Another new blog post. [link]

So, my youngest son has written a book -- a 120K word Sci-Fi novel.

He wants to pursue having it published and I don't know where to begin. I take it we should find an agent, etc. How do we do that?

In the meantime, I am beta-reading it. I don't want to edit him or rewrite it, and I think hearing some kinds of feedback from your mom can dampen the creative flame, which I definitely don't want to do.

I told him the first time through, I'm only going to read it to read the story, and if I notice a glaring error of some sort, I'll tell him.

I was thinking we can then talk about what kind of feedback he thinks he'll find helpful.

Can anyone suggest some beta reading guidelines? What kind of feedback (when I'm on subsequent read-throughs) do you think might be useful, without feeling like mom-criticism?

That's awesome, Cindy!

My honest advice here would be to do exactly what you said and read it through for any story bumps or questions, and explain those constructively. Then I would encourage him to find the best writing sites/communities to start reading, so he can learn the basic ropes. If he's serious about writing and publishing, he's going to have to know how to do that.

What Amy said! This is so great. Cindy, how old is your son? There are great workshops for all ages, in person and online.

The two published authors above may have better specific advice on the agent front, but this seems like a good overview: [link]

Jesse, thanks so much. That's a great start.

Hippocampus, he's almost 19.

He was his H.S. valedictorian, is a mechanical engineering major (and will minor in aerospace engineering, which is his passion, and his uni just started offering it).

He is part of his school's honor's college (it's a state school known for its engineering programs and he got their top academic scholarship). His first semester in college, he got all As and a B.

[Edited to remove detail]

He's currently, reluctantly on a medical leave from university, because of a new diagnosis with a chronic disease we have to get under control.

I'm glad he has something positive to focus on, because he's given up so much lately (even the scholarship -- that is, we will have to appeal to have it reinstated, and there's no guarantee, and he had to forego a fellowship program that was another award, because they don't allow deferrals for any reason).

He's a beautiful writer. I'm about 40 page in, and while I see things that need reworking (character introduction, and talky-meat characters, which I know all too well), I think he has something here.

I want to help him, without discouraging him and without controlling or interfering in his process, if that makes sense.

Edit: Amy, I sent you a DM elsewhere.

Scrivener is awesome. I've even started using it to write GCS posts, because having them all in a project is helpful.

I need to get into the 100 words a day habit.

I found that Query Tracker was very helpful when I was looking for (and found) an agent.

Also Query Shark is a good resource for learning how to forge a decent query letter.

Query Tracker and Agent Query are both wonderful resources.

I loved the SFF Online Writing Workshop for community / critique, but that was years ago and I'm not sure what it's like now - [link]

There's also Alpha Workshop - [link] - a few others but it depends on how well he's feeling.