Raven Elliot O'Connor

The Complexity of the Found Family Trope

At first glance, the term ‘family’ can conjure a very specific mental image. We picture, because we’ve been taught to picture, a traditional family structure: parents, children, siblings, cousins… Found Family, of course, cannot truly conform to that image — so why do we insist upon it doing so? In truth, “Found Family” is difficult…
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Autism Awareness Month: Writing With Autism

Or: how I Double Dinosaur Hands my way through life. If you know, you know. Autism, somehow, is equally misrepresented and underrepresented in media. While no group is a monolith and not all autistic people will feel the same about every autistic character (I, for example, actually enjoy and relate to Sheldon from the Big…
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TDoV – How I Write Transgender Characters

Let’s trans up our writing! Making Transness the Focus An important part of writing trans characters, major or minor, is the decision on whether to make that part of their identity a focus of their story. I think the most important way to answer that is to figure out the main overarching story first. What…
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Epilepsy Awareness – Writing Seizures in Fantasy

Sometimes in writing, an author will ‘discover’ things about our characters as we go. Usually it’s midway through a novel, when the character turns to you and says “hey did you know this fact about me that will completely change the narrative?” and you promptly set fire to your computer. Another, more mentally stable event…
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