Free Beta Readers Question Template

Have you completed your fiction novel and you're considering getting another set of eyes to look over it? Have you already found someone to do it, but you're not sure how to express what you want them to look for?

Here is a template I created for questioning beta readers. These are general questions I developed for my own novel, so they don't cover areas I didn't feel I had problems with. I may, however, return and improve on this template.

How to Use

The questions in the template can be used to brainstorm your own questions, do your first edit, or they can be sent directly to your beta reader through email, Skype, mail, forum, etc.

Use the questions that you feel are most specific to your novel. For instance, asking both if you should have less foreign words and if you should have more is strange. Either you feel it might not have been necessary to include foreign words, or you might be aware that you restricted their usage.

Also, add you own explanations/details to the questions and delete mine as you see fit (I am the parentheses master.).

Enjoy!

Questions for Beta Readers

Plot

• Does any information (by character or by scene) seem extraneous or missing?
• Have you noted any chapters that should be combined? (As in do most chapters contain individual scenes or scenes that could easily be combined with others?)
• Did the story feel complete? Was there ample action/movement? Was it too fast or slow? 
• Was the beginning and ending (first and last chapter/scene) satisfactory? Can they be improved in any way?

Characterization

• Were there any weak characters? (As in characters that should have been stronger for the purpose of the plot.) And why do you think it would be beneficial for those particular characters to be stronger?

Fantasy/Foreign Language(s)

• Did you feel that a glossary or more in-story explanation of meanings was necessary? What would you expect in a glossary?
• Is the lack/presence of italics distracting?
• Did I include too many foreign words, or are they not necessary?
• Should I maybe even include more foreign words in the novel?

Comprehension

• Are there any actions that don’t line up? (Like one moment a character’s leaning back in his chair and the next he’s getting up from the bed?)
• Are there any parts of the story you couldn’t understand? Why? (Missing information, ambiguity, language confusion, sentence structure, etc.)