Benefits of Hiring a Sensitivity Reader

No group of persons are a monolith. Nevertheless, the truth about the experience(s) of a person or a group of people can be overshadowed by stereotypes, bias, misrepresentations, and so much more. This translates into it being harmful content that not only creates a bias to those who are ignorant of the misrepresentations, but it alienates and harms the voice and image of that community. There have been scandals in the book world about consistent and resounding misrepresentation from children’s books to Young Adult and Adult books. The primary purpose of a sensitivity reader is to be a lens to objectify a particular representation in my mind that the writer has no personal experience with. That being said, what are the benefits of using a Sensitivity Reader?

Enhanced Realistic Portrayals

The experience of a group of people, be it people from ethnic minorities, people living with disabilities or LGBTQ+, can never truly be the same. This is true even when they have shared experiences because they can experience the same thing in diverse ways. Even then, a Sensitivity reader is needed. So, yes, proper representation of people matters. But some might wonder—if it is true that not all people in a group are the same or perceive things the same, can one sensitivity reader be enough to show proper representation? The answer to that is that sensitivity readers are not there to overhaul how the writer has portrayed a character’s experience by forcing the writer to stick to the sensitivity reader’s experience.

For example, not all black women’s hair have the same curl pattern. Still, most black women will probably agree that our hair products work better when they’re products tailored to textured hair. This does not mean that there wouldn’t be black women who have found that relaxed/permed hair products can also work for natural hair. As a sensitivity reader, I wouldn’t caution the author or ask them to change their character’s narrative who used relaxed/permed hair product on their natural hair just because that’s my experience.  Instead, I’ll advise them on making the character’s use of relaxed hair products on more textured hair more realistic.

By doing this, I’ve not added try to undo the way the author imagined the character, but better portray them. Why this might not seem like proper representation, it is. People with Afro hair worldwide have suffered from identity issues of not living up to do social standards of beauty when they keep or wear their hair textured. So, our hair emerges as a part of our identity we have to consistently defend. This is the same for women with relaxed or naturally straight hair and is of Afro descent.

Nevertheless, the proper representation in this situation lies in the fact my advice to the author would have been to create circumstances where using relaxed hair products on textured hair would be plausible—lack of funds for natural hair products that tend to be more expensive, living in an area where there aren’t options for specific natural hair product, growing up in an environment where they didn’t have access to information that there are products that better cater to their hair, or even just that there is an ingredient in the product that somehow works better for the character’s hair texture because of maybe porosity.

Consequently, I would have avoided a lack of misrepresentation about Black women’s deep and yet, complicated, and sometimes frustrating relationship with hair and hair products. This is mainly because it is not so far-fetched that a writer without personal experience with such specific experience with naturally textured hair and the struggle for products might not understand how significant such issues are for people with Afro hair. And by appropriately representing the struggle, even if it doesn’t apply to every black person, they’ve given that group of people their actual voice, not how the author inaccurately thought their voice or experience would be. Yes, representation matters. And adequately and realistically portraying a character leads to the second reason why sensitivity readers are important: it helps create a deeper connection for readers.

To Make The Characters Better Relatable and Connectable

Even in fiction, it is common knowledge that the characters people love the most are the ones they relate to, connect with, or sympathise with. For so long, marginalised characters have found it hard to connect with characters that are supposed to be like them when they’re misrepresented. As a Black African woman, I’ve encountered such characters in books and movies alike. I mention movies because the actions from movies are words brought alive—words written by writers. But yes, the same is true for books. I’ve personally read books that are supposedly portraying African, Asian, Latin or Polish characters, yet even though these people were not born and brought up in their home country before moving abroad, when you bring me into their homes, all they cook is food prominent in the country they moved to. How can I connect to such a family when those little details have made those characters unrelatable? I won’t. If anything, I’ll be irritated, and so would many people.

I also mentioned how creating characters that are properly represented can help readers empathise with characters further. I earlier mentioned that as people with textured hair, it is a double hassle to find products that moisturise and helps locks moisture without harming your hair with chemicals. So even if the writer portrayed the character as resorting to using products for straight hair, maybe because she can’t afford the more expensive products, or they aren’t just available or even working for her, even readers that haven’t experience these things are bound to sigh or smile sadly with empathy. I mean,  what author won’t want readers to connect to characters and milk empathy out of that connection? Even from people who might not relate to that specific situation, but can empathise with the characters having to compromise to using something they’d rather not use. But, let’s not forget that the characters readers connect, relate and empathise with are usually three dimensional. This leads to how sensitivity readers help create rich and nuanced characters.

Rich and Nuanced Characters

What makes characters rich and nuanced? It’s the realistic and even contradictory roundness of a character. But how can a character be nuanced and textured with richness when the writer knowingly or knowingly follows stereotypes or unrealistic actions? Rather than feeling the roundness of the character, readers would be left irritated at poking holes at why a black character with very kinky hair is sweeping their hands through their hair? Trust me, I’ve come across that one too many times that it’s left me cackling. This is the same with the lack of realism that queer, disabled, or other marginalised characters have been written with, which left these characters feeling fake and flat as opposed to rich and nuanced.

A sensitivity reader will provide perspective as they’re able to spot these holes of unrealistic traits or actions that take away from the roundness of the character. So, these characters are not just cut out characters made to fill a gap of characters. Instead, they are characters full of life and complexities that people can relate, connect and empathise with. And that’s I believe that sensitivity readers help stories feel sharper. (When their suggestions are considered, and not just listened to for superficial reasons.

Realistic Characters

One of the issues some people have with sensitivity readers is that they are seen as censors. Therefore some writers might feel having someone censor what they write is an absolute attack on the creative freedom of writing. This perspective is not at all new. Creators don’t joke with the creative license, so the idea that an author would feel like their work is being stifled by censors to fill the diversity gap could very well be triggering. But this point of view is more often than not rooted in the word “sensitivity” and how it connotes that the reader is supposed to react to anything sensitive to them and asks the author to cut it out because they’re not comfortable with it. But that isn’t what a sensitivity reader does. Again, the goal of a sensitivity reader is to use their personal point of view to objectively suggest adjustments to characters, events and so on to improve how they’re representative.

Authors might also want to remember that we do not know everything. Writers have been known to reach out to people with personal experience of situations, jobs, and experience to improve the authenticity of a character. Like an author reaching out to a painter to get a painter’s personal experience and fictionalise it into their character. Guess what? That’s no different to what sensitivity readers do. In fact, they’ll do you one better. They’re actually helping you develop your characters and not only giving you insight.

So, are they not a king or developmental editor? There, I said it. The sooner we look at sensitivity readers as editors—representational editors if I may, the sooner authors would be more open-minded to not just giving out their works to the suitable sensitivity readers but reaping the benefits of an added type of editing. The only difference is, they offer you suggestions, advice, and guidance to making situations and characters with a particular representation(s) in mind more authentic and nuanced.

Of course, using a sensitivity reader is up to the author or publishing house, but I highly suggest it. In all honest, writers should know that using a sensitivity reader will not stop the raid of the mob who will attack the author’s style of representation. But the author will know they’ve done their best to represent that particular group of people to the best of their ability. And that requires not dismissing so many suggestions of sensitivity readers as authors have been known to do. But, that also requires having trust in your sensitivity reader.

I look forward to talking more about finding the right sensitivity reader.

Part II: Ready to Hire a Sensitivity Reader?

About the author:

Evelyn Jegede is an avid reader and writer. She reads and writes fictional romance & fantasy. Evelyn also works with Writerful Books to provide beta and sensitivity reading services to writers. She hopes that by helping authors with beta and sensitivity perspectives, she can provide guidance to creating immersive and well rounded characters to take the readers for a ride.

How Much Does a Sensitivity Reader Cost?

AUD $245, CAD $220, GBP £130, EUR €150, USD $165 per reader up to 120,000 words*.

*For manuscripts in excess of 120,000 words please contact us for a quote.

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* Acceptance of a manuscript electronically or by post does not automatically imply any contractual obligations.