How do you decide what's good and what's not?

Get more than one opinion. If it sucks too much, give it a hug and tell it you'll always love it and put in a trunk. Figure out why it sucked. Then write something better!

Betas have different opinions. You just need to learn to take away what you can use and discard the rest. Otherwise it will make you crazy trying to make everyone happy.

Start submitting it. See what response you get. If you sell, great! If not...like Kitty Pryde says.

Have you posted your first chapter in Share Your Work? You might get some good insight from other AW'ers!

I am not published, but I'll impart to you what I've learned over the past year.

First off, most people do not get their first manuscript published. It takes usually the fourth or fifth book before that magic happens - unless you write about sparkly vampires of course.

How to know if you're any good? Well, you need to get more than one or two opinions of course, but it also helps if you've spent some time reading books on writing to know whether you're making a lot of the mistakes of new writers. Two good ones are: Self Editing for Fiction Writers and The First Five Pages. Also combing through these forums is a good idea, and if you're brave enough, then post something you've written to get feedback. If you know that you've got all of that stuff under control, then I think that it's mostly a matter of sticking to it and writing and re-writing.

If you like your plot, your characters, etc. and you think that you have a good story, then it might just be a matter of finding the best way to tell it. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to trunk it. Whether you want to keep working on it I think depends on how much you love the story. If you do, then keep at it. If not, then find something new and try for a second manuscript.

Hope this helps.

Suggestions

Betas are tricky.
Some will mindlessly praise your writing no matter what flaws it has. Some are nitpicky to the point of ridiculousness, to the point where you have to question whether they have an agenda (and sometimes, they do, especially if they're very religious and your writing is not an example of squeaky clean morality.)
Ideally? Put your story aside for a month. Read published novels. Lots of them. Then look at your story again a month later. You can read it more objectively by this point. Really look at it and use your judgment.
Another suggestion-- did you exchange chapters with the betas? Look at -their- writing. If one of them is a terrible writer and one a decent one, you know who probably has the better idea of what good writing is.
Last suggestion: get a third beta.
Always read your beta's writing before deciding whether their advice is worth pursuing, though.

I am not and have never been a craft book person. I just write. I don't plan or do GMC worksheets or do detailed outlines. I have never read a how-to-write book. Ever. BUT I am a voracious reader. Have been all my life and I know thats the reason I have the level of understanding of the written word that I do. (And I'm not saying I am an expert by any means!)

First you have to figure out what your voice is, because voice can overrule the "rules" any day if the writing is strong. Then read anything and everything! Study what you are reading, figure out why you like it, what about the style appeals to you, how you can use what you learned to improve your own writing. IMO that goes a lot further than a book telling you to put a comma here. YMMV!

YAwriter72 - I feel that your response was aimed at my book suggestions. Just to clarify a bit, these books don't tell you how to build worksheets or write an outline or how to craft a book by some forumula. They simply point out a lot of things that new writers do that can be easily corrected. I read a lot too, but like you said you have to really study what you're reading in order to understand what makes a book good. It can take a lot of time to figure out why a book is good when you don't know what you're looking for. If someone had said to me a year ago that I was telling and not showing, I wouldn't have known what they are talking about, but now I do. I wouldn't have figured that out by studying the books that I read for pleasure. The way I figure it, if you have a serious interest in becoming a professional at anything, then you need to put as many weapons in your arsenal as you can.

To the original poster - I hope it didn't come across that I was suggesting that the beta who had disparaging comments was more correct than the one who loved your book. Heatercat's suggestion is a good one. Get more beta readers and consider the writing level of the person who is doing the beta reading for you.

Oh, I was just pointing out that you don't necessarily have to have read hundreds of how to books to be a writer! I had the very first thing I wrote published and I know I couldn't have done it without being an avid reader and having some really great betas! (Actually, a good beta is worth their weight in gold and hard to find!)

AW is also a great tool to learn about writing things in general if you are just starting out too!

I have found that creating a MS is one-third writing and two-thirds rewriting, at least. No book can teach you how to write, but I have used a few to help me ask myself the tough questions.
NOVEL METAMORPHOSIS byt Darcy Pattison
THE FIRST FIVE PAGES

Opps, hit the wrong bottom

THE FIRST FIVE PAGES by Noah Lukeman

Sands Hall also wrote a good book. But I lent it to someone and never got it back so I forget the title

adktd2bks said:

Two good ones are: Self Editing for Fiction Writers and The First Five Pages.

Click to expand...

They really helped me, too. Also try Manuscript Makeover. That made a huge difference to my writing this time round.

I agree with the suggestions above. Also, a book that helped me was: Your First Novel, written by an author/agent duo. The author details editing and the agent lists what you need to do to land an agent, and, subsequently, what happens after you land one. Very informative.

YAwriter72 said:

(Actually, a good beta is worth their weight in gold and hard to find!)

Click to expand...

THIS.

Find a few betas who truly want to help you make your book the best it can be. Because as scary as it is to get thorough, honest comments, it's also amazing. And so unbelievably valuable.

Also, don't give up just because the comments seem hard to take. Sometimes, comments can be overwhelming when you first read them, and you have to give yourself some time to digest them and figure out how to deal with them. Editing can be quite a process. It's not easy, but it's rewarding, in the end.

I'm curious about this too--how can anyone really know if they're good at writing? I think it has a lot to do with distancing yourself from your work. I'm incapable of distancing myself, so I have no idea if what I'm writing is crap or not. I suspect crap.

I think the suggestions of SYW and betas are spot-on The more opinions you can get, the better idea you'll have of where you are in your writing. So basically, get as many people to read and honestly comment on your writing as you can!

I think it's OK if a beta points out a lot to work on. That's usually where I need to do a lot of work to make the book shine. That's the beauty of having a reader.