Serious question on long fics

It can be very hard to deal with, after you spend hours and hours making his chickenfeed presentable. I have found that a good editor can really carry a mediocre (or, dare I say, awful) story to success, especially if they re-write chunks of it.

This is so true. I once beta'd for a friend. I didn't even volunteer, they passive aggressively asked, and I didn't volunteer because I knew for a fact no one had ever given them one hint of negativity for their writing, which is sort of the point of editors/betas. Pointing out weak spots, correcting, SPAG, telling when things are working, when they're flat, etc. So reluctantly I agreed to beta and then tried hard to give it a lot of TLC. They had a very soggy, mushy middle and I offered my advice (all while doing a disclaimer that it's just my opinion, they don't need to consider, but the middle is a bit soggy, etc).

When they got the story back, they proceeded to blacklist and smear me and get into arguments, killed the friendship and other friendships (I eventually left that group entirely). And in the end, when they posted the story, they didn't follow any of the advice (not even the objective stuff like SPAG. And the story was a mess... much like the punctuation in my comment here, but shhh ignore that). Luckily they didn't thank me for beta'ing in the author's note.

Never beta'd again. Some people are too precious about their art.

/r/FanFiction Thread Parent