If You’re Beta Reading, You Could Also Be Book Coaching

Last week, Author Accelerator's CEO Jennie Nash and I did a webinar about the difference between beta reading and book coaching. While book coaches and beta readers help authors succeed at two different points in the creative process, an organized and passionate beta reader could also become a successful book coach. Jennie is hosting a free Business of Book Coaching Summit, and she's here to tell you more about it.

“The Spun Yarn has brought a systematic, strategic approach to beta reading, which offers writers much-needed support at a critical part in the development of a book. It’s part of a new era in the world of publishing, where smart writers put together a team of people to help them write the best books they can. In a very crowded marketplace, it takes this kind of intention to break through with agents, editors, and readers. For the same reasons, many writers are also turning to book coaches to help them structure, finish, and revise their books and then navigate the path to publishing.

A beta reader brings a critical perspective to the author once a draft is complete. A book coach serves as an editorial guide and a project manager while the author is getting that draft in shape. Coaches often work with writers for long periods of time – 6 months, 9 months, a year, and even longer – and this intense 1:1 relationship is part of the deep satisfaction of the work. Coaches are intimately involved in the writer’s process while they are bringing their dream to life. (To learn more about the difference between beta reading and book coaching, listen to this webinar I did with The Spun Yarn’s Sarah Beaudette.)

If you’re drawn to beta reading, you might consider adding book coaching to your income stream as well. It will allow you to spend even more time enveloped in the world of books and writing. It’s work you can do from home, ramping up or down depending on how much time you have to devote to it and how much money you wish to make. There are five key skills you need to be an effective coach, and odds are very good that you already have some of them. If there are some you don’t, they can be taught. That’s exactly what we are doing in Author Accelerator’s Book Coach Training and Certification program. The skills are as follows:

1. Mechanical editing skills. An effective book coach understands the basic mechanics of good writing. We can identify errors such as head hopping, info dumping, and point-of- view violations, and we can explain to writers why these errors weaken the work and how they can be fixed. This teaching aspect of book coaching runs throughout each of the 5 key skills, which brings up an important point: You don’t have to be a published author to be a good book coach. Writing well is a different skill than teaching or coaching, and you can learn to be an effective book coach regardless of your record of success as a writer.

2. Narrative design. While paying attention to the details of mechanical editing, an effective book coach also has an eye on the big-picture elements of a book. We talk to our writers about the point they are trying to make, the message they hope to convey, and the impact they want to have on their ideal reader, no matter whether that impact is to entertain or to educate, or something in between. We look at the structure and shape of a story or argument, paying attention to plot holes, logical problems, and the way the work moves and flows. We look for a strong resolution and emotional payoff, since that is usually what the reader is coming for.

3. Marketplace awareness. I coach my coaches never to guarantee their writers any sort of success in the marketplace, because it’s impossible to predict what will happen in the publishing arena. Instead, a good coach will help their writers understand the way books are bought and sold, research the competition, and help determine the best publishing path for their book.

4. Project management. A book coach helps their writers complete a complex intellectual undertaking. It’s a big project, where goals need to be set and deadlines need to be met, but a coach also helps writers through the emotional aspect of producing a book. We understand the creative process, and the way doubts can plague writers, and we are there as a cheerleader and a support when the going gets tough.

5. Compassion. In my 10 years working as a book coach, I have been continually amazed at how many writers have suffered some sort of hurt around their creative work. Someone told them they had nothing to say or that they couldn’t write or that they were wasting their time. I am a tough critic to be sure, but I always give my advice with compassion for how hard it is to be a writer, and I insist that the coaches I train do this as well.

Does book coaching sound like the kind of work you might enjoy? If you would like to learn more about what book coaching is all about, please join me on January 20, for a week of free online programming at Author Accelerator’s Business of Book Coaching Summit. I have 15 experts talking about mindset, money, marketing, and business strategy for book coaches. If you feel called to this work, our Book Coach Training and Certification program and Business of Book Coaching master class are available, as is a special Business Mastermind, starting in March 2020, in which I will be working directly with a small number of coaches. Start with the Summit – it’s going to be great!”

Jennie Nash

Jennie Nash is the founder and CEO of Author Accelerator, a company on a mission to help writers write books worth reading by training book coaches to guide them through the creative process. Learn more about being coached or becoming a coach at www.authoraccelerator.com – and be sure to join the free online Business of Book Coaching Summit

Reader Spotlight: Shareca the Californian Comic Connoisseur and Consumer of all Mediums Under the Sun

 

In the Reader Spotlight series we ask our smart, diverse and multi-talented readers what makes them tick, and what they're seeing in Spun Yarn manuscripts. Our readers span the gamut of literary taste, so expect to see a little bit of everything! 

By day, Shareca is an English teacher and tutor, and is about to begin her MFA in film studies. Because that’s not enough, she also runs a Comic Book and Gaming Aficionado website at The Daily Fandom and is a longtime reader for us here at The Spun Yarn! She reads everything, but especially Young Adult, Poetry, and Mystery/Thriller.

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The Spun Yarn: Shareca, you have been with us since 2017. Why do you do it, and what about reading for us do you find rewarding?

Shareca:   My favorite aspect of the reading experience is getting to partake in the editing process. I love being able to help writers, as I am one myself. I love the fact that I can help shape a story or at the very least, give advice from my perspective as a totally new reader. It makes me feel wonderful knowing that I was a part of someone’s process. 

The Spun Yarn: You've seen a lot of manuscripts come through. In your experience, what is one thing that's hard for authors to get right?

Shareca: Can I choose two? Endings and beginnings. It’s like an essay: you either love to write introductions and hate to write conclusions or vice versa. It is astonishingly hard to grip a reader at the beginning of the story and to leave the reader with a hard-hitting life analysis at the end. You know, the stories that really make you consider your mortality. I think that’s the most troublesome part of writing. There’s never a definite way to do beginnings or endings, but I wish there were! 

The Spun Yarn: You are a passionate gamer and comic book fan, and have turned these passions into a business, is that right? Tell us about it!

Shareca: Yes! I run The Daily Fandom, I do a lot more comic book reading than gaming these days (adult life, sadly). It has been a wondrous experience to teach myself a ton of development quirks over the past two years. It was something I didn’t foresee myself doing, but one thing led to another and the former owner couldn’t take on the website anymore and I just said, “let’s do it.” Since then, I have been “doing it.” 

The Spun Yarn: Where do you live, and what do you love about living there?

Shareca: I live in Fresno, CA. I love the weather here — that’s my favorite aspect. Also, it’s a small town in California so I don’t have to deal with the traffic as much (thank goodness!) The weather, however, is my ultimate favorite reason to be here. I live about 3-4 hours max from everything in California and it’s nice to be able to drive anywhere in under 5 hours!

The Spun Yarn: You love to read, and like other passionate readers are probably on the lookout for your next favorite book. What are you in the mood to read right now, or what kind of book would you love to read that you haven't found yet?

Shareca: A healthy, romantic, dreamy, sort of detective story. I love detective stories and I feel like we don’t get much in the genre of Sherlock and Drew. I am always missing detective love stories. I haven’t found one that has gripped me yet, one day I will.

The Spun Yarn: You’re right, we could really use more classic detective narratives. Stick around, and maybe someone reading this will send us one for you!

3 Times You Ignore Reader Feedback at Your Peril

Before we curate an author's Spun Yarn Manuscript Report, we ask how far along they think they are in the editing process on a scale of 1 - 10. The average score over a hundred manuscripts? 7.3.

We also track every manuscript's scores from readers, who are comparing the manuscript they've just to other well-known books in the genre. The average overall score? 6 / 10.

There's a gap here. It's grayish, smudgy around the edges, and rrrrrreally annoying to authors.

After getting your beta reader feedback, how do you decide how much more work you really need to do? Do you really need to make the changes your readers suggest, or is the whole thing a matter of opinion? If writing and reading are subjective arts, why change the manuscript at all, especially when you've put more thought into this book than any other person on the planet?

Sometimes readers may be pointing to a valid issue, but may not have the right solution for it. Other times, readers are going to be spot on. Here are a few rules of thumb based on all the manuscript reports we've done.

1. When two or more readers independently agree on an issue, pay attention.

Hopefully, your beta readers haven't talked to one another and don't know each other at all. For example, here's a report in which two readers had the same comment at the exact same point in the manuscript:

Reader 1: "I'm struggling with the biological and scientific details that seem off the main topic.

Reader 2: "The content becomes very medically oriented in Chapter 6, and at times it's too dense to read."

As a writer, this kind of specific consensus is gold, and the change is also fairly straightforward. Go back to Chapter 6, and cut out some of the dense scientific details. Read it for tone, and make sure it's consistent with the rest of the book. These easy wins are why it's so important to have more than one beta reader read you book.

What if readers agree, but it's on a major issue that's going to require a lot of work?

For instance, what if you were writing a dystopian book about baseball, but your readers say it's actually a love story, and therefore your ending is all wrong?

This is the kind of feedback that takes some time to digest. Resist the urge to scoff. If your chest starts feeling tight just reading the feedback, it means you need to leave it on a shelf for a few days before you have the emotional energy to consider it. And then, when you're ready, you've got to consider it.

Go back to your story fundamentals and ask yourself: is this really a love story after all? Is there an arc you missed, or a reason why the arc you started out with became less compelling or relevant as the story went along?

The point here is that readers have pinpointed an issue that demands attention. They don't necessarily know the best way to address it. That's your job. But if you want a great book, you've got to pay attention when your readers agree.

2. If it's a straightforward minor change that doesn't matter too much to you, what do you have to lose?

In one of our recent manuscripts, one reader pointed out that the names of two main characters both started with a D and were sometimes hard to keep track of. Though as writers we tend to get attached to every word in our carefully wrought works of art, it can be helpful to think of editing as picking your battles. If a change is small, ask yourself what the manuscript stands to lose or gain by making the change.

3. Readers disagree on the problem, but all of them have some kind of problem with the same part of a manuscript.

At The Spun Yarn, we break a manuscript into four sections for feedback. This is another way of separating the opening, the building action, the climax, and the denouement. This is true of memoirs, and even to some extent of nonfiction manuscripts. When you have at least three readers commenting on each section, you'll begin to see trends. Particularly, you'll see that some sections have more reader comments than others.

For example, two readers think the ending was rushed, and one reader loved the action but didn't find the characters' actions consistent with their prior behavior. This is a cue that it might be in your best interest to take another look at your ending to see which issues you can address and which you'll need to leave as is. In your next revision, focus solely on what it’s delivering to readers, and how.

Even if you don't agree with readers or if they don't agree with one another, you have strong confirmation that you need to sit down with that section of the manuscript and give it a lot of thought and attention. Pretend you're a reader rather than an author, and try to diagnose the issue with fresh eyes. Just because readers don't always agree doesn't mean they aren't identifying an important trouble spot.

5 Things I've Learned From my Novel Feedback

When we started the Spun Yarn in 2017, I thought I knew a thing or two about what it meant to be a writer. I’d finished several novels over the years and also had a day job as a designer working with IDEO teams to use stories to communicate with our clients and customers. But once the Spun Yarn was up and running, I started to meet authors who had a completely different understanding of what it actually takes to write a novel. There were secrets to getting published that no one had told me about. It was like I’d just been petting the head of an elephant. I hadn’t realized that there were whole parts of the feedback and revision process that existed and that were SUPER important. The elephant’s feet. And his tail. And his back and his stomach and all of the rest of the parts of this giant beast of a process. 

“Once the Spun Yarn was up and running, I started to meet authors who had a completely different understanding of what it actually takes to write a novel.”

What I came to realize is that there are steps to eventually getting published that almost every book and every author needs to follow. If you follow these steps, it doesn’t mean your book will be published. But if you don’t follow these steps, there is a fantastic chance that it will never be published. There’s just too much of the elephant out there to ignore. I’m telling you, you’ll get trampled!

Here are five things I’ve learned about the feedback process from working with authors at the Spun Yarn.

First (and perhaps most obvious), you need to get feedback on your WHOLE manuscript.

Not just the first 100 pages, and not just a few random chapters. Having provided feedback to over 50 manuscripts at the Spun Yarn, one of the most commons problems we see with unpublished manuscripts relates to either uneven pacing or undeveloped characters. Both of these aspects of a novel are almost impossible to get effective feedback on if the reader hasn’t read the entire manuscript.

Second, you need to get feedback from someone who doesn’t like you.

Don’t get me wrong, they don’t need to actively dislike you. But they can’t be your friend or your partner or your mom. They should be a stranger and they should be responding to the words on the page, not what they know about you as a person. Just because a person is a stranger doesn’t mean they don’t care about your book. At the Spun Yarn, we’ve assembled a network of anonymous readers who are careful, diligent readers. They don’t know you, but they want to see your manuscript get better.

Third, it’s really important to get feedback from multiple people.

You probably have that one person in your network who is just fantastic. They read everything you send them and they always have thoughtful feedback. But the problem is that this is just one person’s opinion. If there’s one thing we’ve learned these past two years at the Spun Yarn, it’s that readers come in many shapes and sizes. And so do their opinions. It’s a huge thing to completely rewrite a character or an ending as part of a next draft. Which is why it’s so important to make sure that you have reader consensus on which parts of your WIP aren't working.

As a side note, this is also something we’ve seen when it comes to opinions from editors and agents. While these folks are professionals and super smart, it still often comes down to the opinion of a single person. Any good feedback approach should synthesize feedback from multiple readers (instead of just one) and distill reader consensus to make it clear what you should focus on in a next draft. Having learned that, we spend a lot of time at The Spun Yarn analyzing reader comments to find where readers are agreeing and disagreeing. 

Fourth, you need *actionable* feedback.

Writing a novel is hard work. It takes a long time. The act of finishing it, then starting from the beginning with the revision process, takes an emotional toll. Knowing where to start when you get started again can make all of the difference.

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel with your first edit. By focusing on some of the smaller, more obvious aspects of the manuscript that need fixing first (and I don’t mean typos or spelling errors), you’ll gain the momentum you need to tackle the bigger stuff. As part of a Spun Yarn Manuscript Report, we provide an author with a list of First Five revisions to focus on. It’s a great way to prioritize. And to get started.

Fifth, you need to thicken your skin.

Acknowledge that getting feedback is painful, but necessary. If your attitude when reading feedback is to look for reasons to ignore the criticisms, your manuscript won't get any better. You’re only human, after all. And that’s what makes you a fantastic writer. The Spun Yarn has made the feedback process as gentle as possible. Your feedback comes from anonymous strangers who care. They don’t know you. And you don’t know them, but they're not reviewers looking to pan you--they're honest, gentle people who want to see your book succeed. 

Your feedback is delivered only to you. We’ve removed all of the bullshit politics that often exist in writers groups or classes. Your feedback report is your feedback report. Take a peek at it. Then take a jog around the block. Then take a longer peek. Then really read it and get to work on your next revision. Getting feedback is never easy. But it could be easier. And that’s what we’ve tried to do at the Spun Yarn.

So get out there. And meet the whole elephant! Your manuscript will thank you. 

How To Decode Beta Reader Comments on Pacing

At The Spun Yarn, we do Feedback better than anyone else. You choose your reader demographics. We assign three readers to provide full novel feedback, including check-ins throughout the novel, overall comments, and qualitative scores compared to our growing manuscript database. Then we find consensus, analyze, and give you actionable suggestions for what to do in your next revision.

In our How to Decode series, we share our learnings from more than one hundred full beta reads from our diverse group of readers. How do beta reader comments map to potential problems in your manuscript, and what can you do to address them? 

Ok, so you finished a draft of your WIP (go you). You swallowed your imposter syndrome long enough to ask some people to read it, (phew!), and at least one of them finished it (you're rocking everyone's pants off). 

So...now what? Your reader(s) said some good things about your WIP, and maybe some not-so-amazing things too. You have a feeling that some of their comments are right, but you aren't sure if you agree with others. What do you tackle in your next revision?

More readers = consensus = gold 

Quick note: the more readers the better. The good thing about multiple readers is consensus: where they agree and disagree. Consensus is liquid gold for writers.

Personally, when it comes to big story issues, I trust an honest reader's gut reaction that something is wrong, and then decide whether it's important to fix it, or whether fixing it would break something else. When two or more readers independently agree that something is wrong, I bow to the throne of consensus and I FIX IT.

If you don't have multiple readers (get some, and uh, we do consensus analysis really well), you can still map specific comments to areas you may want to look at in a revision. 

Comments That Are Really About Pacing 

Pacing, the speed at which your story unfolds, gathers momentum, complicates itself, and resolves. Different genres have different paces, literary fiction moving more slowly than thrillers, for instance. What's important is that your pacing should be deliberate and consistent. 

A glacial pace could lose readers and sound your WIP's death knell, even in literary fiction. A frenetic pace will confuse readers and may eventually lose them, even in a thriller. You may keep readers a bit longer with a frenetic pace than with a glacial pace, but a confusing, hurried pace is worse because when you do finally lose your readers, they will be frustrated and ANGRY with you. Hell hath no fury like a disappointed reader, especially when it comes to Amazon reviews. 

Let's take a look at the kinds of quotes we see in Spun Yarn beta comments that relate to pacing. 

"At three-quarters of the way through, I was riveted." 

We've noticed that our most liked manuscripts share this trait: readers are at their peak of enjoyment three quarters of the way through.

This makes sense when you think about it: in the first quarter, you're setting out your premises, building your world, and introducing your conflict and characters. In the second quarter, your characters are journeying, complicating the conflict, reaching their lows or gaining tantalizing leads to their highs, and by the third quarter, all of your work should be paying off as the plot and character development fall into place and gain momentum.

By the three quarter point, you may have answered or resolved some initial conflicts, but readers are tuned in and leaning forward to see your grand finale. This is pacing at its finest: a beginning and middle that meticulously set all the pins in place, a third quarter and finale that knock them all down in surprising ways. It's a sign of a great outline, or, if you're a panster, that your revision thus far have paid off, pulling all of your disparate threads into place. 

"The book was a little slow for me at this part..." 

Slow = boring. Readers are generally nice people. They don't want to hurt your feelings. Any good writer can hurt their own feelings by translating words like "slow" into "boring the pants off of me, turning my eyelids to cement, making me crave a root canal to distract from the monotony." Okay, we writers tend to go overboard with the self-deprecation.

If readers say that a particular section was slow or took them several tries to read, they're indicating potentially slow pacing. You haven't made them care enough about what they're reading, or, in some cases, you're covering too much old ground and frustrating readers who want to move to new plot events.

A well-paced book will unfold at a consistent pace, and will always give readers a compelling reason to keep going. Most often, the reason to keep going is conflict. Sometimes it's mystery. Your characters should always be struggling and changing. If readers get bored, consider ways to shorten the section in question, cut it altogether, or weave it into a section of the book that does have clear conflict.

Finally, clunky writing can slow the pacing. If you sent a book out to beta readers but none of them finished despite their pinky swears, take a hard look at your opening chapters. In addition to conflict, is your writing tight and engaging? Check yourself on passive language. I like this article on passive voice because it dispels the notion that passive voice is always bad, and gives examples of when and when not to use it. Check for overuse of adverbs (we don't believe that adverbs are evil but they can certainly be overused). Check for tedious reiterations of things you've already said in slightly different ways. Check for filter words and awkward phrasings. Read the opening aloud in front of a frenemy and you should be able to tell immediately if there's something wrong with the writing. 

"The X part felt a little too quick, and/or confused me."

When readers are confused or feel that events unfold too quickly, it could be a sign of inconsistent pacing. At the Spun Yarn, we often see this in the last quarter of the book. An author finds herself with too many loose ends to tie up, or isn't sure about how to end the story and it shows in an overly convenient ending or an ending that leaves too many questions unanswered. 

1. Make sure your subplots are resolved. Map them out and address each one, even if only in passing. The point is to instill the reader with confidence that you're not wildly abandoning subplots along the path behind you: that you have a plan, that you haven't forgotten anything.  
2. If every subplot's resolution occurs in the last quarter of the book, see if you can resolve a few of them earlier to make the pacing consistent. Minor subplots can be resolved a bit earlier, and spacing them out can quell the heartburn that comes from a placid third quarter followed by an explosive, chaotic finale. 
3. Cut some subplots altogether if they're not strongly contributing to the story enough. 

If you receive this feedback about 'too much at once' or 'it's confusing' at the beginning of your story, tease out whether readers are content to stick with you and trust that their questions will eventually be answered, or whether readers seem overwhelmed and panicked. If the latter, try taking more time to cover the critical elements first, and saving other characters / mysteries / subplots / settings for later. 

We notice in Spun Yarn comments that readers are often willing to give you the benefit of the doubt for the first quarter of the book, as long as they don't continue feel overwhelmed in the second quarter of the book. 

Let us know in the comments: was this helpful? Were you rolling your eyes at the lack of new information, or panicked at seeing terms you didn't recognize? If the latter, check out this brief primer on pacing from the always helpful Writer's Digest. 

 

You wrote a book. Is it any good?

After months (or years) of carpal tunnel, crippling self-doubt, and procrastination, you have FINALLY FINISHED YOUR MANUSCRIPT. Congratulations!!! You emailed your mom and told your dentist and other random people on the street. Hopefully, you also sent your manuscript to a few readers, and at least one of them actually finished the thing and gave you some feedback.

So...what's next? Are you sitting on a bestseller? Are you ready to approach agents? How can you tell? At the Spun Yarn, we've learned a lot about what separates the finished from the not-quite-there-yet, and we'd love to share those learnings in our free quiz.

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