(no subject)

[donutsweeper]

I will never understand why people put in the effort to write long, wonderfully plotted, interesting stories yet can't bother to spend 5 minutes running it through a spell checker before posting it.

Comments

[haldane.livejournal.com]

I don't generally use a beta for anything under a thousand words, or a "one-facet" fic. I *almost* always do for my longer ones, even if I sometimes forget to credit them (big oops there).

It's amazing what you can miss in your own work - I was writing a Sherlock Holmes with a blackmail aspect, and my beta asked "If he's so rich and powerful that they can't touch him, why is he reduced to using blackmail to get what he wants?" They were absolutely right, why did he?

Betas are also useful if you're writing sex scenes and you get the ol' "three hands" problem. :D

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

I almost never use a beta for my drabbles or short ficlets, but I trust my flist to poke me if they spot something that needs fixing.

[aeron-lanart.livejournal.com]

I only started using a beta for Torchwood Big Bang last year, but that was habit as much as anything else - the betas in Trek fandom (where I first started writing) were harsh in a not-good way and I wouldn't have been able to cope with that so I always made sure I spell checked things pretty thoroughly myself.

Now I have a kind of 'official' beta and we bounce stuff around between us all the time when we're writing and we know each other well enough to be critical if required - funnily enough she's one of my LJ flist.

Still can't get my head around the no spell checking thing.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's the best kind of beta!