Writers need readers. But first they need beta readers. Those are the kind souls who will read a rough draft and give you an honest opinion on it. Writing is a solo affair, conducted in a bubble and you never really know how good it is… you are too close to it. As with software, you need a testers to put it through the mill and see how it stands up.
Steven King says never let a beta reader see your first draft, that one is just for you. I know other writers who have people who will read successive drafts, making comments and helping to shape the next draft along the way. I don’t know anyone who would go that far, reading successive iterations of the same novel repeatedly. I haven’t even let anyone read my work until I consider it, basically, done.
Right now, my beta reader is my daughter Charlotte. She’s a writer herself: she was accepted into five fully-funded MFA programs for this fall. She chose University of Michigan. She has a book of short stories that she wrote while at Bowdoin, and has a wonderful voice. So it was with trepidation that I asked her to read my first novel, Mad World. It’s not her genre but I knew she would be able to assess it from a writer’s as well as reader’s viewpoint.
Charlotte’s feedback was pithy and helpful, but more important was the validation I got from it: she’s a real writer and she treated my work as an equal.
That’s priceless.
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