beta-reading for fun and completely no profit

[arcanetrivia]

Do you have absolutely all of your work beta-read? If not, when do you not?

This question comes about because I noticed that alisanne has all of her drabbles betaed (by sevfan), and that seems unusual. I've seen a number of other people say that they never bother to have drabbles betaed, while they do most/all of their other stuff. I suppose with a piece that short she's just having someone check it quick for errors of mass stupid, but still.

I never have my drabbles betaed. In fact, a lot of my stuff (as though there were a lot! ha!) has never been passed through a beta because I regarded it as highly non-serious, just written as a lark, or sometimes literally as a joke (e.g. "Potion-Induced Comma"). I certainly don't beta the stuff I write about silly summaries, which often is long enough to get a "drabble" (<200 words) or "ficlet" (200-1000 words) tag. Not that crack/humour can't be done "for serious", just that that wasn't what I thought I was doing.

So. What are the factors that would cause you to pass up having something betaed, if anything? Just curious.

Comments

[awry.livejournal.com]

yeah. Personally when I go to read people's writings I can't read them if it's full or spelling and grammar errors.

[arethinn]

Ah. I agree with that, though in my own case I have good grammar and spelling, so those are unlikely to be issues in something I've written that's only 100 words long. I might have made a dumb typo that my eyes are glossing over, but it's not going to be a mess. I mostly have style problems -- being unclear about describing what's happening, or using 25 words where 15 words would have done as well.

[arcanetrivia]

Oops, starlightforest that was me. Wrong account.