Meet Braden Russell

Braden Russell is an aspiring musician, filmmaker, and novelist from Central Oklahoma. He runs a YouTube channel called Broken Lens Productions where he posts comedic videos, and he wrote Firewalls, a 76,000-word serialized novel. He is partially colorblind — a detail that shapes how he sees the world and tells his stories.

In August 2015, Braden attended the Realm Makers conference in St. Louis, an experience he chronicled in a two-part series on the blog. His writing spans craft articles, guest posts, and ongoing fiction projects including I, Sherwood.

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A story begins long before the first word is written. It stirs in half-heard melodies, in the grain of old photographs, and in the quiet ache of a moment that refuses to fade. The storyteller’s task is not simply to invent, but to listen—to sift through memory and imagination alike, gathering fragments that resonate with emotional truth. Every abandoned draft and every false start plays its part. The blank page is never truly empty; it holds the weight of everything the writer has lived, dreamed, and dared to feel.

Serialized fiction carries a rhythm all its own, one that echoes the great nineteenth-century feuilletons yet feels utterly contemporary in the age of digital publishing. Releasing a novel chapter by chapter transforms the reading experience into something communal and anticipatory. Each installment becomes a small event, a reason for readers to gather, speculate, and return. For the writer, serialization demands a disciplined relationship with momentum—every chapter must satisfy on its own while pulling the audience deeper into a world that still has secrets left to reveal.

Genre fiction thrives on the tension between the familiar and the unexpected. Whether the story unfolds in a futuristic firewall-guarded metropolis or beneath the green canopy of Sherwood Forest, the reader arrives with certain expectations baked into the setting. The writer’s privilege lies in honoring those expectations just enough to build trust, then subverting them with a turn of character or plot that feels both surprising and inevitable. The best genre stories function like a conversation between tradition and invention, each enriching the other.

The physical act of writing is often romanticized, but the reality is grittier and more rewarding than any myth. Words do not flow; they are coaxed, wrestled, and sometimes dragged onto the page. A seventy-thousand-word novel is not written in a burst of inspiration but in hundreds of small, stubborn sessions where the writer shows up despite doubt and distraction. This persistence is the true craft. The muse, if she exists at all, only visits those who have already done the work of sitting down and beginning.

Conferences like Realm Makers serve as vital gathering points for storytellers who spend most of their creative lives in solitude. Walking into a room filled with fellow writers, editors, and artists transforms an often-isolating pursuit into something tangible and shared. Panels dissect the mechanics of plot and character; hallway conversations spark collaborations and friendships. The energy of these events lingers long after the name tags are discarded, becoming fuel for the months of solitary work that follow.

Multimedia storytelling has reshaped what it means to be a creator. A novelist might also run a YouTube channel, compose music, or produce short films, and these disciplines do not compete—they converse. Visual composition informs scene description; musical timing sharpens narrative pacing. The storyteller who works across mediums develops a richer toolkit, learning to sense where a tale might thrive as prose, as moving image, or as something that blurs the boundaries between them all.

Every writer carries a unique lens through which they perceive the world, and those differences are not liabilities but assets. A detail as personal as partial colorblindness can shape a narrative voice in profound ways, influencing how scenes are described, how characters notice their surroundings, and what emotional textures rise to the surface. The stories that endure are rarely the ones that strive for universal sameness. They are the ones that render a singular perspective so vividly that it becomes, paradoxically, relatable.

A blog about making stories is, at its heart, a workshop with the door left open. It is a place where craft essays sit alongside personal reflections, where serialized fiction coexists with guest posts and book reviews. The archive becomes a living record of growth—a trail of attempts, breakthroughs, and lessons learned in public. For the writer, this openness is both generous and terrifying. For the reader, it offers something rare: not just finished stories, but an honest glimpse into the messy, magnificent process of making them.