I have been revising of my work-in-progress. I am 30% through it and I wonder if it is time to consider finding beta readers. My concern is I haven’t been at this very long and things the pros take for granted, I question or struggle with.

Where do you find beta readers? Rather, where does a strong introvert find beta readers? I am in a critique group and had several submissions critiqued. I found the comments useful for the material submitted. None of the comments gave me their thoughts how it fit in the plot, did the scene move the book forward, or such. Reality, I didn’t expect that because the only practical critique was thoughts on writing technique, sentence structure, word choice, and such. In return, I provided similar reviews of other member’s snippets. I couldn’t address plot, character development, etc. either from the 2000-3000 words I critiqued.

They are what I need from the person or persons willing to dedicate time reading my writing. How do I find this (these) person(s)? Could I trust a volunteer a family member to be objective in their assessment? Advertising on one of the social media sites might bring volunteer(s), I suppose. How do I evaluate them?

How do I know they understand my genre? Or would provide constructive evaluation of plot, character development, scene development, etc. How do I evaluate if their assessment?

Questions and few answers. Blogs I read suggest social media friends. Great idea but it seems those I have for “friends” are “romance” authors or fantasy authors so embarrassingly successful that I wouldn’t think of approaching them to read my drivel. Other blogs warn to take care in selecting beta readers. I forget the reasons but suspect warning that bad feedback can be hard on my …

Here I am without a finished work worrying about getting someone to read it. Now, after writing this, I wonder if I am putting the proverbial cart before the horse.  Am I?

What are your thoughts on beta readers? How did you find yours? What genre do you write?

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