What is a Sensitivity Reader and Why You Need One

When your book is undergoing edits and revisions, one conversation that should be brought up whether you are traditional or self-publishing is sensitivity reading. This refers to a person who reads your manuscript to check for harmful stereotypes, misrepresentation, and other problematic aspects of your manuscript. 

Often, this is a specific person reading for a specific sensitive issue. For example, for our novel, The Visionary, we got two sensitivity readers reading for black representation as we have a mixed black protagonist and a diverse cast. Another common sensitivity reader is for LGBTQ+ representation. 

A sensitivity reader is a crucial to the success of your novel. They are specifically looking for things that you as the author may not notice. They are the tough feedback that will point out any internal bias that comes across your manuscript. 

I know what you may be thinking, but I’m not like that! I wouldn’t think anything harmful about anyone! Yeah, so we thought too. Which is why I called it internal bias. These are things you don’t notice that you are doing. You may have the best intentions as an author and human being but still may have some problematic thought patterns that come across in your writing. 

Why is this important? Because your sensitivity reader will find the things that readers will put down your book and never read from you again. Because it is not enough to just have good intentions as a person, we must actively learn and correct our biases, and since this is a post about writing, crucial for you as an author. 

When an author doesn’t take the time to get a sensitivity reader, it lets the reader know you don’t care about certain issues. A common example is in character descriptions. A sensitivity reader will compare each one of your descriptions to see if your sensitive group is depicted with the same care and attention as your other groups. It will come across to a reader that you, the author, that you don’t view it important enough to be addressed. This may seem like harsh advice, but these are things to consider. When a reader finds your book, they want to feel absorbed in the story and maybe even seen as a person. What you don’t want is for a reader to get out of the story because you were insensitive. 

Another thing a sensitivity reader will do is look at your whys. Why did you make your characters a certain way. Do you have a purpose for making them a certain race or sexuality (or both) or did you include it as a means of checking a box of inclusion? We talk often here in other blogs that all of your decisions should be intentional and this is one of the more important examples of that. 

Now, a sensitivity read will probably be a lot. When we got our first sensitivity report, it was a lot. We had to really take a step back and research and then rethink about different aspects of the novel which led to another draft of the novel. But that feedback was so crucial to our book. It was the advice we needed to hear and those changes made really helped the book. After all the work we put into redrafting after that sensitivity report, our second report was a complete 180.

The sensitivity read is vital to every manuscript. As authors, no matter how well we may intend, we may have hidden biases that come across in our work. A sensitivity reader will help address those and help to strengthen your work.