writing advice – Ridley Park

What You Should Ask a Beta Reader (and What You Shouldn’t)

August 22, 2025August 22, 2025Posted in Book, Ridley Park, WritingTagged author tips, Beta readers, beta reading, books, editing, editing process, fiction, how to use beta readers, manuscript critique, notebooklm, novel, novel writing, podcast, publishing, reader experience, Speculative Fiction, writer support, Writing, writing advice, writing community, writing feedbackLeave a comment

Chef reading a cookbook that reads Beta Recipes

Congratulations, you’ve finished a manuscript. You’ve pushed the boulder uphill, typed “The End,” and maybe even convinced yourself you’re done. Spoiler: you’re not. This is where beta readers come in — those kind souls who’ll slog through your draft and tell you whether it sings, stumbles, or just sits there like porridge. The trouble is, most writers don’t actually know what to ask them, and so they end up with feedback about as useful as a horoscope.

The first and most uncomfortable question is about intent. What are my goals in writing this, and did you see them? Most writers never ask, because it forces them to say what they meant in the first place. Are you interrogating free will? Trying to write a page-turner? Smuggling philosophy under the hood of a dystopian thriller? If your beta doesn’t see it, either you buried it too deep or you didn’t put it in at all. Of course, not every writer works with some grand meta in mind, but if you do, this is the question that makes or breaks the project.

If your story feels like homework, you’ve already lost.

Enjoyment comes next, even if it bruises the ego. Did they actually like reading it? If your story feels like homework, you’ve already lost. It’s better to know this from a sympathetic reader now than from Goodreads later. A related angle is pacing: where did the story drag? Readers know exactly where they reached for their phone, even if they’re too polite to say so without prompting. Ask them to point to the spots where the air went out of the room.

Did the conclusion feel like it belonged to the story’s own logic?

Characters are another litmus test. Which ones did they care about, and which ones left them cold? Writers are often too close to notice when a protagonist reads like cardboard, or when a side character steals the oxygen. Beta readers are your lab rats here, revealing who’s magnetic and who’s forgettable. The same goes for endings. Don’t ask if it was happy – ask if it was satisfying. Did the conclusion feel like it belonged to the story’s own logic? If the reader feels cheated, the manuscript isn’t finished.

World-building deserves its own interrogation, especially in speculative fiction. Readers will happily forgive dragons, AI dictators, or interstellar chalk drawings, but not inconsistency. If the rules of your world shift without reason, they’ll notice. In fact, coherence is more important than cleverness. The reader doesn’t need to understand every mechanism, but they do need to trust that you do.

Was there an image, a phrase, a scene that stayed with them once the book was closed?

Finally, ask what lingered afterwards. Was there an image, a phrase, a scene that stayed with them once the book was closed? That’s your gold. Double down on it. If nothing sticks, you’ve got polishing to do.

One last but often overlooked question is about the reader themselves: am I asking the right person? An excellent sci-fi enthusiast might not be your best pick for YA urban fiction. A romance aficionado won’t necessarily grasp the rhythms of a philosophy-laden dystopia. Fit matters. You wouldn’t ask a vegan to taste-test your steakhouse menu, so don’t ask the wrong reader to bless your book.

Am I asking the right person?

And here’s the tightrope for the beta reader: they are not there to tell you the book they would have written. Their job is to respond to the book you actually put on the page. It’s your manuscript, not a co-authorship audition. If their feedback starts with “what I would have done,” that’s not critique – that’s a rewrite.

The meta point is simple. Beta readers are not editors. They aren’t there to fix your commas or restructure your second act. Their value is in telling you what it feels like to read your book – hot, cold, flat, or electric. And if you’ve got a grand philosophical undercurrent humming beneath the surface, they’re the only ones who can tell you whether it came across.

Beta readers are not editors.

So don’t hand your beta readers a scalpel and ask them to perform surgery. Hand them your story and ask: did you taste what I meant to cook?

The First Rule of Writing: There Are No Rules

August 16, 2025Posted in Art, Video, Writing, YouTuberTagged artistic freedom, books, creative writing tips, creative-writing, editing, fiction, first paragraph strategies, genre conventions, no rules in art, novel, philosophy of writing, scaffolding vs art, Writing, writing advice, writing beginners, writing rules critique, writing tipsLeave a comment

It is all well and good that experienced people share their advice with neophytes, with those who are less practised, less confident, or simply eager to imitate. There is nothing inherently wrong with offering footholds. This particular video, for instance, sets out ten strategies for the opening paragraph, each supposedly designed to stop readers from bolting at the first hurdle. For the green and anxious, a checklist can feel like a lifeline.

But here is the rub. The first rule of writing, which is also the first rule of art, is that there are no rules. There are, admittedly, a near-infinite number of bad ideas – every creative writing workshop is proof of that – but this abundance of failure does not magically distil into a shortlist of approved techniques. “Best practice” is a managerial fiction dressed up as gospel.

Video: First Paragraph Strategies

NB: I am not disparaging John Fox, Bookfox, or this video. I am commenting on the notion of writing formulae. I found the tips informative and on-point, but in the end, you are the artist.

Yes, if you are working in a commercial genre, there are conventions and tropes that must be acknowledged. A murder mystery without a corpse is merely awkward, and a romance without union or rupture is simply wishful thinking. But let us be clear: these are expectations, not commandments. They are signposts, not shackles.

The danger of this kind of advice is not that it is wrong, but that it is received as dogma. If every first paragraph dutifully obeyed these ten tricks, the outcome would not be ten compelling openings but ten perfectly interchangeable ones. Predictability, not incompetence, is the real enemy of writing. To follow rules too tightly is to aim directly at cliché.

And yet the defence is equally obvious. A novice often requires boundaries, if only to resist paralysis. “Begin here, avoid this, try that.” Advice of this sort can be useful scaffolding, and scaffolding, while inelegant, keeps the building upright until the architect has a design. The problem arises when people mistake the scaffolding for the cathedral.

So the honest conclusion is double-edged. Watch the video if you like. Steal what steadies you, ignore what doesn’t. But do not imagine that art is born from lists. At best, such advice can prevent you from falling flat on your face; at worst, it convinces you that walking in circles is the same thing as running.

The AI Isn’t Coming for Your Manuscript, Karen

August 5, 2025August 5, 2025Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Book, critique, Generative AI, Needle's Edge, Ridley Park, Software, WritingTagged ai, AI and writing, AI fearmongering, AI won’t steal your work, author fears, books, creative writing tools, editing, editors vs AI, fiction, fiction writing advice, Generative AI, how AI works, indie author tips, manuscript paranoia, publishing, publishing tips, Ridley Park blog, snarky writing blog, writers and AI, Writing, writing advice, writing satire3 Comments

2–4 minutes

And neither is that editor you refused to hire.

Too many people don’t understand how generative AI works. Not civilians. Not your mum. Not even your dog (though he’s probably got better instincts about plot pacing than half of #WritingCommunity). No, the truly confused are writers. Authors. Editors. The ink-stained guardians of literary virtue who see AI and scream, “Plagiarism!” before they even read the terms of service.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

I posted a question on a Reddit forum for Fiction Writing—because I’m a glutton for punishment—and within seconds, the doomsday chorus began. “Don’t share your work with AI!” they cried. “It will steal your ideas!” As if ChatGPT is some sentient literary magpie with a fetish for your rough draft.

Another chimed in: “They’ll use your words to train future models!” Yes, Brenda, because your glacially paced fantasy epic with twelve warring kingdoms and three prologues is the key to cracking AGI.

Let’s set the record straight. This is not how AI works. Models are trained, and then they’re deployed. That’s it. Done. Finished. They’re not learning from your prompts any more than your toaster is evolving every time you burn the crumpets. The AI doesn’t remember you. It doesn’t save your work to some secret vault labelled “Possible Booker Prize Winners—Do Not Delete.”

Unless you deliberately cache content into a persistent memory—and you’ll know, because the interface reminds you like an overzealous librarian—it’s gone. The machine forgets. Your precious prose vanishes into the void, right alongside your childhood dreams of being discovered at Starbucks by a passing Penguin editor.

But what this really exposes is a deeper, older neurosis: the idea that someone—AI, human, interdimensional elf—is going to steal your genius. And you’ll be left penniless while they ride your glittering words all the way to a Netflix deal.

This is why some of these folks won’t share their work with editors either. Or beta readers. Or critique partners. Because someone might steal it. As if the entire industry is just waiting to snatch up your unproofed, comma-spliced debut and slap a different name on the cover. The paranoia is delicious. Also tragic.

Here’s the thing: no one is stealing your manuscript. Mainly because no one wants it. Yet.

You know who does get their work stolen? People who publish. People whose work is finished, polished, and out in the world. And even then, it’s usually pirated by some bot-run content farm in Indonesia, not secretly optioned by HBO.

Meanwhile, you’re clutching your WIP like it’s the Dead Sea Scrolls. You won’t let AI see it. You won’t let an editor see it. You won’t even let your cat walk across the keyboard while it’s open. And so, it rots. In obscurity. Like 99% of manuscripts that die not from theft but from neglect.

Look, I’ve been around since Wave 3 of AI. Back in the ‘90s, we called them “expert systems,” which is just a fancy way of saying “spreadsheet with delusions of grandeur.” They weren’t intelligent. Neither are today’s models, frankly. But we gave them a sexier name and suddenly everyone’s worried they’re going to replace Shakespeare.

Newsflash: AI isn’t going to write your book. But it might help you finish it—if you’d just stop screaming and let the damn thing look at a paragraph.

In short: AI is not your enemy. Editors are not out to get you. And the only person likely to sabotage your novel… is you.

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Ridley Park

The Echo Chamber of Aspiring Authors

July 28, 2025July 28, 2025Posted in Book, Ridley Park, WritingTagged anti-hero’s journey, artistic integrity, author networking, book marketing, book review, books, commercial writing, exposure, fiction, genre tropes, hawking, independent author, literary fiction, marketing, marketing frustration, promotion, readers vs writers, Ridley Park, save the cat, self-publishing, selling books, tropes, Writing, writing advice, writing tips1 Comment

I’ve been thinking…

I’ve been lurking and participating in many author and writing groups, but I’m not sure this is a productive strategy.

Like other authors, my goal is to network and connect to readers, and more importantly, buyers. The problem is that other authors, like myself, share the same goal in mind. There is no reciprocity, no “coincidence of wants,” which is that I happen to be offering a book that you might find engaging.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

Of course, one can frequent reader groups, but these are often inundated with publications, so there is no focus. I don’t write genre fiction, so I don’t have the benefit of, say, a sci-fi group, romance, werewolves, and whatnot. I (tend to) write literary fiction without identifiable tropes and storyline. As I’ve written before, there are no Hero’s Journeys, no saving the cat.

Indeed, there are literary fiction groups, but there are numerous motivations for this reader cohort. It is not homogeneous. I could (and do) hunt for sub-categories, but these are less fruitful.

I see dozens of ads splashed on my screen, suggesting someone can help me write my next book by telling me what’s hot, what’s selling. I am not interested in writing books that sell. I want to tell my stories. I am not a commercial writer in the same way that I was never a commercial musician. I am interested in the art. Of course, I want to sell my works, but it needs to be on my terms. If I were to sell out, it would just be another job with all of the intrinsic joy sucked out of it. The extrinsic appeal of money is not enough to compensate. Some people who take this commercial convince themselves, “at least I’m still writing,” or painting, or performing for a living. I am not able to comfort myself with this self-delusion. As the saying goes, ignorance is bliss.

Since I’m ranting…

I’ve been haunting author and writing groups for a while now – lurking in the shadows, peeking behind the curtain, occasionally tossing in a snide comment or two. Call it market research. Call it masochism. Either way, I’m starting to suspect it’s not the most productive use of my time.

You see, like most of these poor souls, I’m here to “network” (whatever that means in late-stage capitalism) and, more importantly, connect with actual readers. Buyers. The unicorns. Not fellow authors trying to sell me their 17-book werewolf reverse-harem saga or the latest AI-generated cover that somehow still manages to have three left hands.

And here’s the rub: we’re all pitching. No one’s catching. It’s a bazaar where everyone’s hawking their wares and no one’s carrying a purse. The law of the marketplace – what economists once called the “coincidence of wants” – simply doesn’t hold. I don’t want what they’re selling. They don’t want what I’m offering. It’s not even personal. It’s just noise.

Could I wade into reader groups instead? Sure. But these are often genre-clogged pools: romance, sci-fi, vampires with high school diplomas. God bless them. It’s just not my lane. I write literary fiction. You know, the kind without a tidy plot, without a cat-saving hero, and – brace yourselves – without an obligatory third-act redemption arc.

Even literary fiction groups aren’t much help. That label encompasses too much: Booker-bait bildungsromans, moody minimalism, and the occasional Proustian doorstop for good measure. And reader motivation in these spaces is hardly uniform. Some want to weep. Some want to feel clever. Some just want to say they read something “important” at brunch. None of them are asking for me – and that’s fine. But it does make targeting a pain in the arse.

Then come the ads. The snake-oil salesmen. “Here’s how to write a book that sells!” “Tap into trending genres!” “Master the market!” As if we’re all desperate to become a literary McDonald’s franchisee, pumping out Big Macs with words. I didn’t become a writer to stuff my soul into a Happy Meal box. I didn’t become a musician to churn out jingles. I don’t paint by numbers and I don’t plot by templates.

Yes, I want to sell my work – but on my terms. I’m not allergic to money; I just refuse to whore out my creativity to chase it. Some people convince themselves that so long as they’re still writing – still playing the game – they’ve won. I’m not built for that flavour of self-delusion. Call it ego. Call it integrity. I call it survival.

Since I’m already up here on my soapbox, let me kick it once or twice for good measure.

There’s a mountain of writing advice out there. I’ve read plenty. Some of it’s even good. But much of it is just a conveyor belt back to the same old factory settings: save the cat, beat the plot, rinse and repeat. I don’t write that way. I don’t read that way. I need more than recycled tropes wearing different hats. I need teeth. Friction. Depth.

Do I use tropes? Of course. We all do. Language itself is a trope. But I twist them. I break them. I bury them in the garden and see what grotesque things bloom. It’s not even effortful – it’s just how my brain is wired. Call it a feature, not a bug.

Anyway, that’s enough bark for one day. If you’ve ever stared into the marketing void and felt it blink indifferently back, I see you. If you’re a writer trying to walk the tightrope between integrity and visibility, I hear you. If you’ve got thoughts, confessions, or sacrificial goats to share, drop them in the comments. Misery loves literate company.

I’ve read a wide range of genres. I’ve found them most unsatisfying and therefore unappealing. I am not saying that these are now good. I’m saying that they don’t resonate with me. It’s why I don’t watch television and find few movies interesting. I need more than templated tropes.

Do I use tropes? Of course I do. Writing a book without tropes would be nearly impossible. I try to subvert tropes and expectations. In practice, I don’t even have to try very hard. It’s how my brain works on its own.

Last but not least, I don’t need a writer’s group, starter ideas, prompts, or exercises. I don’t get writer’s block, probably because I am not trying to force a plot.

Anyway, I’ll hop down off my soapbox. I wonder how many other writers share some of my perspectives and challenges. Let me know in the comments.

The Beta Reader Is Not Your Mum (Unless Your Mum Gets Postmodern Alienation and Narrative Decay)

June 14, 2025June 14, 2025Posted in Book, WritingTagged author tips, bad writing advice, Beta readers, book editing, books, choosing readers, creative writing, editing, editing process, genre mismatch, how to find beta readers, literary criticism, manuscript feedback, publishing, publishing tips, reader feedback, Speculative Fiction, target audience, Writing, writing advice, writing community1 Comment

Let’s get one thing straight: not all feedback is good feedback. In fact, a depressingly large proportion of it is the literary equivalent of asking a vegan to review your steakhouse. Technically they read the menu, but were they ever really your audience?

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

We live in a culture that treats opinion like currency. Everyone’s got one. Everyone’s desperate to spend it. And nowhere is this more evident than in the world of beta reading—a supposedly sacred process in which brave authors hand over their embryonic manuscripts to friends, lovers, ex-wives, and total strangers in the desperate hope someone will “get it.” Most don’t.

Know Thy Manuscript (Before It’s Murdered by Committee)

Before you even think about soliciting feedback, ask yourself: do you actually know what your manuscript is? Is it a quiet literary allegory disguised as sci-fi? A philosophical middle finger wearing the trench coat of genre fiction? A slow-burn deconstruction of capitalism wrapped in alien gloop?

If you can’t answer that, neither can your beta reader. And you’ll deserve every clueless comment that comes slouching back across your inbox like a drunken tortoise.

Audience Matters. (No, Really.)

Let me put it in culinary terms for the metaphorically impaired: if someone hates seafood, they are not qualified to tell you whether your oysters are overcooked. They might be able to describe their gag reflex in exquisite detail, but that’s not useful culinary feedback—that’s autobiography.

Likewise, if your beta reader consumes nothing but cosy mysteries and thinks House of Leaves was “a bit confusing,” why in the name of Borges are you handing them your experimental novella about time, recursion, and the semiotics of grief?

I Know a Writer. I Know Your Pain.

A personal note, if I may. A close friend is a writer. A good one, in fact. But our ideas are so philosophically incompatible that they could be placed on opposite ends of a Möbius strip. Every time they read my work, they suggest alterations that, while technically well-formed, have the uncanny knack of annihilating the entire point of the piece. When I respond, “That’s a great idea—why don’t you write it?” they get cross.

Because here’s the truth: most beta readers don’t give you feedback on your book. They give you notes on the book they wish you’d written.

Signal vs Noise: Spotting the Useful Reader

There’s a simple test I use to distinguish signal from noise.

Bad beta feedback:

“I didn’t like the main character.”
“Why don’t they just call the police?”
“This story would be better with a love triangle.”

Good beta feedback:

“The way you structured the timeline echoes the narrator’s fragmentation—was that deliberate?”
“I wasn’t confused until Chapter 5, which made the earlier ambiguity retroactively frustrating.”
“The tonal shift on page 42 feels earned but abrupt—was that intentional?”

In short: good feedback interrogates execution. Bad feedback critiques intention.

The Beta Reader Interview (Yes, You Need One)

You wouldn’t hire a babysitter without asking if they’ve ever met a child. Why would you let someone babysit your manuscript without screening for genre literacy?

Ask them:

What do you normally read?
What do you hate reading?
Can you name a book you loved that nobody else seemed to?
Have you read [Insert book similar to yours]? Did you like it?

If they look at you blankly or start talking about Colleen Hoover, back away slowly.

The Beta Reader Zoo: Know Your Species

Here are a few common subspecies to watch for:

The Rewriter: Wants to turn your Kafkaesque nightmare into Eat, Pray, Love. Run.
The Literalist: “But how would that actually work in real life?” Mate, it’s a parable. About entropy.
The Cheerleader: “Loved it! Don’t change a thing!” (Translation: I skimmed it during Bake Off.)
The Cynic: Thinks everything is nihilistic, including your dedication page.
The Goldilocks: Rare. Reads the book you actually wrote, not the one they wish you had. Cultivate this one like a bonsai tree.

Curate, Don’t Crowdsource

Beta reading is not a democratic process. You are not running a focus group for toothpaste branding. You are searching for a handful of individuals who understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and whether you’ve pulled it off—or fallen on your clever, post-structuralist arse.

Better three brilliant readers than thirty who think you should add a dragon in Chapter Two.

Final Thought

Your beta reader is not your editor. They’re not your therapist. And they’re definitely not your mum (unless your mum has an MA in critical theory and a fetish for broken narrative structures).

Choose wisely.

Or don’t – and enjoy reading thirty pages of feedback that begins, “I don’t usually read this sort of thing, but…”

PS: I love how Dall-E totally misfired on the cover image. lol