At this stage in my career, both my crit groups are “first draft, in-progress” groups. They read the pages right after I write them, and sometimes, those pages are a hot mess.

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These gals are my alpha readers, giving me thoughts on rough novels I dump right from my head onto the page. Bad pages. Messy pages. Pages that don’t always make sense. It’s a tough job, but they’re worth their weight in chocolate for the invaluable feedback they provide me.

The merits of beta readers (people who read and offer feedback on a writers’ manuscript) are widely known, but having alpha readers, folks you trust read brand new pages, can be equally valuable.