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foxinthestarsI'm working on another Natsume Yuujinchou 'fic that's maybe half-done and I rationally think I should complete a draft before showing it to anybody (especially since it was conceived as one big ball of yarn and it has to get pretty close to the end before it all comes clear), although I occasionally have to beat back the temptation to post WIP. In thinking about it tho, I came up against one of those things I don't know about how people tend to go about writing 'fic because I've spent so much of my life doing it in a vacuum...
So re: betaing. In Yuletide the last couple of years is actually the only time I've participated in it under that name, and of course, you can get someone knowledgeable about your fandom for "fact"-checking (I use the scare quotes because I've done so many A/Us, and I also occasionally fear that I've fallen off into some Uncanny Valley of minor tinkering that's Just Not Done and I get a bit defensive about it, but yeah, you want someone to catch it if you do something dumb like forget that Harry didn't ride the Thestral-carriages until his second year or something ::whistles::). I've become familiar with the shorthand SPAG for Spelling, Punctuation, And Grammar --- ie, general-purpose proofreading issues, but my question is, is there a similar shorthand for general-purpose revising issues, like Plot, Pacing, Diction, etc (with Characterization being kind of in between this and canon fact-checking)? How is that stuff even thought about? I think betas tend to point it out anyway, it just seems a little odd...
So re: betaing. In Yuletide the last couple of years is actually the only time I've participated in it under that name, and of course, you can get someone knowledgeable about your fandom for "fact"-checking (I use the scare quotes because I've done so many A/Us, and I also occasionally fear that I've fallen off into some Uncanny Valley of minor tinkering that's Just Not Done and I get a bit defensive about it, but yeah, you want someone to catch it if you do something dumb like forget that Harry didn't ride the Thestral-carriages until his second year or something ::whistles::). I've become familiar with the shorthand SPAG for Spelling, Punctuation, And Grammar --- ie, general-purpose proofreading issues, but my question is, is there a similar shorthand for general-purpose revising issues, like Plot, Pacing, Diction, etc (with Characterization being kind of in between this and canon fact-checking)? How is that stuff even thought about? I think betas tend to point it out anyway, it just seems a little odd...
