Hi there, AW. I noticed that there are a lot of requests for Beta Readers and I decided to give my hand at it. I was thinking of posting my name in the sticky, but I was afraid my services might be overlooked because I don't know how many times people check it. Please read through all of this before you reply to this thread.
So, a little about me:
Status: Open.
Beta Bio: I'm 24 and I have had a lot of experience with writing. While I did not graduate with an English degree in college, many of my work experiences have led me to write
a lot. I graduated from University several years ago with two degrees: one of them a legal studies for a legal profession and the other computer animation. I've worked in a lot of paralegal positions to gear up being a lawyer. I've written a lot of legal documentation with incredible detail and wording. I have also written many science papers and research papers, sometimes for scholastic reasons and or my own scientific craving. This has made me very knowledgeable about many (albeit random) things.
I will be a harsh beta reader. That means if you are looking for someone who will only give you approval, you might not like me. I try to be the Yahtzee (a gamer reviewer) of the literary world. I will address all of your weakspots and I will be brutally honest if your story lacks charisma or a shred of originality (an instance if it's a Mary Sue story, we might wrestle a lot about stories). I will be harsh about sentence structure and details. Let it be known that I am not trying to be a jerk to hurt your feelings, but I am helping polish up your novel. I am sure you are coming to me because you feel your story needs improvement, and I will try my best to deliver as much improvement as I can.
If your story is already refined and just needs someone to proof it for plotholes or character ambiguity, I deliver what you ask. If you've done well, you've done well. Do not think I will always try to find things to criticize.
My Strengths: Detail. Detail, detail, detail. I am a person who expects my writers to give their readers something to work with. I am someone who will give you honest opinions about your characters, plotlines, and descriptions. That means if you want me to imagine a glacier landscape, I will tell you what my mind came up with what you gave me. If it does not line up, I will give suggestions on how you can succinctly describe what you were seeing. The same goes with characters. If you are trying to get a character to be sarcastic, but what comes off as just one stupid pun after the other, I will try to help shape your character come across as the quality you wish to exhibit.
The next strength is spelling. I'm a spelling nazi. Being someone who's had to wrestle with large words all the time (and having an attorney as a boss) I'm pretty merciless about spelling and word usage.
My Weaknesses: Grammar. It is something I am working on. Legal papers can have a good deal of run ons and I have become rather adjusted to that writing style. I, myself, use the semi-colon too liberally and often times make sentences seem like fragments because of my premature usage of periods. I avoid commas like the plague. I'm trying to improve in this area, though, and beta reading is one of my ways of developing improvement.
Preferred genres: I can read anything. From smut, to fantasy, to romance, to science fiction, etc.
I would rather not: Beta read a story that has its central plot about romance. I have never been a fan of the Harlequinn novels and never have. Beta reading for the Twilight series would of been my worst nightmare. I would like a story to have a driving and diverse plot WITH romance as a side dish (or a secondary plot). If romance is a large portion of your novel, that's fine, as long as it is not THE story. It is hard for me to beta read anything that has it's ONLY driving story being about getting into the pants of the opposite sex.
If you are still interested, please post a summary about your story, the genre, the rating of it, and the length/assumed length. I will then PM if I will take on your story. Good hunting, dear writers.
