Remember when I told you that I hired the The Spun Yarn to beta read my YA sci-fi caper?
To catch you up, I paid this company to assign my manuscript to 3 varied readers interested in my genre. They don’t know my name. I don’t know theirs.
I do know their ages, genders, and broad geographic areas. Within 30 days, they read my ms and produced a thorough feedback report.
Well, I got the results from my 3 assigned readers and OOF!
What I learned:
When you are not directly paying someone to critique your work, they are much more honest.
When the author and readers are anonymous to each other, the feedback is brutally honest.
It huuuuuurts! OMG it hurt to read that much bald honesty about my writing, my talent, my story, my characters. It was tough to read. I cried.
But, what did I say I wanted out of this? Honest feedback. And that’s what I got.
That translates to a very clear roadmap of how to fix what isn’t working for readers, and do more of what they loved.
It was no fun to feel yucky about myself for a few days, but I will come out of it stronger and more successful. 🤞
Be Brave.