If you are an independent author, unless you’re working to set deadline, you get to decide when you share your ideas or manuscript with people.

Some ideas swirl round your head for weeks in some form and others appear seemingly out of nowhere. Record the ideas in whatever way works best for you. Ideas can be developed, discarded or refined when you have a clearer direction and over several drafts of self-editing.

When you’re happy with it, and feel you have done as much as you can yourself, then you can send your manuscript to beta readers who can offer an initial reader’s reaction and editors who can help refine elements, if needed, such as plot structure and characterisation.