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What to do after finishing first draft/when to find beta-readers

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Matt T.

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So, I finished the first draft of my very first novel last night (yay!). After 7-8 months of feverishly working on it, I reached the final page and wrote the final sentence. It’s an odd combination of science fiction, horror, and romance with a heavy emphasis on the characters and their growth, and it’s a bit long at 105k, but I’ve loved writing it.

My problem is I don’t know what to do next.

The common advice is to set it aside and then come back to it later on. What I’m tempted to do though is polish it up right away and find some beta readers, then set it aside. I say that because I have significant questions about the overarching plot and character decisions that I’ve made, and I can’t answer them on my own. I feel that I’m going to have the exact same questions for beta readers no matter whether I take a break from the manuscript or not.

It would be more work to revise the first draft, but I feel it’s necessary before giving it to beta readers to avoid wasting both their time and my own. The best way I can describe the novel right now is, “lumpy.” There are parts that I absolutely love, and other parts that I struggled to write. Some parts have been revised repeatedly (I wrote nearly four incomplete drafts of the story before this, and I revised material from them) and a lot of other parts are brand new for this (finally) completed draft.

All the scenes are essentially complete in their current state, but I need to do a drastic line edit to get the novel down into the 90,000’s and tighten up my writing. Plus, there are things I absolutely know will need fixing, like some continuity and characterization issues that I know beta readers will comment on. I worry that it'd be wasteful to send it off without first fixing the problems I can identify on my own.

I guess my choices are this:

• Revise the manuscript right now, find beta-readers, and use the gap of time while they read it to take a break from it.
• Send the manuscript to beta readers in its current rough form and take a break.
• Take a break, revise the manuscript, and then send it to beta readers.

Thoughts/advice?
 
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mrsmig

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First, congratulations on finishing your first draft!

I'd strongly suggest that you NOT send out anything but your most polished work to beta readers. Beta reading takes a great deal of time and effort, so don't make it harder on your betas by giving them something that you already know needs work.

As to whether to take a break before editing, or dive in right away - that's a judgment call. Some people get up a head of steam and don't want to stop work on a project; others need to get a little distance from it before tackling edits. It's up to you.
 

Esmae Tyler

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Congratulations on finishing! That's a huge step, right there.

As for the rest, I suspect that your time (and your beta readers' time) would be best spent taking a little break and then coming back for a first revision, cleaning up as much of the obvious problems as you can. As in, if YOU know it's a problem, you should probably fix it first and save your beta pool for finding the issues that are invisible to you, or for weighing in on things you might be undecided about. So there, yes, I would agree with holding off.

But that leaves you with the question of how much time to leave it be. Since you just finished it, it probably would be useful to give your brain a few days off from it as a project. But if you started it 6 months ago, you probably have enough distance from that to be able to dig in whenever. More experienced people will probably weigh in on this, but I start my revisions when I reach a point where I just can't leave the story to sit anymore. This is usually about 3-4 weeks after I finish the first draft,
 

aus10phile

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I suppose everyone's process is different. I send it to beta readers after I've read the whole thing through and decided I liked it. :) I do a round of edits after the first draft to catch errors and fix things that I know I want to fix. Then I send it off. But I also edit as I write and share with a couple of trusted people along the way, so it's not total first draft territory even when I'm done with the first draft.
 

Katharine Tree

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It doesn't hurt to do one or two victory laps through the text, fixing things that jump out at you. Just be sure you then put it away and do another round or two before you bother your beta readers.

As for how long to put it away, I can't tell you. The longer it's out of sight the more things you'll think of to change and improve it. You have to draw the line between polishing and knob-polishing, and that line is arbitrary.

I usually try to give mine a month.
 

L. OBrien

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Generally, I proofread the finished draft a couple of times, make whatever changes I was thinking of while writing it (since I don't usually edit as I go) and then once I'm more or less satisfied with what I have I set it aside and write something else for a while. This helps give some distance so that you can go back and reevaluate your own work with a critical eye. Usually a few weeks is sufficient. Then you can go back in and do another round of edits.

I second the point that you should not send your work out to beta readers until you believe that it is as polished as it can possibly be. If you have a lot of common writing mistakes (spelling/grammar, POV issues, slow beginning, etc) instead of useful feedback, you're just going to get writing 101. Polished work allows beta readers to focus on your story and not writing mechanics that you could easily fix yourself.

I've become more active with beta reading lately, and I recently posted a checklist of common issues that are easy to spot and fix on your own. If you think this would be helpful, you check it out here.
 

Jamesaritchie

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I think beta readers complete kill far more promising careers than they ever help. If beta readers help you, chances are you didn't need them, anyway.

This said, never show anyone less than your best. Don't show them what you know is a first draft that you can improve on your own. Write another draft, and make the book as good as you can possibly make it without showing it to anyone. Few things are more annoying than spending time reading a manuscript, finding a few things that need changed, and then having the writer tell you, "Yes, I already changed that", or, "I know. I was going to change that, anyway."

This is a complete waste of the beta reader's time and effort.
 

Matt T.

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Thank you all very much for your thoughts! I've decided to take a break from my novel for probably a two week period, and then I'll come back to it. In the meantime, I'll play around with another novel idea I've been bouncing around in my head for a while now. And once I start revising my first novel again, I'll probably post the first chapter in the SYW forum to get some feedback.
 

Jen144

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Good luck! I find taking a little break at least, enough to clear my mind but also not too long that I forget what I was planning on fixing (changes I want to make right away like you described, not editing the entire novel enough for beta readers) works best, and then putting it away for longer before the final polish works best--for me.
I look forward to seeing your chapter when you do post it.
 

Maggie Brooke

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What about editing and tightening the prose of the first few chapters and sending that out to people? I finished my first draft in March and have sent out a few chapters to several people. I've only sent the entire manuscript to one person who is trying to hone her editing skills. I've found peoples' reactions tremendously helpful in the editing process. It has given me a better idea about what works and what doesn't. If I had started editing without that guidance, I'm not sure I would have know how to edit it.

What about putting a chapter up here or elsewhere on the web to get reactions?
 

EricC

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I think beta readers complete kill far more promising careers than they ever help.

I'd love to know why you think this is true. I'm newb as far as publishing goes, so I haven't really formed an opinion of my own yet, but the common wisdom seems to be that having one or two trusted beta readers is of the utmost importance.
 
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