Beta Reading Update
I am happy and proud and excited to announce that as of a couple weeks ago, I have had a beta reader finish reading Rissa Must Die (RMD), Forbidden Ember (FE), and The Acolyte’s Heresy (TAH) all the way through! My level of excitement at this? Off the charts. Seriously, I cannot thank them enough.
Here is a quick recap of how I felt about edits moving forward - beyond overwhelming gratitude, of course:
There are some plot issues that need to be ironed out, but this is the one that feels the closest to being “ready”! Gist of the two main issues are that I had a midpoint surprise for Rhenise that doesn’t feel “fair” to readers, so I am incorporating that earlier in the novel, and I also have some inconsistencies in the geopolitics of the story that had to be smoothed out. I wrote this to be more commercial, and I think that shows. It is obviously shorter than TAH, and that alone makes editing feel like a breeze compared to trying to edit the majestic monstrosity that is TAH.
For future beta readers, I am particularly curious to see whether they can guess the “whodunnit” part of the plot and how they feel about the ending more thematically. I also am very nervous about whether Rissa is too unlikeable to be DNF. That’s one that it will always be hard to gauge with beta readers - who “have to” finish reading yours if they want you to finish reading theirs… So, I just have to hope that they will give me honest feedback about her and if I need to soften her any further.
Of the three, FE definitely has the most structural work to do. This is not surprising, given that it was the most recently drafted, so would have required more revisions on my own to be at the same level of development as TAH was. However, the beta reader helped clarify what I needed to do the most work on.
My biggest takeaway is that I needed to make Therise and Anisha’s motivations clearer from the beginning. Since both their motivations center around “running away” - Therise from her guilt and Anisha from having to make a decision that will disappoint her family - it’s not that compelling until we get to the midway point and Therise decides to do something about her guilt and Anisha realizes that she doesn’t have the luxury of not making a choice. The pacing also picks up significantly here, but in the beginning the motivations are unclear.
I know prologues are divisive, but I did it. I added one. They are short and more emotionally-charged vignettes than fully-fleshed out scenes, but hopefully it clarifies Anisha and Therise’s motivations enough to get readers to the midpoint. I also added some chapters in the beginning to explore the “magic” system. FE was not supposed to be the allegory about religion and faith that TAH explicitly set out to be, but I can’t fully avoid making some kind of commentary about religion and faith. And apparently, that’s not something I want to do half-heartedly. I am very curious what future beta readers will say about what it does to the pacing.
This one required substantive changes, but all changes that I am so far happy with!
The ending changed a lot - the climax in particular has been strengthened to align even better with my themes on religious fanaticism. Serena’s actions at the end also make it more aligned with my broader point about faith now. Curious to see what other beta readers will think of the ending and the message it leaves about faith.
The biggest change I have to make throughout is to make Kara “smarter.” Showing Kara make difficult decisions instead of just being described as smart. Some of it is easy, some of it is more difficult, and it does require changing the dynamic between Kara and Serena early on. I do think I had Kara trust Serena from the very beginning because I’m the author and I know I want them to end up besties. But I do have to make them go through some more difficult moments before Kara fully trusts Serena.
Beta Reading Commitment
At first I was hesitant to put my work “out there,” but it is so obvious how much better it is getting with each beta read, so I am publicly committing to getting at least three beta readers’ feedback on the full novel before going into my final edits for each novel.
So, we’re 1/3 of the way there! If you are interested, then please reach out. I’d love to hear your thoughts. In this day and age, I believe attention is the greatest gift we can give each other, and therefore, I am always open to a swap if you are.
Postscript
Even after I get three beta readers’ feedback on the full novel, I’m going to wait to publish until I am also done with the fourth novel. It is a companion novel to TAH, so it has to match with TAH, but there will also be some things from FE it will relate to. I’d rather have all four stories build on each other accurately from the beginning than be constrained about what I can write in the fourth novel based on decisions I made for RMD, FE, and TAH.
