First read, living outline

And now I've received the first piece of input from my wife. The poor woman had to slug her way through my first draft from start to end.

I believe some writers call them alpha readers -- the masochistic few who accept the pain of reading a first draft.
In this case it's more than so. Bea, that's my wife, helps me out with concepts, plot ideas and characters even before I write the story. That makes her too involved to give true evaluation on the finished material, but it also makes her perfect for runtime checks of how what I've written compares to what I've said during conversations.

She knows more of the 3 p:s, place, plot and people, than what's inside the pages. That gives her an opportunity to point out where things have gone missing. An 'untainted' reader would just be left in confusion.

It also made me understand that I have a living outline available -- a person who follows me throughout the entire process.