There is a wonderful resource for romance novelists at the website Romance Refined. After some wonderful feedback on Endless Horizon from some family members, I turned to Romance Refined’s paid beta reader service to get some independent perspective on my first novel. I got the feedback late last night.
Whether it’s a poem, a painting, a song, a sculpture, a novel, or any creative endeavor, an artist agonizes over his or her work for hours, days, months, even years. The artist comes to love the resulting work, seeing it as no one else does: through the lens of the ideas, notes, sketches, early drafts–all the effort that went into the work.
When the resulting work is released to the public (because that’s what artists do), it inevitably receives criticism (because that’s what the public does). It’s easy to be a critic, of course, because the critic has nothing invested in the object of his or her criticism; anyone looking at the work simply sees the finished product, oblivious to all the depth behind it. The criticism quickly feels personal to the artist who, through their work, has exposed a bit of his or her innermost self, his or her soul. This is what hurts. The artist has, through his or her work, made herself vulnerable–and feels brutalized by the critic.
The advantage of works such as the poem, the song, and the novel is that they are malleable. So poets, songwriters, and authors masochistically seek out criticism, in the hopes that the resulting changes, large or small, will result in an improved work, one that more of the public will see favorably.
So that’s what I set out to do with Endless Horizon via the Romance Refined website. My beta reader was a 37-year-old woman. Perfect! I’m a guy, after all, writing much of the book from the perspective of a woman. The beta reader had some very nice things to say: she liked the structure of the book, the way the narrative flowed; she liked my writing, calling it “phenomenal,” and the story itself, calling it “fresh and original;” she loved how carefully edited it was: not a single spelling, punctuation, or sentence issue in the entire book.
But…the beta reader did not like Molly, my main character, at all. That’s a problem. You see, the entire book revolves around Molly; Endless Horizon is her story. I wrote Molly as I did because she is a smart, resourceful, and strong woman. But, according to the beta reader, I went too far: I let things come too easily for Molly. The beta reader, a self-described “hardcore feminist,” tells me that a woman’s strength comes not from succeeding, but from getting “knocked on her ass and getting back up.”
Sigh. She’s right. I need to re-engineer Molly’s scenes to “show me, don’t tell me” that she’s smart, resourceful, and strong. This is going to take some thought, some time, and some craft. I don’t know if I have the writing chops to do it. But, for the same reasons that I took a beta reader’s advice back in December 2019 and re-structured the whole book, I will tackle this challenge. I probably won’t go as far as my new beta reader wants me too, but I will do my best to show Molly’s pluck.
Because it will make for a better story, and Molly deserves it.
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