I'm new to Beta Reading, but I figure it's worth trying out. I graduated from Iowa State in 2003 as a computer programmer, and started writing my first Harry Potter fanfiction back around my Sophomore year when I got tired of waiting for book 5 to come out. Since then, I've written a good score of stories, usually taking place in an adventure/plot-driven story (which is far too scarce on fanfiction.net, unfortunately) as well as humor/parody.

As of right now, I don't have any expectations. Since I'm new to this, I'm a bit of a blank slate.

My strengths would be comedic voice, plot tinkering, as well as being a good judge of whether character thoughts/actions seem in character or are realistic for the situation. Also, I'm more of a concrete and linear thinker (which is a bit unusual from an author) so I may be able to help if a story or scene doesn't seem to be going astray or if it seems out of focus.

Spotting spelling and grammatical mistakes. While I'm pretty good at both when actually writing a story, I'm much worse when actually reading them unless I'm specifically forcing myself to look at them. My mind has a habit of automatically mentally filling in missing words, or erasing the extra ones.

An adventure story with a solid plot, or an adventure story that at least wants a solid plot. Short humor/parody stories are nice, as are stories that involve an angle that hasn't been done very much. For instance, if one author is writing a short humor story about Albus' interview process during applying to be a professor at Hogwarts, and another author is writing a humor/romance story about Harry and Ginny, I know which one I'd like to read and beta more (hint: it's not the second one.)

Fluff. If you're writing a light, insubstantial story about nothing in particular, I'm probably not the person to talk to. It's not that I don't like reading them; it's that I don't like reading very much of them.

Book » Harry Potter

General Humor

Drama Adventure

Mystery Parody

Suspense Fantasy