by The BookTown Team
Alpha readers are people who you give your writing and drafts to read and gives you their honest opinion , immediate feedback about your book while you still writing. A good alpha reader will be one who provides you with the right amount of guidance and feedback in order to develop your idea. They happen to be the first readers beside you that lays their eyes on your work and in most cases its someone you already friends with or a fellow writer whom you have seen their work and drafts.
But if do not have any close writing partner or fiend there are ways in which you can find one for example checking on community centers or shops for information concerning writing groups in your location ; you can also check on newspapers or visit creative writing classes and visit them during their discussion .
Another way is to go to the internet and Google search on freelance websites where you will find professional alpha readers though they do charge fee but they are the best to use because most of them are professional editors, writers and proofreaders.
The following are some of the things that alpha readers do when contracted
· They will provide you with objective view on your stories or concepts by giving you an outside opinion on the same
· They will help you sport areas that areas that are not yet fully developed by giving you a deeper and wider suggestion on them
· They will also give you a firsthand impression on your character and how you portray them in your draft or story you writing.
· They also provide you with insight concerning your stories continuity , your characterization , your story structure , they offer fact- checking, your pacing, its believability and plot holding
· Alpha readers will can also motivate your writing through the feedback they give which tends to be of help to you to make changes and improvement to your drafts and writings, this will improve your writing structures thus gets your ideas flowing.
Alpha readers might also help an author in achieving they following in the process of a writing
· Since they offer a first impression they will help you find out what works and what does not work in your writing and thus makes suggestion on the same
· You may also need them to in order to make sure that the foundation and the basic plot is strong sine they spend a lot of time doing revision on it
· Alpha readers being familiar with novel writing can help you discuss your idea or writing verbally thus helps you to work out on issues that might arise in the process.
· They are at times source of reassurance, motivation, criticism, and inspiration and there feedback is ultimately subjective. They do this by going through your work conducting a chapter to chapter analysis thus do a lot of recommendation chapter wise.
· They offer a full review of your of your work and improve on certain areas they feel will spice your writing not to sound boring to the readers.
After an alpha reader has gone through your draft and given you additional insight which you have worked on thus making your work to be in good shape starting from flow of the story to grammatical improvements in case of any, characterization and themes of your writing; as an author what you should do next is looking for a beta reader to conclude your work.
Alpha reader does not need to be professional and you will need more of them as compared to beta readers and they are easier to find too. You can start with your family members and close friends as your first beta readers; they can be quick to give you a genuine opinion about your work whether it’s exiting or not.
You can also branch out from your close friends and family and look for an outside opinion which you can get from groups within your community or even post in certain social media platforms and find out what they think of your work. You will tend to get varied opinions since you will be approaching different people to looks at your work.
It is advisable to find different type of readers and as many types as possible thus the wider the variety the better for you to be able to predict how the general population and publisher at large will react to your work. Beta readers will also form part of the first readers and group of people to get to have a look at your book. This will help propel your work and expand on the number of readers who take a look at your work at the time it’s released to readers.
At time you might be easily influenced by the feedback you get from the alpha or beta readers for example they can influence your writing by making you write on what they recommend to you not as you wanted this is through what they feel should be deleted or added to the writing after going through your work or event advice you otherwise on your presentation levels contrary to what you intended.
You maybe cannot bear the thought of having someone look at your work while you still going on with writing since you feel your work isn’t polished and would prefer to work on it first before you invite an outside to your work. This is to avoid the fear of someone making any criticism on your skills and work presentation as well impression about you and also doubt your working process.
Therefore alpha readers tends to be a good and faster way to get easy feedback, guide in your story and even helps to spot trouble in advance, helps you makes correction through the recommendations they make to you and it’s also important to observe that they can take over your writing by making you write on their terms thus give out their story no your story so as author you know your working process so it’s up to you to make that judgmental call to the alpha and beta readers
You can use these links for reference on alpha and beta readers; http://www.steampowereddreams.com; http://www.standoutbook.com ;maryrobinettekowal.com ; blo.janicehardy.com
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