So you’ve decided to write a story outside your lane. You want a black heroine in your romance novel, or a transgender Cinderella. Awesome! You’re making your world more realistic by including minorities. But. Before you begin, there are a few things you need to consider.

First, why do you want to write this story? Is it really your story to tell? If you want to lift up the voices of minorities, that might be better served by promoting the works of people who actually fall under those identities. Oh, you’re already doing that? Excellent.

Second, does your character have personality traits beyond their minority identity? People are messy and complex. Gender, sexuality, and race are only aspects of what make up our personality. Maybe your bisexual character is super-shy and has trouble talking to other people. Your gay hero could be incredibly brave and self-sacrificing, the first to volunteer for dangerous missions. What flaws does this person have? What strengths? These can be informed by their history, or at odds with it. Be creative!

Third, have you done your research? The advice is to write what you know, because that’s what you’ll write most accurately. It’s good advice! Of course if people only ever wrote what they knew, the literary world would be a boring place. Fantasy and science fiction wouldn’t exist. Every story would be set in the author’s hometown.

But just like you want to research the town your story is set in so you can accurately describe the setting, you want to research the people who populate it as well. Is your hero asexual? Visit the AVEN website and read a few articles about asexuality. Especially look for literature by people who share that identity. The best way to get into your character’s head is to read things from the perspective of people with similar experiences.

Of course, research can’t tell you everything. You might know the entire layout of a city but not realize that because of the illogical set-up of this one intersection, cars have a tendency to swerve across multiple lanes of traffic in order to get into the left lane right before the light. That’s something that only someone who’s lived in that city would be able to tell you.

That’s where sensitivity readers come in. Sensitivity readers are people who share in the minority identity about which you are writing, and will—for a fee—read over your manuscript and give you pointers on what potential harm could come from what you’ve written, and how you can mitigate or eliminate that harm.

Yes, they charge money. They’re providing a service, and deserve to get compensated for their time. Sensitivity readers help you improve your book. Just like you’d pay an editor, you also pay your sensitivity reader.

So how does sensitivity reading improve your book? Well, first, it helps keep you from accidentally contributing to a harmful narrative. This goes back to why you’re writing this. If you want to portray minorities in a more sympathetic light than they’re normally displayed, you’re shooting yourself in the foot if you then perpetuate damaging stereotypes. If you want to cash in on the trend for diversity in literature, again, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you alienate the very readers you’re intending to court. (Not that I advise writing diverse literature as a way to make money, but if that’s your intention, you need sensitivity reads even more than most people.)

Even if your portrayal isn’t actively harmful, a sensitivity reader can point out where it doesn’t quite ring true. Your trans guy knows he’s trans even if he’s still in the closet? He should be thinking of himself with masculine pronouns, despite the fact that he’s still portraying himself as a woman. And maybe your Jewish character shouldn’t be saying “Jesus Christ!” when he stubs his toe. (Or maybe he should! I’m not Jewish, so I couldn’t say. A friend of mine once said, “God knows I’m an atheist,” so there’s definitely some cultural as well as religious influence on speech.)

This helps shape your story to be the best it can possibly be. Ideally you want a three-dimensional character rich with cultural nuance. You want a living, breathing representation, rather than a caricature. This will ring true with all your readers, not just those familiar with the minority identity you’ve chosen to represent.

For a real-world example, let’s consider the show Lucifer. I just recently began watching it, and before I start dragging it through the dirt, I want to lead with the fact that I love this show. It’s very rare for me to find a TV show that I enjoy, and this one hits all the right buttons. It’s fast-paced enough to suit my ADHD brain, with witty dialogue and engaging characters. That being said, it could benefit from having more diversity on staff.

In one episode, Lucifer claims that Oscar Wilde was straight before they met. On the surface, this seems great. It highlights not only the existence of gay people but also the fact that they’ve existed throughout history. Representation! But the underlying implication is that sexuality is a choice. When lesbians announce that they’re only into women, men crawl out of the woodwork to insist that they just haven’t been fucked by the right guy. Fundamentalist Christians insist that being homosexual is just a bad decision that gay people have made, and they could be straight if they just tried hard enough. Implying that a straight person could turn gay also implies that a gay person could turn straight. And yes, there are instances of people’s sexuality evolving over time, or someone who thought they were only attracted to one gender discovering that they have an attraction for one or more people of the other gender as well. But making that claim about an actual historical figure is erasive and harmful. That’s the exact sort of thing that sensitivity reads are designed to prevent.

Another episode is set in a mental hospital. In one scene, there’s a group of patients playing poker with imaginary cards and chips. Now this could be just a way for them to pass the time when they don’t have real cards or money, but the way the scene is depicted makes it seem like they believe the cards are real. It’s treated like a joke, a way to laugh at the crazies. But that’s not how mental illness actually works, and even if it were, making jokes at the expense of mental illness makes life more difficult for real people who are mentally ill. Running the script by someone who’s actually worked or, preferably, stayed in a mental hospital could have resulted in a more accurate depiction and one that was more sensitive to the feelings of the very real mentally ill people who might be fans of the show.

That is why sensitivity reads are important. Because unless you’ve actually experienced the marginalization you’re depicting, you can’t predict what impact your words might have.