Why You Can’t Beta Read Your Own Book (And How to Do It Anyways!)

When I talk to my friends about beta reading, sometimes one will say, “Well, I could just read my own book! Why would I hire a beta reader?” 

Well, with a beta reader, you’ve acquired a second set of eyes. Generally, you only have the pair in your head, and they are attached to your own brain. Your amazing brain, which created your fabulous work of fiction, is completely familiar with the story you wrote. You can navigate your way blindfolded on a dark night through this story by now. You live here. 

Speaking of living here, take a look around your own home. Is everything located in the most logical place? Maybe you are more organized than I am, but my olive oil is in a cupboard on the opposite side of the kitchen from my stove. And my notes for this article were in three different files. I had to hunt them all down. Fortunately, I live here. I could have found them blindfolded on a dark night. 

But, if you stepped into my house to create me a tasty stir-fry (thank you!), you’d be hunting all over my kitchen for the olive oil. You would have every cupboard door open in your search. You don’t live here. 

If you really were coming over to cook in my kitchen, I’d lay out all the ingredients for you on the island counter. You’d be able to stand in one place and see the carrots, broccoli, chicken, and rice. (You’re never going to find the rice on your own. I keep it in the library next to the bookshelf.)  I realize that everything is in the wrong place. That’s fine. I don’t expect a thousand people to navigate through my kitchen this week.  

I do expect several thousand people to navigate through your book someday. To achieve this, it’s best if things are where they belong. Maybe your ending belongs more truly in the beginning. Perhaps your character’s motivation got misplaced after his crisis. Maybe that fellow with the twisted smile never shows up again, no matter how hard the reader searches for him. Your beta reader will see these oddities because she doesn’t live in your book. In the dark night, she’ll trip right over these out-of-place paragraphs. 

So, you could try to beta read your own work, but you could navigate this thing in the dark. You know the rice is in the library and it doesn’t even bother you. So, your eyes are not the ones for the task. 

The fresh eyes of a beta reader will alert you to the missing clues, the absent stranger, the out-of-character behaviors of your characters. The weird things that don’t jump out at you because you live there. 

Would you like to know the secret for doing your own beta reading anyways? It’s a drawer. Put your book away in a drawer and don’t look at it for a long time. A minimum of six months, but two years would be better. So long that you’ve forgotten the details. So long that you’ve forgotten the plot. So long that you’ve lost the main character’s phone number and you don’t talk to them in your head anymore. You’d better set a reminder in your calendar so you don’t forget your book exists altogether. 

Go, make a life, move on to something else. Take up a new hobby. Write a different book. Make me a stir-fry. Anything to get your mind off that novel, haunting your dreams, living in the drawer. Can you hear its heart beating? Can you hear it cry in the night? 

As time goes on, and you get older, and your death day draws ever one day closer with each new dawn, your book begins to grow quieter, murmuring less in the silence of your pre-dawn awakenings. Never screaming out in jealousy anymore when you curl up with someone else’s book. Maybe it died, all alone there, in that drawer. 

Finally, it’s time to pull it out of its sequestered seclusion and read it, making notes about the things that don’t make sense. Why is the character saying that? Is this the one who dunnit? Or is it this one? What a surprise! It was the butler all along! You didn’t see that coming! What a delightful book! It only needs a little tweaking to be perfect.  

On the other hand, what if your story truly does die in that drawer? The only thing that made it alive in the first place was your brain and your heart. What if you can’t provide the resuscitating shock to spring it back into life?  What if your enthusiasm dwindles and you can’t even remember why you were torturing yourself with this story? Perhaps anxiously waiting a mere two to three weeks for the gentle pen of your favorite beta reader would be more relaxing than the horrid specter of a dead book that cannot be revived two years down the line. Your beta reader will return your book to you, complete with new street signs indicating “Danger, Cliff Ahead” and “Road Work Necessary” and even “Party Here – This Part is Perfection.” The road ahead will be clearer than it ever was when you were going it alone on the lonely path of the writer. 

You can beta read your own work, but do you really want to wait to forget? If you think you can handle the wait, please consider coming over and organizing my kitchen during all that down time.