I need Beta Readers.

[Saint of M]

Ok, I am trying to be a writer and get something ready for publication.

I tried to recruit my friends on Facebook, but but nothing but a few likes in the last month and I know I am not that good of a writer for people not to not need a good kick in the butt in some areas. In any case I need fresh eyes to see what I can't, and give me impute. I will have final say, but will take into account what people say to make this the best I can make it.

This is what I am looking for:

People willing to read what I am writing, and I report back. I will try to do twenty pages, give or take, at a time which should be 2 or 3 chapters. I can do it one chapter at a time if people prefer. Otherwise, I will do this amount.

What kind of people I am looking for:

Any and all.

People with only ten minutes in a day to themselves, people that only have say the time on their commute on the bus, and those with all day.

Well read and those that only read a little bit.

Any all. A fire fighter and painter will walk into the same room and see different things.



What I need people to look for.

1. Spelling and Grammar errors: Grammar should be ok, but I screw up here and there, and spelling has never been my strongest point. Also what makes sense in y head as writing may not when I read it again

2. Pacing: Many of you have all the time in the world due to the plague at the moment. Some of you only have five minutes in a day also because of it. I need to know the pacing is good, I am not bogging you down with things, and you have plenty of areas to comfortably stop periodically or just quit for a day and not feel lost.


3. To see What works and what doesn't: I need to know what needs to stay, change, or be cut out completely.


4. I want honest opinions. No sugar coating; I need to know if this is Heavenly, Good, Passable, Bad, the worst thing to happen to literature since 50 Shades.

5. Sensativity readers: Not always in the first few books, but will be dealing with a lot of characters and they will be of all kinds of orientations, heritages, and identites.

Content of story: Science fiction. Idea came from watching Digibro rip Asterisk Wars apart for several videos and going: I can make a better story with the elements it has and went CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

This is a more soft scifi, very science fantasy, but has some hard science elements.

Content will be PG-13 ish, maybe borderline R. Basically James Bond and X-Men on one end, Conan The Barbarian and Predator at the other end. There will be violence and swearing.


Basic Plot: Several centuries in the future when humanity had a massive war over several plants, a student named Samson Wulf has to prove his the biggest badass in a school of other super powered teenagers.

Humanity conquers 10 more uninhabited worlds with the use of the discovery of Jump Gates they find in 15 different parts of the world. They go to different planets and with the exception of a hell world that is used to house the most dangerous of people, they go to only one other world. They might go to others but few dared to experiment as this made several third world nations very wealthy with the travel, and elevated overpopulation. The worlds also have abandoned alien tech that is reverse engineered.

Then 300 war that involved all 11 planets reduces humanity from a trillion to 100 billion. Part of this was due to 20% of humanity developing super powers that is basically in most video games, sci fi or fantasy like conjuring suits of armor and weapons out of thin air, even stuff that doesn't exist yet. Others shoot energy or the elements, boost sped and strength healing factor. Even some weirder ones. They are still more questions than answers when the story starts with them, but enough is known to have special schools to train them in their powers, rankings in power level, with the most powerful ones basically being one man armies.

Tech goes back and forth, but flying cars and sophisticated A.I are a norm.

If anyone is interested, PM me an name and Email, and how much you think you can get out of this, and I will keep this for some some questions and answers for less spoiler parts.

Anyone interested?

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I was interested right up until I read your synopsis and it sounded like young adult fiction. Sorry, not really looking for sci-fi "academy anime" in book form.

I'm sure some people love those kinds of plots, but I've never been a fan.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

I was interested right up until I read your synopsis and it sounded like young adult fiction.

This is unfortunately where my eyes glazed over as well. As soon as you start having people in the story be able to be as powerful as entire armies, being able to create things as if by magic that can range from real life science-based items and equipment to pure fantasy objects from different sources, it then becomes an arms race of who is powerful enough to out over-power the other. It can be done, but it has to be done very carefully, and it has to be done well.
Otherwise, next thing you know it's gone completely off the rails because some guy has a mystical power that lets him create 1000 of some video game weapon and demolishes basically anything and everything, until someone else has the power to *gasp* use a Kamehameha 1000x, golly gee! And, oh dear, the other guy's healing ability means that this is near useless even at point blank range, now what do we do?! Etc, etc, etc.

When you can make up absolutely anything you want and make it justifiable on the pretense of "People can just do that when their super powers suddenly appear out of nowhere as part of the story" then it becomes really, really dumb very, very fast. Don't get me started on "being able to create things that don't exist." That, just... has all sorts of potential storytelling problems right out of the gate. The school for super powered people who get ranked based on their power is also sketchy too, it sounds like My Hero Academia with 100% more power based hierarchy involved.

I like the idea of helping someone out a little bit as they put ideas together into a story, as sometimes we simply lack the ability and know-how to conjure up a story in the way we envision in our minds. Lord knows I'd need help with dialogue if I ever wanted to turn one of my D&D stories into a mini book of any kind, cause I am baaaaaaaad with making convincing dialogue. World and story building is my strength in that regard.

But to you, Saint, please don't take this harshly or anything... The impression I got of this post is "If the book writes like this post does, the beta testers have a lot of work to do." I don't want that to come off as if you shouldn't try or anything, though. Just keep it in mind, looking back at the core idea, and what level of ability there is to write a convincing narrative involving all these aspects all at once, if they are indeed the ones you decide to stick with

 

[Saint of M]

Will edit some of this in the first one. THe first fight in the book, the protagonist deals with one of the so called alphas by being smarter and faster on his feat in a fight. They are human enough that a bullet to the brain will kill them dead. Also he's basicly starting from the bottom and has to work his way up. End goal is super man, starting somewhere much lower

 

[Asita]

Ok, marketing guy speaking: "Several centuries in the future when humanity had a massive war over several plants, a student named Samson Wulf has to prove his the biggest badass in a school of other super powered teenagers" is not the way to pitch this, much less the first line you want us to read about your setting. It's way too vague and impersonal. It does nothing to invest us in the setting or characters, and it reads like a 90s take on My Hero Academia with Bakugo as the protagonist .

Let's take a step back for a minute and look at some other back covers.

Exhibit A: Mistborn

Sometimes I worry that I am not the hero everyone thinks I am. The philosophers assure me that this is the time, that the signs have been met. But still I wonder if they have the wrong man. So many people depend on me. They say that I will hold the future of the entire world in my arms. When they see me, do they see a liar?

Once a hero rose to save the world. He failed.
For a thousand years since, the world has been a land of ash and mist ruled by the immortal emperor known as the Lord Ruler. Every revolt has failed miserably.
Yet somehow, hope survives. Hope that dares to dream of ending the empire and defeating the Lord Ruler. A new kind of uprising is being planned - one that depends on the cunning of a brilliant criminal mastermind and the determination of an unlikely heroine: a street urchin named Vin.
Where a hero rose to save the world and failed, can a young heroine succeed?

Let's look at that structurally for a minute. We get this quote from a seemingly insecure hero protagonist. Not a wholly original idea, but hey, points for an introspective take...then we get the wham line: The hero failed. Wait, what?? That just doesn't happen in fiction! What the hell is going on. Now we get a brief setting synopsis...yeah, things are bad. Like, "life in Mordor" bad...and a crook is leading the next rebellion? Ok, book, you have my attention. I am curious as to what is going to happen.

Next up: The Dresden Files (Storm Front)

HARRY DRESDEN - WIZARD
Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations.
Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates.
No Love Potions, Endless Purses, or
Other Entertainment

Harry Dresden is the best at what he does. Well, technically, he's the only at what he does. So when the Chicago P.D. has a case that transcends mortal creativity or capability, they come to him for answers. For the "everyday" world is actually full of strange and magical things - and most of them don't play well with humans. That's where Harry comes in. Takes a wizard to catch at - well, whatever.

There's just one problem. Business, to put it mildly, stinks. So when the police bring him in to consult on a grisly double murder committed with black magic, Harry's seeing dollar signs. But where there's black magic, there's a black mage behind it. And now that mage knows Harry's name. And that's when things start to get...interesting.
Magic. It can get a guy killed.

Cheeky. Gives us a taste of the series' and protagonist's wry humor in the prose, and some hints at the setting. Chicago P.D. means that it's modern-ish, and while the blurb doesn't really hint at the level of magic at play, we can reasonably surmise that while magic is not strictly secret, it's not well known. And that is a surprisingly rare angle, even with Urban Fantasy; the magical world is usually either fully secret or mostly integrated.

The point of these blurbs is to whet your appetite. They aren't there to give you a breakdown of the setting, or tell you the stories of the characters (hell, Mistborn's blurb doesn't even talk about Allomancy). Their purpose is to hint that the inside of the book will be interesting and worth your while.

Now, I naturally know nothing else about your story than what you've posted here. But let's see if we can rewrite that synopsis a bit to feel more interesting. Granted, I'm totally winging it and taking some creative liberties, but even so...

"Anyone who said the Jump Gates were God's gift to humanity was a goddamn liar. Sure, humanity got ten new planets to its name. Sure, reverse engineering the tech was great. And yeah, with the advent of superpowers, the world today was probably like living in one of those antique comic books. But in the humble opinion of Samuel Wulf, the War of the Worlds (all 11 of them!) was a bit too high of a cost. 900 Billion was one hell of a body count, after all. That, and more importantly, detention for imploding his principal's car wasn't worth it. Goddamn Gates. Probably wouldn't have had to deal with this if they'd never been discovered."

Not my best work by a long shot (and necessarily incomplete without any idea of the book's plot), but I can only do so much with a perfunctory summary. Even so, however, it has more personality (albeit, still a flat one) and hints at the setting in a way that encourages more curiosity.

I know that you're looking at us for editing rather than as consumers, but you have to know how to make your pitch if you want to attract volunteers. This is especially true if you are not paying for the service. If that is the case, then it behooves you to make us go "oh boy, I'd love to read that!" because in that case early access to the book is the selling point.

So before you do anything else, please consider taking a mulligan on your plot synopsis and write it like it's the back cover of a novel. Let us see what you can do not when you're dryly explaining the setting, but when you're trying to make us buy the book off the shelf.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The first fight in the book, the protagonist deals with one of the so called alphas by being smarter and faster on his feat in a fight.

"Feet".

 

[Elvis Starburst]

Not my best work by a long shot (and necessarily incomplete without any idea of the book's plot), but I can only do so much with a perfunctory summary. Even so, however, it has more personality (albeit, still a flat one) and hints at the setting in a way that encourages more curiosity.

Definitely caught my eye a little bit more than the original post.

I know that you're looking at us for editing rather than as consumers, but you have to know how to make your pitch if you want to attract volunteers. This is especially true if you are not paying for the service. If that is the case, then it behooves you to make us go "oh boy, I'd love to read that!" because in that case early access to the book is the selling point.

That was my feeling after reading it. It sounded like the volunteers would have a boatload of work to be doing just to keep everything coherent, and the pitch alone made me and Dirty Hipsters go "I'm out" regardless of wanting to help or not. Hopefully Saint will take a stab at that back cover idea you were mentioning, I really wanna see how that goes

 

[Saint of M]

If nothing else, Trunk it till I can work out the details. As is this is kind of some of the advice I need.

Right now the main thing is the experiment on taking this concept more serious (to a point) and seeing if I can make it work. TO see how a society would use people with these kind of powers, and for the most part, child soldiers. At one point there is a discussion and one of the people is old enough to remember what it was like to fight along side kids, and knowing less scrupulous leaders would send one into an area giving them problems to have the kid leave it a grave yard (like a Saiyan baby to a planet). The lead character grew up in such a place, a former nation that was so thoroughly devastated its now a giant no man's land called the "War Torn" where only the desperate and the malignantly dangerous still call home.



As is the initial issues of saving the world will not be an issue ... yet, although some stakes maybe too high given the statements here. WHen he does, its more or less something like Die Hard where its wrong place right time.

Another area is trying to see how far I can put the main protagonist through when it comes to plot armor. He has it, he's a protagonist, but I want to see how much I can make him hurt knowing he'll live (its amazing what you can survive). Mot of te time this will be comedic (entrance exam instructor on forming armor is impressed with his, so he goes and tests it smashing him into a wall with a very big sledge hammer. He hopes this is the worst of it, but when we cut to the next scene he's in a body cast).

 

[EvilRoy]

I might be able to give you a hand with this, but first I want to ask you how you're going about this. Are you working off of a standard style guide, a beloved authors style guide, or something you've thrown together over time? Have you written up this style guide, or annotated a more standard one?

What's your schedule like? More or less: how many words a day, and when you go back to do your own editing how do you go about it?

Are you writing up a plot skeleton, or are you taking it page at a time?

 

[Asita]

Right now the main thing is the experiment on taking this concept more serious (to a point) and seeing if I can make it work. TO see how a society would use people with these kind of powers, and for the most part, child soldiers. At one point there is a discussion and one of the people is old enough to remember what it was like to fight along side kids, and knowing less scrupulous leaders would send one into an area giving them problems to have the kid leave it a grave yard (like a Saiyan baby to a planet). The lead character grew up in such a place, a former nation that was so thoroughly devastated its now a giant no man's land called the "War Torn" where only the desperate and the malignantly dangerous still call home.

May I make a recommendation regarding the powers? Take a leaf from Brandon Sanderson. The guy has a few very effective rules for making interesting power systems. To wit:

Sanderson's Laws of Magic: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Sanderson's_Laws_of_Magic

Law 1: "An author's ability to solve a conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the audience understands said magic"

(ie, The audience can reasonably surmise what bending in Avatar: TLA is capable of, so the cast is free to consistently use bending as a tool in solving their problems. They have no damn idea what Gandalf is capable of, so Gandalf uses magic sparingly and rarely directly solves problems with it)


Law 2: "Limitations > Power"

(ie, creative/skilled uses of a limited powerset are more interesting both to read and to write than getting power upgrades to overcome the next challenge)


Law 3: "Expand on what you have already before you add something new"

(ie, fully explore the implications of the extant elements before adding new powers to the mix)


That last one is not entirely intuitive, so let me add a little something to it. If you're familiar with Mass Effect, the franchise followed this last rule very well. They added one fantastical element to the setting and went whole hog with it. That fantastical element was, of course, "Element Zero" (aka Eezo), a fictional material that when subjected to an electrical current raised or lowered (depending on the current's polarity) the mass of surrounding matter, creating the eponymous "Mass Effect". This is what enabled everything from FTL travel to creating high durability construction materials. Hell, it's what allows the shuttlecraft to function as flying bricks with no wings. They literally just reduce their mass to the point that they only need directional thrusters to stay airborne. Heck, if you're paying attention, it's very probable that it was also originally going to be deeply tied to the original Dark Energy plotline, as Eezo worked through - wait for it - dark energy. The writers really did take one idea and try to take all of its implications to completion. And that's the gist of this rule.

---

And I go into this because looking at the initial synopsis, it kinda sounds like you've got an 'everything but the kitchen sink' approach to the elements in your world. It sounds like there's a lot of breadth, but I can't for the life of me imagine a unifying element for it, and the powers sound like they have no rhyme or reason to them, they just are, and I worry about the implications about the worldbuilding if my impression is accurate.

 

[Saint of M]

I might be able to give you a hand with this, but first I want to ask you how you're going about this. Are you working off of a standard style guide, a beloved authors style guide, or something you've thrown together over time? Have you written up this style guide, or annotated a more standard one?

What's your schedule like? More or less: how many words a day, and when you go back to do your own editing how do you go about it?

Are you writing up a plot skeleton, or are you taking it page at a time?

I have everything typed up, I just like to know how much time you can give and and what is a reasonable time to look through this and give it back with a honest oppion, from the technical aspects to the world building.

@Ashita

Will try to work around that and make it less chaotic.

 

[EvilRoy]

I have everything typed up, I just like to know how much time you can give and and what is a reasonable time to look through this and give it back with a honest oppion, from the technical aspects to the world building.

@Ashita

Will try to work around that and make it less chaotic.

Oh, what I'm getting at is if you have something to go off of for editing purposes. I deal with a lot of writing for work but most of it is either extremely technical, or business emails. There's like a whole different approach when it comes to grammar and writing style for that stuff so in order to help I would need a pretty straightforward manual of what you need.

 

[Saint of M]

Oh, what I'm getting at is if you have something to go off of for editing purposes. I deal with a lot of writing for work but most of it is either extremely technical, or business emails. There's like a whole different approach when it comes to grammar and writing style for that stuff so in order to help I would need a pretty straightforward manual of what you need.

My Spellchecker dies a little inside every time I use it, so technical works for now. I also don't want to write something that insults the intelligence of the reader.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I'll give my 2 cents based on your summary.

I find it much more interesting to see super powers and what they can't do rather than what they can. Restrictions breed much more interesting scenarios, even Superman, who everyone touts as the biggest example of too much power DOES have a gigantic restriction on him which is his own morality and desire to be a normal person. My favorite anime is Darker Than Black and in it there are people with super powers but it comes with a cost of everything from OCD like acts from earmarking pages in a book or drinking the blood of children or even physical effects like growing older. If you're going to have people with big time super powers then there needs to be a cost to it of some sort. Maybe these kinds of people need something called "Energy X" and without it they can't use their powers, would make it so the story is driven by a constant search for this rare energy so different factions can fuel their super powered people, something like that. Could even have it so without it they die and so then you have it so even good hearted people can be pulled into doing things they don't want to because of pure survival.

 

[SckizoBoy]

I'll give my 2 cents based on your summary.

I find it much more interesting to see super powers and what they can't do rather than what they can. Restrictions breed much more interesting scenarios, even Superman, who everyone touts as the biggest example of too much power DOES have a gigantic restriction on him which is his own morality and desire to be a normal person. My favorite anime is Darker Than Black and in it there are people with super powers but it comes with a cost of everything from OCD like acts from earmarking pages in a book or drinking the blood of children or even physical effects like growing older. If you're going to have people with big time super powers then there needs to be a cost to it of some sort. Maybe these kinds of people need something called "Energy X" and without it they can't use their powers, would make it so the story is driven by a constant search for this rare energy so different factions can fuel their super powered people, something like that. Could even have it so without it they die and so then you have it so even good hearted people can be pulled into doing things they don't want to because of pure survival.

I agree, and not just that, but what of societal/cultural penalties? If such powers are rare, what is the common person's/ruling establishment's reaction to them (on a scale of crapsack)? If they're varied, what is the reaction (whether by the common person or the empowered person) to "scrub powers" or "taboo powers" (what measure is "scrub/taboo")? If such powers are common, what is the reaction both of and to those who do not have them? What is the cost to the individual of growing up with such powers and going through adolescence with them (should they manifest at an early age) or the potential for ostracism (should they manifest in adulthood).

Content of story: Science fiction. Idea came from watching Digibro rip Asterisk Wars apart for several videos and going: I can make a better story with the elements it has and went CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

No disrespect, but I don't think it's a particularly good idea to go into this sort of thing with "X but better" as a premise as it marks the fundamental concept of the piece as unoriginal. Debatable though this may be, it still gives off the feeling of deliberate one-upmanship, and it isn't a good look. Sell it as "X but different" then make it so different as to be something entirely your own.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

No disrespect, but I don't think it's a particularly good idea to go into this sort of thing with "X but better" as a premise as it marks the fundamental concept of the piece as unoriginal. Debatable though this may be, it still gives off the feeling of deliberate one-upmanship, and it isn't a good look. Sell it as "X but different" then make it so different as to be something entirely your own.

That's something that bothered me bout this too. My experience from what I've seen is when someone says "Oh man, this published work sucks, I can totally do better" they usually aren't the type who can. Not to say people still shouldn't try. For all I know, someone out there might really be able to pull it off. I find that's not really the case though. I could say that... Harry Potter (for example) was written like garbage, but I'd never say I could out-write it. I'm one nerd that can barely do dialogue well, let alone write a coherent book. So I'd try and make my own thing instead

 

[Drathnoxis]

So how many takers do you have so far, if you don't mind me asking?

 

[SckizoBoy]

That's something that bothered me bout this too. My experience from what I've seen is when someone says "Oh man, this published work sucks, I can totally do better" they usually aren't the type who can. Not to say people still shouldn't try. For all I know, someone out there might really be able to pull it off. I find that's not really the case though. I could say that... Harry Potter (for example) was written like garbage, but I'd never say I could out-write it. I'm one nerd that can barely do dialogue well, let alone write a coherent book. So I'd try and make my own thing instead

Back when I was an edgy little shit, I was unimpressed by Harry Potter (I'm still largely unimpressed by it, TBH, but I just care about it a whole lot less and enjoy it for what it is purely at face value) and thought "oh, I can do this waaaaaaaaaaaaay better"... and came up with something that within a few weeks of the first instalment's completion (no editing, couldn't bring myself to do it) realised it was such a derivative piece of drivel I had to admit "better for everyone to forget about this forever". Luckily, I never publicised the fact of it, though I still have a digital copy as a memento of a private shame.

That said, trying to take someone else's concept and improving on it can serve as motivation for an original project, as a writing, deconstruction and conceptualising exercise, or just merely as practise. Not trying to discourage OP when I say this as creativity should be expressed whenever the opportunity arises, but I do feel that "challenge accepted" with intent to publish should be reserved for such things as Codex Alera (or not, as some may argue).

 

[Elvis Starburst]

That said, trying to take someone else's concept and improving on it can serve as motivation for an original project, as a writing, deconstruction and conceptualising exercise, or just merely as practise.

This is how I've done things for some of my D&D content and it turned out quite good, at least in me and my group's opinion!

Not trying to discourage OP when I say this as creativity should be expressed whenever the opportunity arises, but I do feel that "challenge accepted" with intent to publish should be reserved for such things as Codex Alera (or not, as some may argue).

Oh, same, I'm really trying my best not to come off as too discouraging or anything in my posts. But there does need to be a tiny bit of a reality check in where the starting point is. And trying to one-up a published work is... probably not it. At least not with the way the starting blocks of the world/story have been laid out. There's an idea in there somewhere, it just needs to come into its own somewhere.

So how many takers do you have so far, if you don't mind me asking?

Colour me curious as well

 

[SckizoBoy]

This is how I've done things for some of my D&D content and it turned out quite good, at least in me and my group's opinion!

Same, most of my writing these days is dramatising (with... some... abridging(!)) roleplaying campaigns and posting it to a different forum. It's a fun experience and serves as motivation to keep at it.