Once upon a time, publishers employed editors. These strange, semi-mythical creatures improved manuscripts by identifying weak plots, wooden dialogue, continuity errors, bloated prose and characters who changed eye colour halfway through Chapter Twelve. Occasionally, they even told authors uncomfortable feedback, such as, “This subplot is pointless,” or, “Your protagonist has all the emotional depth of a parking meter.”
Now, apparently, that isn’t enough. The modern publishing circus has introduced the sensitivity consultant: a professional hired to inspect manuscripts for potentially offensive portrayals, unsuitable language, uncomfortable cultural assumptions, and anything else that might cause someone on social media to type a furious thread while sitting on the toilet.
Because nothing safeguards literature quite like asking a committee of Karens whether every fictional person has behaved in an officially approved manner, and whether or not they should be cancelled.
It Sounds Reasonable...Until It Doesn't
The sales pitch sounds reasonable. Authors cannot personally understand every culture, disability, religion, identity or lived experience on Earth, so why not ask someone with relevant knowledge to catch stupid mistakes? Fair enough.
If you are writing about a Syrian surgeon, a blind explosives expert or a Buddhist monk who moonlights as a contract killer, specialist input might stop you from producing complete bollocks. Research and expertise are useful. Being told that insulin doesn't work like a magical healing potion is extremely useful.
But then it quickly slides into a pile of farce.
The sensitivity industry increasingly treats fiction as though it were a corporate press release being cleared by legal, compliance, human resources, and Brenda from Brand Reputation. Characters must represent their communities responsibly. Villains mustn't accidentally reinforce stereotypes. Trauma must be depicted with the approved degree of solemnity. Humour must travel through an airport-style security scanner, surrender its liquids and explain why it made that joke in 2007.
The result isn't necessarily kinder fiction. It's frequently warmed up oatmeal, safer and more predictable fiction, populated by immaculate representatives rather than recognisable human beings. Everyone becomes painfully aware that they're appearing in a book and must therefore conduct themselves like nervous panellists at a diversity seminar. That's death to storytelling.
Books Should Reflect The Real World - Warts and All
Fiction needs unpleasant people. It needs people who are ignorant, cruel, prejudiced, reckless, and who say exactly the wrong thing at precisely the wrong moment. It needs saints who fail, victims who lie and heroes who behave like assholes. It needs women who aren't obliged to be inspirational, gay characters who aren't required to be morally superior, and disabled characters who are allowed to be selfish, funny, furious or spectacularly incompetent.
A novel isn't an instruction manual for civil society. Depiction isn't endorsement, a distinction that ought to be obvious to anyone who completed primary school but now seems to require a thirty-page explanatory note. If a character says something offensive, it doesn't automatically mean the author agrees with them. Shakespeare wasn't campaigning for regicide because he wrote Macbeth, and Thomas Harris wasn't quietly recommending cannibalism with a decent Chianti.
Thrillers, particularly, should not feel as though every character has recently completed mandatory workplace training. Intelligence officers manipulate people. Soldiers swear. Criminals aren't famous for inclusive hiring practices. Politicians lie (news-flash!), zealots hate, and frightened citizens often turn on whoever appears different. Removing those realities doesn't improve representation. Instead, it creates a dishonest world in which evil has somehow learned impeccable etiquette.
The Past Was a Reflection of That Time - Stop Judging
Historical fiction faces an even more absurd problem. The past was offensive. That's one of its defining features.
People in the past held appalling views, enforced brutal hierarchies, and used language that would cause modern social-media departments to evacuate the building. Winston Churchill, for example, was an absolute fucking racist, but at the time, his behaviour was considered absolutely acceptable.
An author can provide context without pretending that a medieval warlord possessed the moral outlook of a twenty-first-century postgraduate.
Yet some publishers appear determined to retrofit history with contemporary attitudes, producing characters who sound less like inhabitants of another century and more like diversity officers cosplaying in borrowed costumes.
Of course, defenders of sensitivity consultants insist that they actually don't censor anything. They merely “flag concerns”, “suggest alternatives” and “help authors avoid unintended harm”. What happens after that is technically the author’s choice, provided the author is happy to argue with the publisher, risk delays, and accept being blamed if a "professional concern" was flagged but ignored.
The deeper problem is that no consultant can speak for an entire group. There's no elected representative of all autistic people, all Muslims, all Christians, all immigrants, and all women over fifty. Give the same manuscript to three readers from the same demographic and you may receive three incompatible opinions.
One will find a scene offensive, another will find it authentic, and the third will wonder why everyone is wasting time on this crap when the plot has collapsed in Chapter Six.
We Laugh In The Face of Political Correctness, and Steal Its Lunch
Glass Dagger Press doesn't use sensitivity consultants because we publish fiction, not pre-approved emotional safety equipment. We believe readers are intelligent enough to distinguish an author from a character, a portrayal from an endorsement and an uncomfortable subject from a personal attack.
More importantly, we believe writers must be permitted to take risks, explore ugly ideas and create characters who don't pass an ideological inspection.
That doesn't mean Glass Dagger Press embraces lazy stereotypes, avoidable inaccuracies, or gratuitous cruelty. It means we deal with those problems using research, editorial judgement, and common bloody sense.
If a novel contains specialist cultural, historical, medical or military material, we'll verify it with people who actually know the subject. That's fact-checking and informed research, not paying someone to patrol the manuscript for unauthorised feelings.
Does Sophie Decker need to go to a HR-mandated sensitivity training? Does Jack Maddox need to acknowledge the bad guy by their pronouns before killing them? Or maybe Mara Bachmann needs to refer to evil people as "morally-disabled individuals"? You know, in case the criminals file a lawsuit for emotional distress.
Our editors ask whether the story works. Are the characters convincing? Is the setting credible? Does the dialogue sound human? Is something present because it serves the narrative, or because the author has wandered into cliché land? Those questions produce better books without pretending that one consultant’s personal reaction constitutes a binding verdict from an entire population.
We won't promise readers that our books contain nothing upsetting. They're thrillers and romances. People are murdered, betrayed, manipulated, threatened, and occasionally blown into several inconvenient pieces. And then there's the thrillers. If nobody feels tense, angry, disturbed or morally conflicted, we've probably published a bloody appliance manual by mistake.
Nor will we demand that every fictional culture, nationality or identity receive a flattering representative. Positive stereotypes are still stereotypes, and fictional people aren't ambassadors applying for diplomatic immunity. They're allowed to be complicated, compromised and wrong.
OK, I'm Winding Down Now...
There's a difference between writing responsibly and writing fearfully. Responsible writers research what they don't know, listen when someone points out a genuine mistake, and remain willing to revise weak or lazy work. Fearful writers try to anticipate every possible objection from every possible reader until the book has been polished into a smooth, inoffensive pebble with nothing left to say.
If a book provokes criticism, so be it. Readers may dislike it, argue with it, review it savagely or fling it across the room, calling it woke. That's the bargain books make with the public.
The publisher’s job isn't to prevent every negative reaction before publication. It's to publish books worth reacting to, and to uphold freedom of speech.
So no, we won't be assembling a committee to ask whether the villain’s insults are appropriately balanced, or whether the rugged Highlander has sufficiently acknowledged his privilege before decapitating someone. The sensitivity consultants can take that professional concern and stuff it up their rectum.
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