Sense and Sensitivity Read
The Manuscript Review You Didn’t Know You Needed
“The opposite of sensitive is not brave. It’s not brave to refuse to pay attention, to refuse to notice, to refuse to feel and know and imagine.”
—Glennon Doyle
I talk a lot about the wide variety of people who can—who should—read your manuscript before you release it publicly, from the brave betas who give you the earliest feedback to the seasoned professionals who will drag your exhausted carcass over the finish line if you collapse before it’s all over. There are plenty of those folks I have yet to cover in detail, and the one I will focus on today is the curious case of the sensitivity read.
What on Earth is a sensitivity read, you may ask. Is it just something I came up with to have a topic to write about or is it a real thing? Who are the sensitivity readers? What do they do for your manuscript? Do you really need one? And, if so—how do you find one, and how much do they cost? All this and more shall be revealed. I have some excellent resource links for you at the end, too, so make sure you allow the article to come to a complete stop before you exit the site.
The publishing industry has a diversity problem; that’s not news to anyone who has been paying attention. An article, or probably a series of articles for another day. The gist of it is, the publishing industry today overwhelmingly employs white, cisgender, hetero women outside the community of people with disabilities. The effect of this demographic makeup of the industry trickles down to affect who gets to sign contracts to publish, whose stories get told, and what Americans read. This is a gross oversimplification, but I’m just trying to give a brief background.
Over the last decade or two, there has been more of a mainstream push for greater diversity in the range of authors who get published as well as the characters who appear in books and the stories that get told. Hopefully in time we’ll see it lead to a meaningful and sustained change in the overall face of American publishing and authorship—as well as a big change in how advances are calculated and negotiated and how transparent we make them. The topic of inequity in advances would (will?) be a whole week of content on its own.
Meanwhile, many white and straight authors have begun to take a closer look at the stories they tell and the characters they write with an eye toward adding diversity to their stories. It’s imperative to note that this cannot be instead of championing those outside of the mainstream to tell stories in their #OwnVoices. But mainstream authors adding diverse representation to their stories is great to happen alongside, in addition to.
Maybe you’ve been aware of this consciously, maybe you’ve been aware of it subconsciously, maybe you haven’t been aware of it at all. Anyway, it’s a thing. Now you’re aware of it, in any case.
As a writer, one who is aware of this issue, you may have in mind that you want your story to include characters who are different from you in meaningful ways. Characters who have a different skin color, racial identity, ethnicity, culture, gender identity, sexual orientation, or religious affiliation, for instance, or characters who may be living with disabilities that you haven’t experienced. Many agents and editors have these types of stories on their MSWL (manuscript wishlist). Maybe you’re thinking, “Hmm, maybe if I recode a few of my existing characters as gay or Black I can pitch to these agents who are salivating for diverse casts!”
That would be an act of tokenism, and no agent or editor who is worth their signing authority is going to not notice what you did. Tokenism means making a desultory, symbolic gesture toward inclusion. You need to avoid tokenism. Writing diverse characters is more than offhandedly mentioning that one of your characters, for instance, is Deaf. Have you done research into the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community? Do you understand at least the basics of Deaf culture and the issues members of that community face? Do you know the difference between culturally Deaf and audiologically deaf? Are you equipped to show your reader the ways in which this character’s life has been different than and similar to the lives of their hearing peers? In summary, can you write this character in a meaningful way, without glossing over their differences, accurately and without stereotyping?
At the far end of this spectrum from tokenism is appropriation, the act of taking something—particularly a culture or identity—that is not yours, for your own use. There’s already a recent, living example of how this happens, and why, and why it’s problematic, so I don’t need to go into too much detail here. Just review the case of American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins, which you may already know about or which you can read about here if you are so moved.
Oh my god is there anything white people are allowed to write about anymore? Yes, reader, white people can (and do) write whatever they want pretty much all the time and in the United States “whatever they want” gets published more than anybody else’s writing—look, don’t worry about it. You’re not in danger of being silenced. Jeanine Cummins had to do some damage control and endure some controversy but she still walked away with a seven-figure advance at the end of the day.
But you are writing for a wider, more diverse audience than authors have ever had access to before. More people can read than ever before. Books are published in formats that can be instantaneously delivered to a reader anywhere in the world. They’re being translated into more languages than ever. International rights are being negotiated with all this in mind. How can you make sure that the characters you’ve included—the ones who differ from you, whose experiences are outside of your personal experience to draw from—are represented in respectful, meaningful ways?
You get a sensitivity reader on the case.
A sensitivity reader could be a professional service provider who you vet and hire or they could be a layperson, someone from your social circle. They will read an early version of your completed manuscript at the same time as your beta readers—you may consider them a type of beta reader—but they are reading with one goal in mind: To evaluate your characters and story from the perspective of someone who personally has the experience you’ve written about to look for stereotypes, objectionable or derogatory writing, and things that don’t ring true.
So for instance, let’s say you are a cisgender person and you have included a major character in your book who is trans. But maybe you don’t know a lot of trans folks yourself. You’re up to date on current and historical trans issues, you understand the medical process of transition and the wide variety of available gender-affirming services. Maybe you’ve read some autobiographies of trans people. You’re probably in fairly good shape to write a meaningful trans character. Do you need a sensitivity reader from the trans community in this case?
The answer is, probably. If you don’t spend a lot of time with transgender people, you’ll miss out on a great deal of nuance that you just can’t get from research. A person who is transgender has personal knowledge of how trans people think and speak about themselves and others when they’re among their trans friends, for instance, that you probably can’t read about in an article. They can give you pointers on where you may have strayed, where your character speaks or acts inauthentically or where you’ve fallen back on stereotypes inadvertently. Importantly, they can let you know if you’re leaning toward tokenism or toward appropriation at an early stage where you can still adjust course during revision.
What you’re looking for in a sensitivity reader is, first, someone who belongs to the same community as the character or characters you have written. Someone who has personal knowledge of the experience you want your characters to share. But you also need someone who has the other qualifications you’re looking for in a beta reader: Reliable and capable of giving direct, honest feedback—even when the feedback won’t be music to your ears. It’s never easy to hear that, in spite of your best efforts and good intentions, a character has fallen flat in an insensitive way. If you’re looking for a sensitivity reader within your circle of friends and acquaintances, make certain that they are comfortable giving you truthful feedback.
Keep in mind that the experiences and communities represented by sensitivity readers are not limited to those you might think of as marginalized people or “protected classes.” Never left Maine but part of your story takes place in the American South in the 1970s? Or maybe you’re a lifelong civilian writing a character starting over in the workforce with a military career under their belt? A sensitivity reader has got you covered.
Do consider, though, what you’re asking for and from whom. While I think it’s great to find beta readers among your personal associates, a sensitivity reader is often, though not always, a person who belongs to a community of people who have been marginalized. You should not ask marginalized people to do free labor for you, ever. If you’re asking someone to do a sensitivity read for you, even if they are not a professional who typically offers this service for fee, you should consider offering payment in cash or trade.
A sensitivity read runs about the same rate as proofreading (this is a parallel only in cost, these services are otherwise unrelated and not similar). The Editorial Freelancers Association recommends a median hourly rate of $31 to $35 or a median per-word rate of $0.01 to $0.019. As an editorial freelancer myself, at times, I always prefer to be paid per word (instead of hourly) but not everyone feels the same way—if you are working with someone who doesn’t usually do this type of work for pay, find out how they would prefer to be compensated.
If you’re looking for a sensitivity reader outside of your personal connections, you can find them in all the usual editorial service provider haunts: Fiverr, Reedsy, the Editorial Freelancers Association membership directory are great places to start looking.
The exact format of what you receive at the end of the sensitivity read varies depending on the provider, but you’re probably going to get a marked-up version of your manuscript and a summary or report of the findings. You may get a few suggestions on alternate wording or recommendations on where you can do further reading and research to improve the authenticity of your characters. You will not receive editorial feedback. Importantly, you will not receive revisions, rewrites, or detailed advice on how to fix your representation if it is problematic—that is beyond the scope of a sensitivity read, which is to identify those problems if they exist in the manuscript.
Overall, the takeaway (I hope) is this: If you’ve been hankering to write a character who is different from you, and you’ve done what you can to amass the knowledge and information you need to write them well, there’s a type of manuscript review available to help you make sure you nailed it. Make sure you’ve got this tool on your radar so you can employ it in your editorial arsenal when the time comes.
A few links of high-quality, on-topic recommended reading for the weekend ahead:
Thanks, as always, for reading! I hope today’s article clarified the topic of sensitivity reading for you if you already knew about it but didn’t have a deep understanding, or that it introduced an interesting new topic for you if you didn’t. I’m headed home tomorrow from Music City and I’ll be back on Tuesday with a topic I’ve been looking forward to writing about for a long time. Have a great weekend and I’ll see you then!
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