Saved by a Sensitivity Reader

While working on The Use of Heavy Water (The Valence Chronicles book 2) I've been struggling with one particular scene. Not to give away details, but I wanted to explore the nuance of consent and how it's not always as straightforward as we think.

However, I found it to be a very difficult scene to write. I ran it by a few beta readers and none of them picked up what I was going for. Either I was being too subtle and the point of the scene went completely unnoticed, or I was too heavy handed and accidentally ended up portraying a scene of actual non-consent, which is not what I wanted to do.

So I handed the scene over to a sensitivity reader, who really helped me out. They started by breaking down the scene into a series of beats, and summarizing what each beat was doing. This made it easier to see where I was going wrong, and where I needed to slow down and explain my character's thought process in more detail.

In the end we figured out that the emphasis needed to be on the character's confusion over the moment, and how something that seemed simple (saying 'no' or saying 'yes') isn't as simple as he first thought.

I also needed to make the other character involved, the one initiating sex in that moment, more demonstrative in their reactions so it was obvious what was going on in their head. With these corrections made, the scene read a lot better, and when I took it back to my beta readers they were finally able to understand what I was trying to show.

All in all, relying on a sensitivity reader really helped me tackle a difficult topic, and I'll likely be using one for future books as well. So far I think The Use of Heavy Water is turning out well and I hope readers will enjoy it just as much as the first book, if not more.

Hopefully my editor thinks so as well.