From Alpha Version to Final Product

The concept of alpha and beta versions fits software and computer development like a glove, but that doesn’t mean that we as writers can’t use the same method for making our stories come to life.

I accept that making manga panels work requires a bit of fine-tuning, not to mention the whole book drafting process itself.

I’ve sadly heard that National Novel Writing Month has adopted a stance that says AI is acceptable in writing our stories, with specific regard to accessibility. I’m all for accessibility, but authors are a resilient bunch that will always make things work. If I couldn’t type, I’d dictate my stories instead. Dictating takes some getting used to (saying punctuation out loud) but it’s a solid method for writing a book.

But using these tools to make stories is ridiculous. One author I loved as a kid tried one of these tools and it plagiarized the name of his dragon, and the premise was suspiciously like his debut novels’ storyline.

Doing it yourself, with your creative output, takes work and dedication.

Using an algorithm to make a story is almost like writing by the committee of every fictional work ever.

We need to learn to love the writing process and its many steps. That means alpha versions of our books, beta versions of our books, and eventually the final draft.

Machines will never reach this state of honing the craft. The writing craft is fun and flexible, not bowing to the whims of every new advancement.

I’m not saying the upgrade from typewriters to PC wasn’t an amazing leap forward, but we still have to do the work.

Word’s grammar checker wants me to change “have to” in the previous sentence to must, but due to my human input, I’m leaving it as-is. Most of the time, conversations are informal affairs, and novel writing doesn’t need to follow the dictates of sterile language, anyway.

There’s something rough about a rough draft concept of a story, an “alpha version” of the book.

But those edges are necessary to refine and anti-alias our work. Some edges must stay, but over many rewrites, we mold it into the “beta version” and then later the final draft, the crowning achievement of writing our stories.

And writing a novel is an achievement.

Finishing things is commendable.

In my personal writing journey, I’ve written a few short light novels to set up a story I’m going to tell over twenty books. I’ve deliberately chosen to make the heroine a certain way to break things down in the next part of her story, because the ultimate finished version of her journey requires growth and humility.

The same can be said of the writing process. We must have the humility to know no story is ever going to come out perfect, and we must learn to grow as we learn the craft.

These posts aren’t so much giving advice as teaching myself in a written form.

There are tons of craft books out there to teach from people who’ve done it for many decades.

But no matter what level we are at, we need to become the final version of ourselves as authors, eventually. When we start, we’re the alpha version of our ability level, then we move through the trenches and become 1.0, 2.0, 2.60, and eventually we learn we’ll never master the process because there’s always something new to learn.

Writing and programming are quite similar, but if we treat our writing processes as stepping-stones into who we will become, the best version of ourselves, over the course of many “coding sessions,” then we’ll make a mark on this world. Whether that mark is one person out there, or thousands, even as many as millions (that dream might not happen, but you can’t give up), then we’ll have succeeded at making something to help the framework of art.

Learn to love the alpha, beta, whatever stages of development, because the final draft is waiting for you to come to that glorious last line.

We can get with the program without selling our souls to the machine.