Working with Sensitivity Readers

How sensitivity readers help bring characters to life

Sketch of Frances by Susan Tuma ©2024

In this issue:

• News, updates, and upcoming events

• Working with Sensitivity Readers

• Preview: How to find a sensitivity reader for your book

[Note: This newsletter features a section exclusive to paid subscribers. I plan to post a few longer, in-depth essays like this one each month, so please consider upgrading to a paid subscription if you’d like to be included. This will help offset the additional time and effort these essays require so I can keep writing them!]

News & Updates

In case you missed it: Frances and the Werewolves of the Black Forest was recognized in the preliminary ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Middle Grade Novel!

Upcoming Events:

February 7
WRAD 2024

May 4
Heroes, Villains, and the Physics of Storytelling at Superhero Week at the Crystal Lake Public Library. May the fourth be with you.

Working with Sensitivity Readers

I remember first hearing the term sensitivity reader. This would have been years ago, before any kind of writing career. It felt negative then, like a way to erode authorial integrity or water a story down. Sanitize it. Books should be messy and real and true—especially fiction. Certainly not “sensitive!”

“Why would anyone want a story to be sensitive?”

— 25-year-old Refe’s inner literary snob

These are common misconceptions, I think. But that's what they are—misconceptions.

In reality, good sensitivity readers don't erode, water down, or sanitize. Their work isn't destructive to an author's story, it's additive. Generative, even.

With that in mind, I thought it would be interesting to get into the role of the sensitivity reader, and how they helped shape my most recent book, Frances and the Werewolves of the Black Forest.

What does a Sensitivity Reader do?

Sensitivity readers—also called ‘authenticity readers’—provide expertise in the realm of their lived experience to ensure authentic representation, reveal bias, and prevent the use of lazy or harmful stereotypes. Done well, this expertise can also breathe additional life into characters and scenes, helping authors create more authentic and therefore more interesting stories.

My own sensitivity readers helped in three key ways:

1. Avoiding common pitfalls

2. Inspiring authentic moments

3. Encouraging empathy

Avoiding Common Pitfalls

Sign language has always been a part of Frances’s story, and growing up with deaf* and hard of hearing family, it’s something I have a deep personal connection to as well. So when I started drafting Frances and the Werewolves of the Black Forest, I knew I wanted to expand the role of sign language in her adventures.

The result is a character named Otto Brummell, a young German boy who loves his sister Hilde and his four dogs Aldo, Waldo, Rhetta, and Rolf, who is loyal and brave, and who communicates exclusively through sign language.