quality takes time
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ktzeee said:

I've been revising my 86,000 word contemporary YA novel LIES WE TELL and have reached the point to where I don't know how to improve it any longer (NOT that I'm saying it's perfect--far from it--I just don't know how to improve it by myself anymore!).

Click to expand...

Another suggestion to figuring out what can improve your own writing is critiquing others. A note that seems strange to you in your own writing can suddenly make sense when you spot it in others' and it bothers you there. It can even give you ideas about how to tackle solutions in your own writing.

ETA: A note to others that at the time of posting the first post, the OP had no crits in SYW, though that doesn't make advice in here less true.

Oh, yeah, totally true. A flaw invisible to me in my own writing is glaring in somebody else's. And eventually I see it right there in mine, too.

Critique of other people's writing not only endears you to others because you took your time to help them improve their work (and some will make a point to critiquing your work in the future), but it teaches you as you do it. Everybody wins.

Maryn, suggesting reading stickies if you're not sure how to critique