Here's another fun story: once upon, there was an archive full of badfic. I was the beta reader for someone who was friends with one of the owners. Said owner asked my writer to ask me to join. After repeated requests, I finally gave in and registered myself for an account, posted, etc. I heard later from people on my flist that they were having trouble getting their stuff posted, because the archive has a "validation" process, meaning they beta stuff from authors who haven't been "pre-validated", which I apparently was. I was annoyed that they made the distinction in the first place, but that's just me. And yet, despite holding a "pre-validated" account, one of the mods would repeatedly email me to point out things he considered errors in my stories, which were in fact grammatical constructions which he didn't understand. And therefore assumed were errors. Things like subjunctive clauses, etc., threw him completely. He preferred sentences to end with hanging prepositions, which is always a big no-no in professional writing, but very common in terms of actual language useage. I'll have characters do it and occasionally do it myself in the narrative when it sounds to awkward to word it in what would be the officially correct way, but at least I know the difference! Eventually I stopped archiving my stuff there. :P
Here's a confession: I usually don't use a beta, and rarely have. At most, I'll have someone look my story over for obvious typos or missing words. I type really quickly, but I do occasionally skip a word here or there nonetheless. I prefer not to have people critique actual content, as I don't feel that's their job. The archive mod was basically trying to pressure me into using him as my beta reader, since I had openly told him that I didn't use one at the time. But I wasn't about to have a person whose grasp of the language was so clearly inferior to mine telling me what to do with my fic, you know? I haven't taken a lot of English grammar (some, though) and I've certainly never taken creative writing (lots of literature critique, but not writing itself), but I've taken a lot of other languages, and after awhile, grammar itself becomes a language that you can speak, as it were. I've taken six years of German, three years of French, three years of Latin, basic Italian and basic Arabic. I'm a singer, so I also get to experience Russian and Czech on a regular basis. So I guess it is a bit of a double standard for me to say that I think that everyone should use a beta reader, but the fact is that not everyone should write, period. I may have characterisations that don't jive with some people, but other people's characterisations rarely work just perfectly for me, too. It is a rather subjective thing, in the end. In terms of style, same deal. Some people like more commas than others, for instance. According to the general rules of grammar, there are certain places where commas are required, and that's less subjective, in my opinion. In my opinion, JKR uses far too many ellipses, but can I say that it's incorrect? Or just a somewhat juvenile writing style? :P An extremely well-known author was kicked off the same archive mentioned above for refusing to capitalise the word "Galleon", as it's not capitalised in the US publication of the books (which she owned). Furthermore, she claimed that JKR capitalised too many things, and that that wasn't her style. Was she right? Were the archive people right? I don't know, but I tend to lean toward the author having some right to style, even in the murky world of fanfic. I'm totally rambling. It's my rambly time of night, sorry! :D I'm glad you like my writing style. That means a lot to me, especially coming from an editor. :)
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Date: 2007-08-31 06:00 am (UTC)Here's a confession: I usually don't use a beta, and rarely have. At most, I'll have someone look my story over for obvious typos or missing words. I type really quickly, but I do occasionally skip a word here or there nonetheless. I prefer not to have people critique actual content, as I don't feel that's their job. The archive mod was basically trying to pressure me into using him as my beta reader, since I had openly told him that I didn't use one at the time. But I wasn't about to have a person whose grasp of the language was so clearly inferior to mine telling me what to do with my fic, you know? I haven't taken a lot of English grammar (some, though) and I've certainly never taken creative writing (lots of literature critique, but not writing itself), but I've taken a lot of other languages, and after awhile, grammar itself becomes a language that you can speak, as it were. I've taken six years of German, three years of French, three years of Latin, basic Italian and basic Arabic. I'm a singer, so I also get to experience Russian and Czech on a regular basis. So I guess it is a bit of a double standard for me to say that I think that everyone should use a beta reader, but the fact is that not everyone should write, period. I may have characterisations that don't jive with some people, but other people's characterisations rarely work just perfectly for me, too. It is a rather subjective thing, in the end. In terms of style, same deal. Some people like more commas than others, for instance. According to the general rules of grammar, there are certain places where commas are required, and that's less subjective, in my opinion. In my opinion, JKR uses far too many ellipses, but can I say that it's incorrect? Or just a somewhat juvenile writing style? :P An extremely well-known author was kicked off the same archive mentioned above for refusing to capitalise the word "Galleon", as it's not capitalised in the US publication of the books (which she owned). Furthermore, she claimed that JKR capitalised too many things, and that that wasn't her style. Was she right? Were the archive people right? I don't know, but I tend to lean toward the author having some right to style, even in the murky world of fanfic. I'm totally rambling. It's my rambly time of night, sorry! :D I'm glad you like my writing style. That means a lot to me, especially coming from an editor. :)