Anyone who watches me write by hand typically remarks fairly quickly that I don't hold my pencil or pen the way the majority of people do. The reason for this, so the story goes, was that I taught myself to hold a writing utensil before I was taught how to do so in school.

I've been writing since, well, literally before I can remember. It's been over two decades now, and though I'm quite certain I have a tremendous amount to learn yet about writing, I have never wavered in my belief that the single most important factor contributing to the success, believability and appeal of a story is characterization. For this reason, my betareading style typically addresses problems with character development, inconsistencies in voice and tone, the pacing of the narrative and issues with plot evolution, culminating with a few suggestions on how to improve one or several of each of the aforementioned issues. I have long since ceased providing grammatical and spelling critiques unless absolutely necessary because I feel that it is an utter waste of time since a copious amount of tools now exist to assist both writers and readers in correcting those snafus; I am not a human spell checker-that should be the job of the author him or any of the myriad tools available to writers these days. There is never an excuse for not spell-checking your work yourself.

I can absolutely promise that any writer who enlists my services as a betareader will receive a level of polish to their story that you will be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. I do not critique with kid gloves; only the brutal honesty of a trained eye and a critical mind is capable of making a would-be-great story truly great. While I will not attempt to change or alter your personal style as an author, I will most certainly make you aware of situations which arise wherein your narrative voice is inconsistent with or betrays either the characters or series you're writing about.

My greatest strengths are characterization, plot structure tailoring and direction, consistency of voice and tone, believability of the narrative, vocabulary and word choice, and dialog writing.

If there's one thing I'm probably weaker at than anything else, it's probably comedic writing. I have a very bizarre and off-putting sense of humor. Additionally, I am not the fastest beta-reader on the planet due largely to the fact that I spend enormous amounts of time reading, re-reading, and thinking about what I'm reading.

I almost exclusively beta-read stories in the genres of drama, angst, psychological, thriller, mystery, crime, comedy noir, tragedy and slice-of-life. I prefer stories that are generally true to the characters and series about which the author is writing. I read fan fiction because I have affection for the actual characters; if I wanted to read about NEW characters, I'd just be reading regular fiction. I'd also generally prefer to beta-read a story based in a universe I'm familiar with so that I can offer an infinitely more valuable critique.

I hardly read comedy or slapstick fics, slash fics, cross-overs, or stories that are gross departures from the series in which they are based. I detest stories which place the characters in nonsensical or vastly different situations without any explanation whatsoever. I won't read a fic about Ichigo (Bleach) becoming a professional baseball player, for instance unless there is a brilliant reason for him doing so. I also won't read a fic that has spelling and grammar mistakes all over the page because frankly there is absolutely no excuse for this, even if English isn't your first language.

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