Beta Services Offered

[Shadowsfyre]

Hello, I am Shadowsfyre. I have almost lived on FanFiction for years and I finally realized that while I may not have the skills to write one I definitely know how to edit. I've had plenty of schooling and with a degree in English I know how to put together a sentence or two. I live in the Harry Potter world. I usually read male pairings but I have no problem with branching out, whether that be in pairings or story categories.

I love editing almost as much as I love reading, and since I check for updates at least 2-3 times a day I would say that is a lot. I take pride it turning a written work into the best thing it can be. That includes school papers, my own personal stories as well as the novel I had to write for my thesis. It came nowhere near to the amazing things I have read on this site but it had to be done to graduate and since I am now looking at my degree in a corner of my room know that I wrote, proofread and edited, over the course of a whole year, in order to write something that would meet with the approval of my classmates, my professor and a panel of my other professors as well as the department head.

I look forward to working for you and helping put that extra shine and polish on your story. If you have any questions and/or would like for me to serve as your Beta please don't hesitate to contact me.

---Shadowsfyre

I would say my style is the same no matter what I read, at least when the work is a creative piece. I usually have to read it at least once or twice before I start editing because the story will draw me in and/or I want to get a feel of what the author is trying to do. After that I start editing. I look at the plot as well as the basic rules of grammar, spelling and punctuation before I do anything else. Following that I move on to how can I make it so the story flows better, maybe by changing some words so that they follow the tone that the author might have been using. I try to keep the writer's intentions behind the story there because I don't want to take anything away from what they have done. The work is purely theirs, I am just a stagehand helping out with props and scenery. Mostly I try to work with the authors because I want them to have a hand in the editing. I want them to understand what I am changing and doing and why I am doing it.

I am really good and knowing how a story is supposed to come together. I am also good at catching things that don't make sense or need to be explained more for the reader. I read more than most people would admit to, including things outside of Adultfanfiction, and I have a reader's eyes as well as an editors. As a reader I am able to give feedback on the story content, like what makes sense to me and what doesn't as well as parts of the story that I don't understand because they weren't explained well or were left out completely. As an editor I am able to take those observations and help shape the story so those key pieces are no longer missing.

My weakness is that at times I fall too much into the story and my editing comes to a halt. That was something that I had a problem with in school when editing a classmates short story or other creative piece. I have gotten better but I notice that I still do it sometimes. If a story really captivates me I know that I have to step away from it, or read it all the way through at least twice and then go back a third and fourth time to do my editing.

I would prefer stories in the Harry Potter world. My favorite pairings are Harry/Severus and Harry/Draco as exclusives, while I enjoy Harry/Severus/Draco and Harry/Severus/Draco/Remus as groups. I do branch out sometimes to other categories such as stories in anime as well as other parings because I know that you never know where you will find a gem.

There isn't anything that I wouldn't read, but I won't hesitate to say that most of the categories I know nothing about. I feel confident that I can edit a story based on the fact that I know what I am looking for but I won't be able to offer much in the plot and content based on the story. A lot of story warnings, such as rape and other things of that nature don't necessarily disturb me, but they do make me pause and even cause me to break out into hysterical fits of tears. Even with that being the case I will still read these stories because I know that if I am feeling the pain that the character is going through then that scene is well done and the author is able to convey it in such a way that it will affect the reader.

[Nekomiffy]

Hello Shadowsfyre,

I'm looking for a Beta for my original M/M stories. Would you be interested? They're generally not very long and mostly fantasy. I'm no native speaker, so my writing progress in English is rather slow and the stories are not very long, so it shouldn't be too much work. If you look at my profile and find my story "Secrets", you'll know how my stuff looks like usually when it's written without a co-author and not beta'd.

Regards, Neko

Edited August 4, 2011 by Neko