Beta Heaven

[icarus]

CLS has finished the Beta review of the last few chapters of Primer to the Dark Arts.

Yay! Just a few changes. I really have to write a steamy version of 'Morning Breath.'

Axelle's done a final on First Signs of Magic: Severus Snape, part of my gen series on the Sugar Quill. She loved A Moment of Sin and she did the final clean-up Beta. Alas, A Moment of Sin is too hot for prime time, and won't go up on the Quill.

Now she's going to final 'Your Friendly Neighborhood Death Eater.'

tboy has volunteered to Beta my drag-fic 'Sex, Drugs and Death Eater Rock'! Go tboy! I took a lot of my previous Beta's suggestions, cut it to ribbons. Additionally, I chopped about eight pages off its length.

The writing of this story has gone as smoothly as throwing up a hairball.

Note to all: despite the fact 'Death Eater Rock' is a sequel to the (heavily plot driven) Beg Me For It it has no plot, and only minimal character development. Unless you call wine and bubblebaths 'character development.'

Comments

Hmmm.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

No, I'm holding with the 'cursed story theory.' Really.

I've been stuck numerous times.

I had a pot-hole - er, plot-hole - that threw the last third of the story into disarray.

I've struuuuugled through and finally Spellotaped together a finished story.

I didn't like finished product, so I ripped through the story late one night. And pretty much every change I made has to be taken out.

Handed it to a Beta who, as it turned out, expected a plot, really wanted to see Ron take on the Ministry. But this story really is just a PWP. There's nothing in it but sex, drugs, and Death Eater rock. Really. There is no plot. So she was disappointed, took it out on the story over the weekend. She rewrote an entire page.

I took one look at it, shot her a flip email: "What?! You're fired."

She laughed and sent me a 'oh c'mon, I didn't change that much' email back.

I emailed her saying, look, I can tell from the tone of your comments you don't like this story. It's happened to me as a Beta.

She said, alright, I expected this to tell us more about Ron's plot to take out the Ministry. There's a little bit at the end of the story... *sigh*.

I said, that's okay. Fly and be free. And to show you there's no hard feelings, I'll still Beta your Boozefic.

Now this.

New story name: "Titanic."

~Icarus