Just fleshing out a couple of these notes a little bit
The month of beta reading? Oh, well well over... to be honest I'd been considering the beta reading to have begun at least a half-year ago, when I was being shown all the snippets and thoughts for scenes as they were written and re-written, the month-long "official" beta being for when everything was (mostly) in final order, and the need to really Brit-pick the descriptive writing as well as the dialogue came to the fore.
"at least a dozen other versions" To say nothing of the number of times beta reading paragraphs lead to someone trusting too readily and promptly being et :D We didn't think of a tally, but it would run off the page...
Olgaren - Several evenings were devoted to his scene, especially when it came to finding his voice - or rather, making sure he didn't sound too modern or too highly stationed (Russian etiquette for addressing strangers is quite involved to this outsider's eye, especially taking into account differences across centuries). Similar with all of the swooning at least discussed (even if it didn't make the final version) - most synonyms found were just too cold or too modern for the style of the story.
no subject
The month of beta reading? Oh, well well over... to be honest I'd been considering the beta reading to have begun at least a half-year ago, when I was being shown all the snippets and thoughts for scenes as they were written and re-written, the month-long "official" beta being for when everything was (mostly) in final order, and the need to really Brit-pick the descriptive writing as well as the dialogue came to the fore.
"at least a dozen other versions"
To say nothing of the number of times beta reading paragraphs lead to someone trusting too readily and promptly being et :D
We didn't think of a tally, but it would run off the page...
Olgaren - Several evenings were devoted to his scene, especially when it came to finding his voice - or rather, making sure he didn't sound too modern or too highly stationed (Russian etiquette for addressing strangers is quite involved to this outsider's eye, especially taking into account differences across centuries). Similar with all of the swooning at least discussed (even if it didn't make the final version) - most synonyms found were just too cold or too modern for the style of the story.