Beta Readers and AI

crmsn_conqueror

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I'm a relatively new author, and I've been wondering whether or not my fics are good reads from the perspective of a new reader. As it is for most fictional pieces, people could glaze it to high heaven, if you don't like the start, you're probably not going to read farther than chapter 1.

And that means I need beta readers to help me out and gauge the level of my work. My issue is that I don't have anyone to do that for me. Would you let an AI beta read your work, and potentially offer criticism or edits? Does my work feel like it was AI edited?
 

CodeCrisis

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The thing about AI is that it's always indifferent and doesn't have an opinion, and therefore thinks everything you write is "perfect" or "amazing" (found this out when playing around with ChatGPT). When it comes to editing, I think it should only be for spelling, grammer and punctuation. And, depending on the AI and it's model, it may or may not have multiple limitations (for example, GPT can't do anything with smut and bursts into fire when mentioning something more than a small amount of blood when it comes to action scenes).

In short, for small basic edits because you're either lazy (no fault, I am too) or because you don't catch them all, sure use AI, but responsibly. But AI can't offer much in the way of constructive criticism other than pointing out writing errors (at least in my experience).
 

Dec

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AI will always return what you want it to return. If you say in a prompt that "you aren't sure about/dislike X" or "are very happy about it," the response will always reflect this. It cannot criticise, and all edits made with it will strip the author's "me" from the text and replace it with generic, bland paste that readers will pick quickly and potentially leave the story thanks to this.
So, unless you want a yes-man type response, don't use LLMs for beta-reading.

If you are in need of human beta readers, ask so under the chapters you publish. Or join the SH Discord server and ask there -- you can find the link in the footer of the main page.
 

Jerynboe

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AI editing is a bit like spell checker, in that it can help with technical stuff but not really artistic stuff, but it will PRETEND to weigh in on artistic stuff.

I’ve found Claude to be the most useful for this, of the options I’ve experimented with, but only after I firmly tell it to stop moralizing or trying to write entire scenes for me. If I shame it for its inadequacies and tell it to focus on this chapter and continuity with prior chapters, it does reasonably well in the role of “first beta reader.” It’s much better at finding problems than it is at providing good solutions, much like Karl Marx.

For example, in a recent chapter Claude pointed out one of my secondary characters vanished between scenes because I forgot she was there. I worked in 2-3 minor references to her presence and used her reaction to fill another minor hole in the narrative. I ignore something like 50% of its feedback entirely, and treat it more like a tool to help with my last few passes of editing before actually presenting it to anyone else.
 

Author_Riceball

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miw

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Honestly, AI is only good at catching grammar mistakes... even if you threw a piece of writing made of random words at it and asked it to be critical, it acts like that writing is the best writing in the universe, and that's annoying... Can an AI be a beta reader? I don't think so, though. Getting a human's opinion and getting an AI's opinion are very different things...

If it's okay with you too, I can read your work in a week and write a beginner level critical feedback... I'm having my exam week right now ?
 

crmsn_conqueror

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Honestly, AI is only good at catching grammar mistakes... even if you threw a piece of writing made of random words at it and asked it to be critical, it acts like that writing is the best writing in the universe, and that's annoying... Can an AI be a beta reader? I don't think so, though. Getting a human's opinion and getting an AI's opinion are very different things...

If it's okay with you too, I can read your work in a week and write a beginner level critical feedback... I'm having my exam week right now ?
please, feel free to! if my current work meets your expectations, feel free to dm to beta read knew chapters.
 
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LeilaniOtter

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Honestly, AI is only good at catching grammar mistakes... even if you threw a piece of writing made of random words at it and asked it to be critical, it acts like that writing is the best writing in the universe, and that's annoying... Can an AI be a beta reader? I don't think so, though. Getting a human's opinion and getting an AI's opinion are very different things...

If it's okay with you too, I can read your work in a week and write a beginner level critical feedback... I'm having my exam week right now ?
Yes, I only use Grammarly for this - catching anything I overlook, like errant commas, or other punctuation. I'll occasionally let it work on passive/active writing shortcomings, but that's it. I'm never going to allow AI to "write" for me.
 

FRWriter

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I proofread my chapters a few times, but then I just upload them to Patreon. Usually, people point out any mistakes I make, and before I upload my chapters on SH, I have 1-3 things to correct. It's really convenient.

Like Dec said, if you put in the effort, there are many people around who would give it a read. Usually, it's best to have at least one person look over your chapters before you upload them.
 

ElenaV

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Tell it to behave like a redditor toward your story. Easy.
Tell it to behave like a goodreads user towards your story. If you like it on hard mode.

Source. Made me take one month away from a single chapter review.
 

Lakstoties

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LLM AIs are useless for beta reading and editing. Why? They have no cognition. They can't think. They can't understand. It's literally totally arbitrary decision trees with arbitrary weighted paths to the next point on the tree that outputs arbitrary tokens of bits all based on random dice rolls. It's like asking the smartest parrot you know to review your work. It's going to spout off some random sounds that people mistake for language and then assume there is logic behind those words.

A lot of people are making some grand assumptions about LLM AIs capabilities based on falling into a psychological trap of anthropomorphizing it. Don't fall for it.
 

CharlesEBrown

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LLM AIs are useless for beta reading and editing. Why? They have no cognition. They can't think. They can't understand. It's literally totally arbitrary decision trees with arbitrary weighted paths to the next point on the tree that outputs arbitrary tokens of bits all based on random dice rolls. It's like asking the smartest parrot you know to review your work. It's going to spout off some random sounds that people mistake for language and then assume there is logic behind those words.

A lot of people are making some grand assumptions about LLM AIs capabilities based on falling into a psychological trap of anthropomorphizing it. Don't fall for it.
One of my favorite stories about playing with AI came from a guy on Substack who used to be a professional film critic. He was teaching a writing class, and had an AI create a movie poster for a film that didn't exist but could have and had his class come up with plot synopsis. On a whim, he had the AI create a review of the movie from the poster alone.
The review was mostly glowing - it made up a few flaws, but also showed how the director and actors turned them into positives. Some of his students got the review, and the poster, most just got the poster.
Then, while he was grading the assignments, he got another idea - and had it write a review of the (still fictitious) movie, in his own style.
Except that the review was about 95% positive and he was NEVER that positive (also never more than half negative, as movies that were that bad he simply didn't review unless forced), it was only possible to tell the review of this fictional film from the ones he wrote by the fact that this review was for a movie that didn't exist...
 
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I once wrote some deliberately bad pieces of fanfiction and fed them into various AI models to see whether any of them would call out that the fiction was bad. With the right prompt, you can get the AI to say that something is bad (it's more likely to admit something is bad if you tell it that someone else wrote it, and more likely to complement the work if you say it's your writing), but it takes a surprising amount of work to lead it there (unless you straightforwardly tell it the work is bad).

You can ask LLMs for suggestions on your work, but I mostly find the suggestions of all of the models to be bad. (I'm a huge fan of LLMs, so my pessimism here is coming from a place of thinking AI is "amazing in general, but terrible for this".)

Hyperwrite is the best model for helping me "tighten" my prose, as it often has good suggestions for how I can reword sentences to express the same thing with fewer words, though even then I ignore over half of its suggestions. Still, I highly value that kind of "never use a longer sentence when a shorter one will do" editing, and Hyperwrite is the only service I've found that consistently offers good feedback for those kinds of edits. (It's shockingly terrible at all other forms of feedback, but that type of editing is useful enough for me to shell out for their paid service anyway.)

If you want test readers, I recommend you join the Royal Road "Writer's Guild" discord server. They have a "Critique Circle" channel where you can join other writers and all agree to do test reading of each other's works (usually 10k - 30k words). You and 3-6 other people will each read everyone else's stories and offer in-depth feedback. It's time consuming (because you have to read X other stories in order to get X other people to read yours) but I've had great experiences with it. Not all fellow authors will offer useful feedback, but if you join a circle with 3 other authors then odds are at least 1-2 of them will have great suggestions.
 

DharmaCA

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I agree that AI is not an ideal beta reader. But if you lack real beta readers (like me) and ask the right questions, AI can be somewhat helpful. At least, that’s how I see it.
 

DireBadger

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Scribblehub USED to be a great place to find beta readers, but I think all the translated pap has scared them off.
 
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