30 Day Fandom Meme Day 23 and 24

[leethet]

Day 23 – When you post, where do you post to? Just your journal? Just an archive? Your own personal site?
My LJ, any easy archive that I know about. If it’s work, I won’t do it (like if I have to jump through hoops to join or whatever). I love self-loading archives.


Day 24 – Beta'ing – How many betas do you like to use to make sure there aren't any major flaws in your fic? Do you have a Beta horror story or dream story?
I don’t use betas. :-) I heartily approve the concept, but am comfortable with presenting my work as is, warts and all. I very much enjoy creating something that’s wholly mine.

Comments

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

I don’t use betas. :-) I heartily approve the concept, but am comfortable with presenting my work as is, warts and all. I very much enjoy creating something that’s wholly mine.

Boy, you're brave! *g*

[leethet.livejournal.com]

Well, I've been writing for a really long time, and I make my living as an editor (have for about 25 years), so, y'know - that doesn't mean my work is brilliant, or flawless, but I don't have any fears about it having horrible grammatical or spelling problems, and I'm pretty good about plot holes and stuff (as for characterization, that's so subjective anyway, but I feel like it's pretty good). If I were trying to sell it, I'd hold it to a higher standard, but for fanfic, the occasional goof or POV screwup (though it annoys me) isn't enough to make me regret my choice. :-)

[elmey.livejournal.com]

I wish all your MFU work was in one central location :)

I haven't written that much, and most of it isn't that long--I haven't felt a strong need to have it betaed, I can pretty much tell when it's crap--and proofreading I can do. But I have a feeling that for longer stories I'd want someone to look them over just to make sure I wasn't rambling and getting dull. Your stories don't have that problem though!

[leethet.livejournal.com]

If there was a central archive that had slash and gen (and that was easy to archive at) I'd put it there, but File 40 seems to be defunct, the Madhouse only takes slash, and I'm too lazy to go looking for other archives. :-)


Betas are a good idea - if they're good. I can't tell you how many stories I've read boasting of three or more betas that have sloppy grammatical or spelling errors within the first couple of paragraphs. A crap beta is worse than none, because the author mistakenly thinks they've been helped (or worse, takes lousy advice to heart). And a writer who won't listen to a good beta, of course, might as well not bother. Most fanficcers are beginning writers - there's a lot to learn about the craft just to get to the workmanlike level I'm at - a lot. However, I would never say "Don't share your fic unless it's been beta'd" even though most of the fanfic I sample is very poor and could use help - because hell, it's offered for free and done (usually) for fun, so why step on people's harmless fun? But most fanfic I've sampled (can't say "read" because semi-literate work makes me backbutton pretty quickly) needed serious quality checking. The good stuff's hard to come by.

On the other side of that coin, editing fanfic is usually so much work (because the authors are usually beginners) I don't volunteer to do it often, and I know that even if an author wants a beta, a good one's hard to find.