Test/Beta Reader Needed for Unpublished Story

Hello! I need test readers for my story, “Queer: Camp Heimat”!


I’ve gone through the first episode lots of times but I want to make sure it’s fully finished before I start polishing the second episode.
I’d like you to read the first episode all the way through and episode 2 if you could. NOT episode 3.
I’ll credit you in the story (if you would like) in whatever episode/s you review.
If you’d be interested, comment and I’ll give you the link along with a few questions I’d like you to answer about the story.
Any help is appreciated, thank you!

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I don’t mind being a beta reader.

I’d love to help as well!

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I’d love to help too!!

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@episode.lupita @Percy @distortedtales
Thank you all so much!
http://episodeinteractive.com/s/6215484515221504

Please tell me what choices you picked so I can see what it’s like in different storylines. Thank you!

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Sorry, I can’t get to your story. After pressing the link I get stuck on this. So I searched for your story and couldn’t find it.

Summary

Oh, are you on android?

Yeah.

I think they made an update to where androids couldn’t use unpublished story links.

Yeah…

Oh well, thank you for your help!

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I’ve finished reading the two first episodes of your story! :blush:
What would you like me to comment on, or tell you? (I saw you wrote in the original post that you had a few questions you’d like answered?)

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Yes! Feel free to just write out your comments, I just wanted to know specifically:
What choices did you pick?
Were there any repeated mistakes you saw that were annoying?
Were there any grammar/spelling/directing mistakes you found?
Would you have read to the third episode (if the story was finished)?

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Ok!
This is all obviously just my personal opinion so please take it with a grain of salt! :two_hearts:

This seems like an interesting premise, and I love that it seems like you have a lot of different characters with different personalities! It’s promising that the three characters (except for MC’s parents) already feel completely different personality-wise, and I’d love to see you explore that more and get to know the depths of their personalities as the story progresses!

First I’ll directly answer your questions!

What choices did you pick?
I forgot to screenshot every choice, but I remember at least picking ‘’Listen to Kim’’ in the first episode, and I helped Vivian pick out clothes.

Were there any repeated mistakes you saw that were annoying?
I’d recommend going through your lines and fill in periods/dots after any sentence that doesn’t already have an exclamation point or a question mark! I talk more about this in my comments. :arrow_down:

Were there any grammar/spelling/directing mistakes you found?
I only catched this one, where ‘’just a’’ is written two times!

Screenshot

Would you have read to the third episode (if the story was finished)?
I would! I’m interested in knowing what this camp is and what will happen there!

Now to some of my other comments and observations! :two_hearts: :sparkles:

The camp & people’s thoughts about it!

Summary

I don’t know if this is just me being slow haha, but I didn’t quite catch why everyone going to the camp seemed so afraid/sad to go? Was it because they didn’t want to spend their summer at a camp instead of going abroad with their families?

Or is the camp seen as a bad place? The MC seemed to have wanting to go on vacation instead as her reasoning, + not wanting to leave her friends that she was going to a concert with. (If I remember correctly?) The camp seemed like a nice place to me, from what you explained in the story, so when the kids/teens seemed so sad it confused me a bit as to what I was supposed to expect from/think about the camp!

But again, this could just be me being slow or confused, I’m just letting you know what I felt! :two_hearts:

Period/dots

Summary

I noticed throughout the two episodes that some of the dialogue without question- or exclamation marks, are missing a period. Like in these screenshots:

Personally, this is something I notice right away in stories, and something that distracts me a lot while reading. I don’t know if other people will feel the same way, but in my opinion I think it would be a good idea to go through all the dialogue in the episodes and make sure every line has a period/dot at the end. (Unless there’s a question mark or exclamation mark there already!)

Speech bubble placement

Summary

In some scenes, I found the speech bubbles to be a bit distracting as they were covering either a character’s face, or in the case of the dress-up games, the MC’s body and her clothing. I’ve included a few screenshots of what I’m talking about!

Loved the polaroid/photograph edits, super cute addition!

Screenshot

Mentions of time/time-stamps

Summary

I noticed in a lot of the dialogue and MC’s internal monologue, the time is mentioned. As in lines like ’’It’s 6:30 now, and we’ll be there at 7:45.’’ I don’t think you wrote that exact line by the way, I just tried to give an example as to what I’m referring to, hehe! If you want my input, I’d personally try to mention the time with numbers less often if it’s not very important to the story!

For me, the timestamps were kind of blending into each other when they were mentioned often and within a small timeframe of each other, but this could also just be my preference! When the lady on the train in the second episode says something like ’’We’ll arrive at 7:45!’’ I think that’s totally fine, what I mean is more of maybe lessening the amount of times they mention the exact time. I’m also going to put in a screenshot here, which I’ll be referring to when I suggest using for example ’’for a couple of hours’’ instead of ’’for about 3-4 hours’’.

If the distance from MC’s previous location/her home to the camp is important to the story and you want to emphasize on it, I understand that making it know how time is passing is important! And again, this is just my opinion, but I’d suggest maybe then just cutting down on the times it’s mentioned and just going for a line that straight up says something like ’’The camp is in ____, __ hours away from our house.(?)’’ Or something like that!

Zooms/camera effects

Summary

I’d love to see you play around with different zooms and/or camera effects! Mainly I was thinking, when people are talking or having conversations, zooming in on and between the characters will usually make the scene more dynamic! Camera effects aren’t that important in my opinion, but zooming makes a big difference, if you like the look of it!

Kim, love interest?

Summary

If Kim is going to be a love interest, maybe it would be an idea to include some hint of that when asking the reader if they want to customize her? Like for example a readerMessage that says ’’Kim is a possible love interest/LI, keep it in mind when customizing her!’’ Or something like that? I don’t know if she is a love interest or not, and of course all of this comes down to your preference, maybe you don’t want to write that!

:sparkles: Final thoughts! :sparkles:

All in all, I felt compelled to continue on reading to see what this camp was all about, and to learn more about the characters that were there, Kim and everyone else. I’d love to see MC interact with more people and see what’s going to happen! You’ve done great, I’ll be keeping an eye out for this whenever it’s published! :blush: :two_hearts: :rabbit:

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Thank you very much!
Few things I’ll say

The reason the teens are all upset about going to the camp in the first place was because it was disguised as a conversion camp. They thought they were being sent to a conversion camp so they were scared and not sure what would happen to them. The camp is disguised as a conversion camp to kind of “lure” extremely homophobic/transphobic parents to send their kids there. I’ll see if I could make that more clear in the start of the story!

Kinda spoiler for the story but you got it so whatever

Kim will be an option as a love interest in the story, but not for a while and it’s kind of meant to be a surprise so I wasn’t sure weather to say so in the story when customizing her.

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Oh wow, that sounds very interesting!
If you’d like, yeah, I think making it even more clear that it’s advertised as a conversion camp could be good! I totally understand that they’re scared, and even feel betrayed by their parents, that’s terrible. :broken_heart: But what a smart thing for the camp leaders to do! :pleading_face:

Ahh I see! That’s totally understandable, I’ve been debating this for my own stories as well, whether to say it or not because it kind of does take away from the mystery/romance when you have to straight up say ‘‘This is your love interest, make them hOT :crazy_face:’’ hahaha. But I think it works out either way! If you end up feeling like it’s a problem, maybe make MC react with thinking she’s really pretty or something when she sits down next to her? Just a thought, though! I think it’s good as is to be honest. :heart:

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Oops, to clarify;

I thought maybe if the readers see the MC express she thinks Kim is pretty before they’re allowed to customize her, they’ll get the impression that this is a potential romantic partner instead of just a friend. But AGAIN haha, I don’t really think it’s necesarry unless you end up feeling like you need some extra clarification! :sparkles:

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I’ll keep that in mind :wink:

Thank you for your comments! What would you like me to credit you with? I’ll be making an instagram post (@phoenix_hope.episode, shameless self-promo) along with a mention at the end of the chapter.

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Haha I respect that!!

No problem, it was a pleasure! Thank you for letting me test your story! :sparkles:
Ohh, if you want, you can just address me as @episodepercy ! That’s my insta for episode.~
(Is that what you meant?)

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Yes, thank you so much!

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Np at all! Looking forward to reading the rest of your story!! :sparkles: :two_hearts:

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