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Boosting your confidence with authenticity reading services

Writing outside of your experience doesn’t have to be daunting. My authenticity reading services support authors to write non-binary and neurodivergent characters.

An authenticity reader is a person who gives authors feedback on the representation of identities of experiences in an author’s story. This is especially important when an author is writing outside of their own experiences and wants feedback from someone with lived experience or firsthand knowledge.

Authenticity reading is a type of beta reading which focuses on the story from the perspective of their experiences. Often used to ensure authenticity of a story’s plot, characterisation, setting, and dialogue, authenticity readers helps an author build trust with readers and authentically represent marginalised characters.

Even publishing houses like Penguin hire authenticity readers.

I provide authenticity reading services for neurodivergent and non-binary characters, separately and together.

Still curious about what authenticity reading entails? Keep reading!

Sensitivity reading and authenticity reading is the same thing, but authenticity reading is the preferred term for many. Authenticity readers focus on providing feedback on how authentic and real the characters (or settings or plots) come across.

Consider this: a book has two protagonists, one of whom is non-binary, and the author identifies as cisgender. They work with me to ensure that their non-binary character is portrayed authentically. I offer feedback on how their character comes across, so they can make any changes and feel confident in how they’ve written the character.

This ensures more of their readers will be comfortable reading their story, and readers who are uninformed about non-binary people won’t be misinformed about stereotypes.

Sensitivity reading is an inaccurate term which encourages the misconception that sensitivity readers censor writing. This isn’t the case at all. Authenticity readers simply want to help authors portray more diverse characters and plots without encouraging inaccurate or harmful depictions.

Authenticity reading is a type of beta reading with focus on specific elements. While beta readers will give an author overall feedback on a novel’s characters, story, and narrative, authenticity readers narrow in what they specialise in.

Beta reading gives authors feedback on how general readers perceive their book and how they’d improve it before publication. Authenticity reading gives authors feedback on how a particular reader perceives their book and flag any potentially harmful biases or inaccuracies before publication.

For non-binary authenticity reading, I’ll check non-binary characters and from a non-binary reader’s perspective. For instance, if a description perpetuates a binary world without addressing the inclusion of non-binary people, I’ll ask the author if it would work better in a more inclusive way, such as suggesting the term ‘parents and children’ instead of ‘women and children’.

For neurodivergent authenticity reading, I’ll check neurodivergent characters and from a neurodivergent reader’s perspective. For instance, if a character self-describes themself as being ‘high-functioning’, I’ll ask the author if this is something the character would actually say. If another character calls them ‘high-functioning’, I’ll explain how this language can be harmful to neurodivergent people.