[personal profile] barbayat
This is not a fail safe method but I had at least found interested parties so far and had one chapter done ;)

In case you do not know it, fanfiction.net has this feature were authors can offer their beta services. Apart from the usual author profile a new beta profile is generated.

Potential beta readers give a general bio about themselves. Then they give their strength and their weaknesses followed by what they prefer to beta read and what they will not do.

Some author's have problem setting themselves up in the right categories. So if under the specific category for your fandom there is no active beta and you start looking through those who listed all movies or all comics. You might find people who are just willing to do specific fandoms. Just as not everyone listened under up to M rating will do M stuff.

Still, the idea for the service is not bad.

However, it is not very well maintained. When I first used it, I wrote to a couple of betas and never heard anything back. As everyone stays in the system even if the last time they been on the site was 2003 or even later.

My new strategy involves starting with betas who have signed up in the last few years, later dates I look at if they wrote a lot. The next step is to quickly glance at if there is any "won't dos" in regard to the story I am needing the beta for and if they list grammar as their strength (because a plot beta like myself is not what my fanfics needs the most).

If they sound like they might do my story, I go to the author profile and see if they are still active either for posting stories, messages in their profile or if they favourited any recently posted stories. That way I know they at least still go to the side.

Then I revisit the beta profile and look at what they wrote and write a message why I seak them out as a beta and what I like them to beta for me. After that I hope for the best ;)

I only wrote three so far and I heard back from all of them and have one chapter already beta read. As for the other two, need to write one back if they are still interested and waiting for another reply from an interested beta.

It is not a perfect system and interested parties might become de-interested but maybe that helps you to find a beta.
[personal profile] lacygrey
Hi, welcome to June. Hows it going?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 12


Today, I...

View Answers

wrote
3 (25.0%)

researched
1 (8.3%)

edited
1 (8.3%)

sent to beta
1 (8.3%)

posted
1 (8.3%)

did something else about writing
1 (8.3%)

did really something else
4 (33.3%)



Friday is also the weekly day for snippets and beta requests, so let us know what you are doing and what you need.
[personal profile] snowynight
1. Looking for an beta for a 1K Axis Power Hetalia fic featuring Taiwan/Vietnam. Canon knowledge is not necessary. The story is a fluffy story set in current time, so no historical/cultural knowledge needed. No warning applied. I mostly look for beta help on SPaG and plot. I would like to get it back before 30th April.

2. Looking for an alpha reader or beta on a 25K  Marvel comics story featuring Steve/Tony and Carol/Wanda. There's no time pressure. The rating is PG/R for mention of child harm, mention of brainwashing and mention of murder. For an alpha reader, I mostly need opinion on plot. For a beta, I would like this and extra help of SPaG. The story is a total AU so fandom knowledge is not necessary.

Looking for beta

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011 19:39
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[personal profile] snowynight
I 'm looking for a 4K Marvel comics fic featuring Misty Knight and Colleen Wing.  It's PG rating at most. I mostly need a grammar and possibly plot beta. Could anyone help? I can work with Gdoc. Canon knowledge 's not quite necessary.
[personal profile] littlebutfierce
The tiny thing in this post first: I've been messing around w/the tags, in an effort to make them nested & neat, & much easier to browse if you want WIP challenge stuff that isn't a check-in post, or info on writing sessions in your time zone, etc. I think there's a bug that still needs tweaking, but we'll see what Support says. BTW, if any of you have been interested in nested tags but couldn't find the info on how to use them, my support request has some useful explanations!

On to betas! There's been consistent interest in finding betas through the comm. How can we make this happen for you? I thought maybe a list of people volunteering to beta might be helpful, but I know that such lists go out of date almost immediately. There's even [community profile] beta_masterlist, but that doesn't seem to be active either.

Looking at the other side of the equation, if you need a beta, feel free to post & ask! If we get to the point where we have a dozen beta-seeking posts a day, we'll have to rethink that, but for now it's absolutely fine.

But I'm still really stuck on wanting a way to keep a list of volunteer betas. Is there anyone else who would find this useful? I ask partly because of this comm's original focus on fic-writing newbies, & my experience as a newbie myself (which wasn't so long ago...). I was terrified of posting fic, & especially putting my username to it--this is why my AO3 name is different!--& certainly at first, I was too afraid to ask anyone I knew for a beta. None of my friends were in the fandom, & well, yes, I could've posted to the fandom's LJ comm. But it has over a thousand members. Way too intimidating for me at the time. Eventually I got my nerve up to ask a friend of mine to beta for me, & things got better from there.

But still, I agonized so much over daring to ask for a beta! I can't be the only person who went through that. Of course, even if we had a volunteer beta list, people would still have to approach a beta directly, but I think it would've felt less intimidating to me.

Also, I like betaing, & (time/energy permitting, fandoms matching if need be) would be happy to do more of it. It'd be nice to find a way to note that to people in this comm.

Any ideas on how to do this & keep it relevant & up-to-date without being too burdensome? Maybe it's impossible, but thoughts welcome!
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