Writing Raven Shorts

From Merlin to Gandalf and from Harry Potter to Harry Dresden, fantasy worlds often shine or stumble by their magic systems. In this episode, I discuss three ways to link your magical system to your world, building from the ground up in ways that reflect culture and create and enhance the stakes for your characters!

In this episode I talk about foreshadowing, the contract a writer makes with the reader's mind and emotions that certain events presented early on will pay off by the end of the story. We'll talk about what it is, why it matters, and how to keep it subtle and powerful.

In this episode, I discuss three ways to take dialogue from bland to bomb by focusing on the moment of tension, keeping it flowing through the emotional subtext, and tailoring it to the character.

In this episode, I talk about how to build fantasy world without getting overwhelmed. How? Start from the ground up by thinking about the lived experiences and daily life of the people in your world, and then build everything from culture to cosmology up from that as expressions and explanations of their lives. If found this helpful, drop me a follow or a comment. You can always support the show b...

In this episode, I offer tips to speed up world building for writers of all types: keep it small, build only what you need, but hint at more being just off the page.

Today I tackle a question that worries ever writer with writer's block: when do I abandon a work in progress? In this video I go over things to consider as well as takeaways to help the process feel less like a loss and more like a learning experience. Why? I want to Reduce the guilt and stress associated with the writing process, teach you how to Reuse what you have learned from each project,...

How do you select writing software? This micro podcast episode tackles three major considerations: your needs, practical considerations and features, and budget. I then discuss what software I use and how I came to use it. What software do you use to write?

In this episode, I talk about how writing daily, combined with my ADHD, led to burnout, and how changing my writing schedule to write on alternating days helped relieve the burnout, bring back the joy of writing, and sustain momentum over longer periods of time.

In this episode, we examine the meme-ified writing advice that pervades the internet, particularly the "write every day" and "you should always be writing" varieties. Drawing on my experience as a writer and a professor who teaches writing, I deconstruct the problem with the advice as it is often presented and then extract the idea and present it in a more nuanced and beneficia...

So... this was longer than 6 minutes, but it's still only 8 minutes! In this episode, I discuss my process of generating ideas for writing stories and turning those ideas into outlines that I can use to help me draft. I talk about three things here: mind mapping, creating a story bible, and outlining. You can find longer form content as well as my books for sale ($2 off retail for paperbacks!)...

Welcome to my micro-podcast where I, Robin Schadel, an author with sixteen books (gothic fantasy, southern gothic, urban fantasy, and paranormal romance) on her shelf and a professor of rhetoric, offers writing advice, discussions of literary/fiction conventions, and book reviews in short, six-minute chunks on Wednesdays and Saturdays. If you'd like more, visit my website, Cursing Raven Books.