How Are Beta Reading, Manuscript Evaluation, and Developmental Editing Different?
Aspiring editors sometimes aren’t sure of the differences between different types of services they could offer. Three of the main big-picture services editors offer are beta reading, manuscript evaluation, and developmental editing. Here’s how they differ.
Beta Reading
Beta reading is a type of reader feedback on a manuscript. If you’re familiar with writers’ workshops, then the name you’re probably accustomed to using for this kind of feedback is critique.
But a critique is generally considered to be grounded in the critiquer’s cultivated sensibility. The idea is that the critiquer has some fundamental knowledge of how stories work and what an “ideal” story in a particular genre should look like, and their reaction is rooted in that knowledge. Keep this point in mind because it’s going to be important later, when you try to decide what to call your service and how you want to position it.
A true beta read is simply a reader’s reaction. The reader could be anyone of any experience level, with the main criterion being they read the particular genre the novel is in (if it’s a novel) or the category it’s in (if it’s nonfiction). For example, if someone doesn’t read self-help at all, an author isn’t going to ask that person to read their self-help book (or at least shouldn’t bother). The non-self-help reader is not in the intended audience. What the author is trying to do when seeking a beta read is to understand how a member of the target audience reacts to the manuscript.
The beta reader reads the manuscript and says how they’ve experienced it. If they were confused by a chapter, they’ll say so. If they really liked the romance between the protagonist’s best friend and the antagonist’s brother, then they just say that.
They don’t try to explain why anything is going wrong or why any particular thing is going right. They say “the pacing is slow here” or “this bantering dialogue made me laugh!” and that’s it. They don’t diagnose the root cause of the slow pacing or what in particular about the conversation was charming. They just say what they think.
Manuscript Evaluation
For our purposes, I’m using the phrase “manuscript evaluation” to mean a process of reading a manuscript and drawing conclusions about its main developmental issues—that is, determining what’s going wrong with the story in the big-picture sense. This is also sometimes called “manuscript assessment.”
Typically a manuscript evaluation is a type of pre-developmental edit of a work. You read through the manuscript carefully, taking notes, then diagnose the problems in the manuscript and write a revision letter based on your understanding of what’s going wrong and how you think the author can fix the problems.
You’ll notice that this is very different from a beta read as I’ve described it. In a beta read you’re not trying to diagnose the manuscript. In a manuscript evaluation, you are. This is another fundamental difference to take note of as you go forward and consider how you might position this service. If you also offer manuscript evaluation, how will you describe beta reading as a distinctly different offering?
A manuscript evaluation differs from a true developmental edit in that you don’t make edits or queries on the manuscript pages, which significantly reduces the amount of time it requires to perform the work. I typically suggest a manuscript evaluation when a manuscript has significant problems that require major rethinking, such as a lack of a clear central conflict, or goal-motivation is entirely missing for the protagonist, or the plot wanders off into the bushes and dies. I could do a developmental edit on a manuscript like that, but the AU really doesn’t need to hear me say, “You need to have plot events that forward the action” over the course of two hundred manuscript pages.
Once the author has addressed the significant problems, then I can do a developmental edit that is more focused on things like helping the author sharpen a character arc or make the setting pop a little more.
Can you see a series of possible services developing here?
Developmental Editing
Developmental editing (also called story editing or content editing) does contain elements of critique but it is more than that.
To do a good developmental edit, I have to immerse myself in the story world, to try to understand what it is and what it’s trying to be. I’m not just saying, “I was confused here.” That is critique, not editing. A lot of developmental editors say that what they do is development when it is actually critique.
In a developmental edit, what I am trying to do is guide an author in understanding what strategies will help them make their story more closely match what they want it to be, whether this is an ideal in their head, the conventions of a particular genre, or the commercial elements that will help them get an agent.
To accomplish this, I’ll make edits on the manuscript, add queries to the manuscript, and write a revision letter, all intended to help the author see how to improve the story.
This is complex undertaking, far more so than the reader reaction that beta reading is.
So, again, this is something to think about as you’re positioning your services. If you’re offering developmental editing as well as beta reading, how do you create a contrast between them so that both seem valuable, they’re just approaches that are used at different points in the writing process?
In the DE model, we’re not peers or readers speaking to writers. We are editors positioning ourselves as authorities on writing and editing matters.
In beta reading, we are positioning ourselves more in that peer-to-peer position.
