Why authors should reject trigger warnings and sensitivity readers

The rise of trigger warnings and sensitivity readers is one of the most damaging trends to hit modern publishing. Pushed under the guise of compassion and inclusivity, these tools are little more than methods of censorship, control, and ideological conformity. If you're an author, you should respect your readers intelligence and your work.

Trigger warnings are spoilers in disguise

Let’s not pretend otherwise: a trigger warning is just a spoiler dressed up in polite language. When you slap one at the front of your book, you’re not protecting the reader, you’re undermining your own story. You're broadcasting exactly what emotional beats to expect, killing the impact before the reader even reaches the scene. It's storytelling suicide.

Fiction is supposed to stir something in us. Great stories shock us, disturb us, even hurt us. That’s part of their power. When you tell someone in advance to “watch out” for uncomfortable themes, you rob them of the emotional punch you’ve spent months or years crafting. If your writing can't stand on its own without warning labels, maybe you’re not writing anything worth reading.

Respect your readers, treat them like adults

You’re not writing for toddlers. Readers are grown adults capable of engaging with difficult material. If someone genuinely can’t handle certain themes, they can put the book down. They don’t need to be warned, protected, or wrapped in cotton wool.

Trigger warnings insult your audience. They assume fragility, not resilience. They assume readers are helpless victims, not thinking, feeling humans who understand that fiction is—shockingly—not real. The moment you start treating readers like patients instead of participants, you’ve lost all respect for them.

Sensitivity readers are a scam

Let’s be blunt. Sensitivity readers are nothing more than ideological censors for hire. These aren’t neutral experts helping to improve your book they’re gatekeepers enforcing their version of what’s acceptable. Their goal isn’t to help you write better; it’s to make sure you say only what they approve of.

The number of authors who have told me how such people tried to censor their work is high and I have been fighting against them for many years now. YOU DO NOT NEED THEM.

You’re paying someone to tell you what you’ are and not allowed to write. Think about that. Paying to have your own voice neutered. To have your creativity boxed in. To rewrite your characters, themes, or entire plot because someone might get upset. That’s not writing that’s cowardice and pandering to frankly the mentally ill.

Worse, the rise of sensitivity readers has created an industry where offence is currency. The more things someone claims to find “harmful,” the more valuable their opinion becomes. It’s a racket, a parasitic grift that plays on authors’ fears of backlash.

Stop bending the knee

Real writing isn’t safe. It never has been. If your goal is to tell meaningful stories, you can’t let yourself be shackled by outrage mobs or self-declared arbiters of morality. You owe it to yourself, and your readers to write boldly, honestly, and without compromise.

Stop warning. Stop censoring. Start writing like it matters.