There are ten things that you should know about my beta-reading style. I am all about professionalism, so many of my ten things will help become a more professional writer when I am done reading it. These are the things I look for, followed by a brief description.One, grammar is huge with me. Get it right the first time. At least make it mediocre before I read it. It doesn't need to be perfect, that's why I'm beta-reading it, just make sure that you don't make the silly mistakes, like, "Naruto breaked his pencil." Please don't ever let me catch you having that in there please.
Two, spelling. Spelling is a little "iffy" to me. I don't expect you to know how to spell words like Zygomorphic, but like I said before, don't make stupid spelling mistakes. And please know the difference between definitely and defiantly. Definitely means assured, defiantly means reluctantly. If you write Naruto stories, please spell "Hinata" correctly. Do not spell it "Hianta."
Three, capitalization. Please just know where to put capitals. Put them in appropriate places.
Four, punctuation. Please put them in sensible places. Don't put periods after quotation marks, they always go inside the quotations. If you type, "What are you doing!!!" you are wrong. Remember it is a question, so add a question mark or two.
Five, paragraph style. I don't care how you arrange your sentences, be they in large paragraphs, or small, one sentence paragraphs. Just please don't arrange each of your chapters in one big paragraph. We are not Quizilla, we are professional writers, we don't put everything in one large paragraph like they do on Quizilla, making it difficult to read.
Six, I will never, ever, criticize your writing style. I will never criticize your story or what it is about, no matter how rediculous or unrealistic it may seem. Why will I never criticize your work? Because unlike many reviewers of my stories, this is fan"fiction".net. This is "your" story and you can write it however you please. My reviewers don't seem to understand that. However, I realize it and will never do it to you.
Seven, consistency. Be consistent. If you want to spell something wrong or do something, do it the same way every time. Othewise it confuses the reader and the beta-reader alike to find two things that seem to be similar but they cannot tell because the writer wasn't being consistent.
Eight, names. Do "not" ever put names before sentences, ever! Like so, 'Naruto: "What's up?" Sakura: "Not much,"' Never do that! Again we are not Quizilla, we are professional writers, and professional writers use quotations and titles after the fact. For example, "What is going on?" Xorias queried.
Nine, I look for changes in numbers. For example, if I see in your writing this, "The genin didn't know where to look, and they stopped because of that." I wrote one Genin and then used the term they. Sometimes this is harder to spot than other times.
Ten, please do not capitalize every word in a sentence when you want someone to yell at someone else. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!!!!!!!!!!!" is very unprofessional and it makes the story look inflated kind of. Do this instead. If you want to emphasize someone yelling, instead of using the example I used, and instead of using only one exclamation point use three and make the letters normal. Because maybe one exclamation mark isn't enough. "What are you doing!!!" Even add question marks too. "What are you doing?!?!?!"
