examples of a braided essay

Braided Essays and How to Write Them

Zining Mok | October 4, 2023 | 7 Comments

When I first started reading and writing creative nonfiction , I was particularly struck by the “braided essay”—its poeticism, its interlacing movements, its endless possibilities. The beauty of a braid lies in the way it weaves distinct strands into a coherent whole, the way individual strands intermittently appear and disappear.

If you’ve ever felt like your essay was missing something or needed more texture, or if you’re someone who loves miscellany, a braided essay might be right for you. But before I wax eloquent about the braided essay:

What is a braided essay?

A braid is a structure commonly used in the genre of creative nonfiction, though it can easily be adapted for use in other genres. Richard Powers’ The Overstory and Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 are great examples of novels that use braiding as a structure.

Simply put, a braided essay is one that weaves two or more distinct “threads” into a single essay. A thread can be a story with a plot or simply a string of thought about a specific topic.

A braided essay is one that weaves two or more distinct “threads” into a single essay. A thread can be a story with a plot or simply a string of thought about a specific topic.

If all of this sounds abstract and complicated, don’t fret: the good news is that a braided essay is much easier to understand in practice than in theory. Consider, for instance, Roxane Gay’s “ What We Hunger For ,” which consists of two threads. In thread A, Gay writes about The Hunger Games and the representation of female strength in pop culture. In thread B, she recounts memories of her childhood as a girl. Gay breaks up these two threads into smaller fragments, then alternates fragments from thread A with those from thread B.

This alternating movement draws out themes and ideas from each thread, such that the essay as a whole points to larger ideas and themes.

This alternating movement draws out themes and ideas from each thread, such that the essay as a whole points to larger ideas and themes. In the case of “What We Hunger For,” the result of braiding is an essay that combines The Hunger Games and the writer’s personal experiences to gesture to the themes of strength, trauma, storytelling, the power of reading, and hope for healing. This happens often in braided essay: the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

What counts as a “thread?”

For something to count as a “thread,” it has to be sufficiently distinct in terms of style and/ or content. To braid these threads together, break each into fragments, then alternate a fragment from one braid with a fragment from another braid. Check out the following diagram to see how this works:

How to braid threads in a braided essay

To help your reader distinguish one thread from another, writers often add a visual break between fragments from different threads. This usually means inserting either an additional section break or an asterisk between fragments.

In addition, while there are no maximum number of threads you can include in an essay, an essay with too many threads can get out of hand really quickly!

What makes a braided essay coherent?

Distinct threads often speak to one thing (or a few things) that unifies the essay. In Maggie Nelson’s Bluets , it is the narrator’s love of blue—established in the very beginning of the book-length essay—that provides coherence to the many threads in the essay, which range from philosophy to personal suffering, vision to pain. In other essays, what unifies the threads becomes apparent only as the essay develops; the pleasure of reading such essays comes from seeing how disparate threads gradually come together. A good example is “ Time and Distance Overcome ” by Eula Biss, which begins as an essay about the history of telephone poles and develops into a meditation on race. Another wonderful example by Biss is “Babylon,” which can be found in her book Notes from No Man’s Land .

The best braided essays, however, unfold associatively, even ambiguously.

The best braided essays, however, unfold associatively, even ambiguously. While coherence is important, making the links between the various threads too neat or too obvious can make an essay feel contrived and boring. When writing a braided essay, it’s always good to remember: your reader is often smarter than you think!

Before we explore how to write a braided essay, let’s look more closely at braided essay examples for inspiration.

Braided essay examples

Rebecca Solnit’s “The Blue of Distance” is a classic braided essay that weaves the narrator’s meditations on the color blue in 15th century paintings and her personal reflections on distance, memory, and longing. This unlikely pairing plunges the reader into a poetic, blue-hued aura, inviting us to contemplate our own relationships with distance and longing. “The Blue of Distance” can be found in A Field Guide to Getting Lost alongside two more essays of the same name.
In “ The Empathy Exams ,” Leslie Jamison draws on events in her personal life and her experiences working as a medical actor to craft a moving meditation on the concept of empathy. This essay also uses the form of a hermit crab essay (for more on hermit crabs, check out #9 in this article) with deftness and to great emotional effect. This essay can also be found in Jamison’s book, The Empathy Exams .
Annie Dillard’s “An Expedition to the Pole” is a fascinating braided essay that interlaces the narrator’s religious experiences in church with reportage on famous polar expeditions. While this essay is rather long, the ending – in which the two separate threads fuse into one – makes it entirely worth it. “An Expedition to the Pole,” which opened up my ideas of what’s possible in a braided essay, can be found in Dillard’s essay collection, Teaching a Stone to Talk .
In “Reality TV Me,” Jia Tolentino’s reflection on her time as a contestant on a reality tv show is intercut with short, ekphrastic descriptions of various scenes from the show. The result is a fun yet compelling meditation on the concepts of reality and performance. This essay can be found in Tolentino’s essay collection, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion .
Braiding Sweetgrass offers, in the words of its author Robin Wall Kimmerer, “a braid of stories” about nature “woven from three stands: indigenous ways of knowing, scientific knowledge, and the story of an Anishinaabekwe scientist trying to bring them together in service to what matters most.” Expect to be delighted, jolted, and awed by this brilliant book.
Rivka Galchen’s Little Labors is a miscellany of thoughts on motherhood, children’s literature, and great women writers. Enchanting and entirely unique, Little Labors is a great braided essay example in book form.
In A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause , Shawn Wen paints a portrait of the mime Marcel Marceau with a varied collection of materials. At times cutting and moving, this innovative essay is a must-read.

Inspired yet? Follow this step-by-step guide on how to write a braided essay to write your own!

How to write a braided essay

The writing process, by definition, requires many rounds of drafting and revision. For a more general step-by-step guide to writing essays, check out the guides in these articles on writing lyric essays , narrative essays , and memoirs .

1. Get inspired and generate ideas

The best way to learn how to write a braided essay is to read one, and to get an idea of what’s possible. Next, begin making a list of ideas for your essay. If you’re in need of writing prompts, check out our Facebook group !

2. Do a freewrite

Once you’ve chosen one idea, explore its possibilities by doing a freewrite. While freewriting, be sure to keep your pen moving – don’t even stop to correct any grammatical or spelling mistakes! The point of a freewrite is to keep the ideas flowing until you arrive at an idea that feels right. In the words of Peter Elbow, who developed the freewriting strategy, “The consequence [of writing] is that you must start by writing the wrong meanings in the wrong words; but keep writing until you get to the right meanings in the right words. Only in the end will you know what you are saying.” In my personal experience, it often takes at least 10-15 minutes for a freewrite to yield the ideas that feel right.

3. Read your freewrite

As you read what you’ve just written, highlight important themes, ideas, words, and/or motifs. Rely on your intuition in this process. Of these, identify the core of the essay you’d like to write. This is the primary thread of your essay.

4. Begin writing your primary thread

Rather than starting from “the beginning,” however, begin with the thing that resonates most with you. Doing so not only helps you to maintain momentum in the writing process, but also provides an anchor for your writing. Because braided essays are so associative, it can be easy to lose track of what feels right in the process of writing.

5. Start on your other thread(s)

It is often much easier to build a braided essay when you do it bit by bit, rather than thread by thread. The reason is that, with a braided essay, development in one braid often affects another. It’s much easier to develop one thread alongside another. This also makes the final produce much more organic.

6. Read what you have so far

Now that you have written the beginnings of several threads, read what you have and notice how your essay has already morphed. Doing these regular “check-ins” with your braided essay can help you to stay on top of how it is developing. If not, a braided essay can get unruly very quickly!

7. Continue writing

If you’re not sure how to continue, do research. This can be any form of research – from interviews to googling, immersive to archival. As you do research, keep an eye out for opportunities for expansion. Ask yourself: what new associations emerge?

8. Repeat steps 4-7 until satisfied.

Good writing is often built section by section, rather than produced in one burst. As you read what you have written so far, note places to expand and places to cut.

Once you’re satisfied with your braided essay, begin paying attention to the finer things: word choice, sentence structure, figurative words. Revising and editing are key to making your braided essay work. If you’re looking for a fresh pair of eyes to look at your writing, check out our schedule of nonfiction workshops !

Writing a braided essay for the first time can be challenging, but remember to have fun in the process. If you’d like to learn about other forms of creative nonfiction, check out this article !

Write the best braided essays at Writers.com

What will your braided essay be about? Perhaps you’ll combine the most seemingly unrelated topics: your marriage with the history of paleontology; your time in high school with musings on the color orange; the anatomy of an orca with your favorite jacket.

Whatever the braids, write the best braided essays at Writers.com, where you’ll receive expert feedback on the essays you write. Find inspiration in our upcoming creative nonfiction courses , and forge new relationships between seemingly-unalike things.

I have written a braided essay (although I did not know it by this name until reading this post) of approximately 11,000 words. Too long for a short-story; too short for standard creative nonfiction.

Where does one publish a braided essay of intermediate length?

Hi Kathleen,

Good question! I don’t know of any journals off the bat that accept essays of that length–generally, the upper limit will range between 3,000 and 7,500 words. Nonetheless, you might find a good home for your essay at this article: https://writers.com/best-places-submit-creative-nonfiction-online

Best of luck!

Hi Kathleen, This is such a great explanation of the Braided Essay and these examples are amazing. I just bought ‘A Twenty Minute Silence’– thank you for introducing me to this text.

Question: I teach Creative Writing and my students love these Lyric Essay forms, but one student noted, ‘It seems like most collage and braided essays are about serious subjects: loss, heartbreak, grief, abuse, etc. Are there any funny collage or braided essays?’

I thought surely there must be but scanning Brevity and other online journals I could not come across a single ‘funny’ collage or braided essay. There are numerous funny Hermit Crab Essays but do you know of any funny/humorous Braided or Collage Essays?

I can also be reached at [email protected] (should you want to respond or have a response).

Sorry for the long comment here. Really enjoyed reading this! Thanks again.

I’m working on a braided essay for my class at the moment and its about mud and magic. Not a funny story but a fun story about childhood and imagination.

Have you looked up David Sedaris (Santaland Diaries) or Dave Barry? Off the top of my head, I’m sure they’d have something!

[…] writing styles, and this one is called a braided or woven essay. A braided essay is where you take two seemingly dissimilar topics and weave them together into one. In this case, I describe the physical and psychological strength my adoptive mother required to […]

I’m writing my memoir and can see a few threads that I could use for the braided structure, Does braiding work just as well for a book (80,000 words) as for an essay?

Braided Essays

I turned the talk I gave last year in Melbourne into an essay for Creative Nonfiction magazine . Now, I’m kind of obsessed with braided essays and am looking forward to working with my colleague, Gretchen Younghans, who teaches at Flag High. As part of the Alpine program, she and I and a few grad students are taking her Alpine students out to Clear Creek Reservoir to kayak and write.

I suggested we do a braided essay exercise where the students make observations about the tiny things, the mosquito hawks on the surface of the water, the kinds of graffiti on the rocks, the spinning leaves, the wind broken trees. Then, when we take a break for lunch, the students will use their observations as one thread of their essay. Then, they’ll switch to writing a personal narrative that uses scene and dialogue to really root us in their experience–they could write about their emotional experience being on the lake, they could write about a past memory of another lake, they could write about their childhood kitchen or the time they dropped their school lunch on the lunchroom floor and everyone laughed. After five minutes of personal narrative, we’ll ask them to return to their “research,” again dispassionately describing what they saw. Then, after five minutes, we’ll ask them to return to their personal story finishing, for now, this process.

In revision, what the students might discover is how certain word choices, images, or motifs appear in all four sections. To make those synchronicities stronger, the students can emphasize them by writing a little more, and a little more slowly, around those repeated moments. They can change some words so more words do repeat. And, they can see how, by putting these two seemingly random stories together, they learned more about themselves and the place they visited by pressing the two so closely together.

In order to give the students a sense of what these essays might finally look like, here are some examples.

Brenda Miller’s Swerve

Lee Ann Roripaugh’s The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed

Nicole Walker’s Superfluidity

Matthew Komatsu’s When We Played

The above essays show how moving from topic to topic between paragraphs can provide multiple perspectives on the same topic like a prism. The following essays, though longer, provide that true braid where the back and forth phenomenon leads to a new and integrated understanding of the subject.

Chelsea Biondolillo’s How to Skin a Bird

Nicole Walker’s Abundance and Scarcity

Joann Beard’s The Fourth State of Matter

Eula Biss’s Time and Distance Overcome

How to Write a Braided Essay: Easy Steps & Example

Icon Calendar 18 May 2024
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Importance of Writing a Braided Essay

As a literary form, a braided essay is unique for its distinctive ability to weave together multiple narrative strands or threads (from 2 to 4), creating a new and complex piece of ideas and themes. This structure is crucial in academic writing for its ability to explore topics from various angles. In a braided essay, each strand or thread, such as a personal anecdote, historical analysis, or theoretical exploration, maintains its distinctive role and perspective, and it is connected to other strands or threads, creating a harmonious and coherent whole work. This method is effective in illustrating how different elements can be connected to each other, indicating new layers of meaning and understanding. By following a linear narrative style dominant in traditional academic essays, a braided structure enables a more holistic and reflective exploration of subjects. This form of writing also engages readers actively, compels them to draw connections between various strands or threads, and promotes a more engaged and critical approach to reading and interpretation.

What Is a Braided Essay and Its Definition

According to its definition, a braided essay is a distinctive literary form of writing characterized by the interweaving of several narratives or threads of thought (from 2 to 4), much like strands in a braid. Each strand or thread in a braided essay stands as a self-contained narrative, claim, or argument. For writers, the purpose of using a braided narrative structure is to connect different themes from multiple perspectives, leading to a new understanding of topics under analysis. Moreover, a braided essay structure can follow not only a linear narrative writing format but also a more complex arrangement that reflects various connections to life experiences and ideas. A braiding technique also enables writers to use personal anecdotes with scholarly research or historical events. In turn, this form of the synthesis of personal and external elements results in writing new insights and perspectives about storytelling and creative nonfiction.

How to Write a Braided Essay: Easy Steps & Example

How to Start a Braided Essay in 5 Steps

Like any other types of essays , starting a braided paper requires a thoughtful approach to set the stage for a correct weaving of narratives. Begin by introducing your central theme or question, which is an anchor that ties your strands together. Then, focus on each narrative thread, writing about stories or ideas you plan to connect. A strong start in a braided essay is like separating your strands before weaving them into a cohesive and beautiful whole.

1. Identify Distinctive Strands (2-4 Threads)

Begin by identifying different strands or narratives that you will intertwine in your essay. These threads may include personal anecdotes, stories, historical events, research findings, or theoretical discussions. Each thread should be distinctive and relevant to the theme of your essay.

2. Develop Each Strand Individually

Before intertwining strands, develop each thread separately to ensure it is coherent and complete in itself. This aspect involves fleshing out the details, arguments, or stories within each thread, ensuring they are engaging and well-articulated in your braided essay.

3. Interweave Strands

Start braiding all chosen strands together. It involves making connections between different narratives at critical points. The transition between threads should be smooth and logical, allowing readers to follow the flow of a braided essay without confusion.

4. Highlight Connections and Contrasts

As you weave all chosen strands, highlight their connections and contrasts. This stage is crucial in writing a braided essay, as it improves the writer’s understanding of the topic by providing multiple perspectives and layers of meaning.

5. Conclude With Synthesis

In the end of writing, synthesize all the insights gained from interwoven narratives. It does not necessarily mean providing a resolution but offering a reflective overview of how intertwined threads contribute to a deeper understanding of a braided essay’s central theme.

Examples of Braided Essay Topics

Climate Change: Personal Impact and Global Policies
Cultural Identity: Exploring Heritage and Modern Influences
The Intersection of Art and Science in Historical Contexts
Mental Health: Personal Experiences vs. Societal Perceptions
The Influence of Technology on Human Relationships
Journeys in Nature: Personal Adventures and Environmental Conservation
Food Culture: Family Traditions and Global Cuisines
The Role of Music in Personal Development and Cultural Expression
Education Systems: Personal Learning Experiences and Theoretical Frameworks
Migration Stories: Personal Narratives and Political Contexts
Urban vs. Rural Living: A Personal and Sociological Perspective
Fitness and Wellness: Personal Goals and Healthcare Systems
The Evolution of Communication: From Letters to Digital Media
Fashion Trends: Personal Style and Historical Influences
Language and Identity: Personal Linguistic Journey and Sociolinguistics
Travel and Discovery: Personal Expeditions and Historical Explorers
Parenting Styles: Personal Experiences and Psychological Theories
Social Media: Personal Use and Its Impact on Society
Work-Life Balance: Personal Strategies and Corporate Policies
Volunteering: Personal Motivations and Community Benefits
The Changing Landscape of News Consumption: From Print to Digital
Gender Roles: Personal Experiences and Societal Expectations
Space Exploration: Personal Fascination and Scientific Endeavors
Reading Habits: Personal Literary Journeys and Evolving Publishing Trends
Sustainable Living: Personal Practices and Global Environmental Policies
The Evolution of Gaming: Personal Experiences and Technological Advances
Historical Events: Personal Family Stories and Their Place in World History
The Influence of Cinema: Personal Impressions and Film Industry Changes
Entrepreneurship: Personal Business Ventures and Economic Theories
Spirituality and Religion: Personal Beliefs and Cultural Practices

Simple Outline Template for Writing a 5-Paragraph Braided Essay (Structure of 3 Threads)

I. Introduction

Introduce a central theme or question of a braided essay.
Briefly present the three threads (narratives or ideas) that will be braided for writing your paper.
Thesis statement: Summarize the main point or insight that emerges from intertwining these threads.

II. Body Paragraph 1: Introduction of Thread A

Introduce the first narrative or idea (Thread A).
Provide background information or context.
Explain how Thread A relates to a central theme.

III. Body Paragraph 2: Introduction and Weaving of Thread B

Introduce the second narrative or idea (Thread B).
Weave Thread B with aspects of Thread A introduced previously.
Highlight connections or contrasts between Threads A and B.

IV. Body Paragraph 3: Introduction and Weaving of Thread C

Introduce the third narrative or idea (Thread C).
Weave Thread C with aspects of Threads A and B.
Emphasize how Thread C adds meaning and depth or a new perspective to a braided narrative.

V. Conclusion

Provide a summary of how the three strands are interwoven and what this new perspective reveals about a central theme.
Reiterate the thesis in the light of the three braided narratives.
Offer final reflections or implications of the insights gained from the essay.

Note: You can add or remove body paragraphs depending on the number of strands. However, the logic of a braided essay must be followed for 2 or more threads. The structure will depend on the number of critical points between 2 or more threads. Hence, there can be more than 2 paragraphs in each body section of a braided essay.

Braided Essay Example

Topic: The Evolution of Communication (Critical Point): Traditional Letters, Telephony, and Digital Media (3 Threads)

I. Sample Introduction of a Braided Essay

The evolution and development of communication is a historical reflection of human intelligence and societal progress. In this case, it is fantastic to see how far people have come from the simple act of writing handwritten letters to the introduction of the Internet. With each mode of communication, they see how different changes happen in all aspects of their lives. In particular, traditional letters, telephony, and digital media reflect speed, style, and societal changes, which is evidence of human progress.

II. Body Paragraph Example 1: The Era of Letters

In the era of letters, communication was a deliberate, reflective process. Handwritten letters, crafted with care, were imbued with personal touch and emotional depth. This mode of communication shaped a sense of intimacy and patience between a sender and a recipient, as people wrote their thoughts and feelings in physical papers, often waiting days or weeks for a response. As a result, the physical features of letters, with individualized handwriting and paper, created a personal connection between many people who could not meet together due to long distances but wanted to share their feelings and thoughts.

III. Body Paragraph Example 2: Emergence and Impact of Telephony

The invention and mass introduction of telephony as a communicational technology marked a significant shift in the human world. With the telephone, conversations that once took weeks for letters could occur in real-time, bridging distances with the sound of a human voice. Basically, this revolution in communication changed not just how people communicated but also social dynamics. Telephone conversations offered a new form of connection, one that was more direct and personal than letters, but it lacked their intimacy and patience nature. In turn, this era of telephones saw the beginning of the transformation of communication from writing letters to private conversations.

IV. Body Paragraph Example 3: The Digital Media Age

Nowadays, with the help of the Internet, digital media has taken a dominant position in all human societies, and it is characterized by its speed, diversity, and popularity. For example, emails, social media, and instant messaging via smartphones have changed people’s interactions, allowing global connectivity in one second. Moreover, digital communication has a universal format because it supports text, audio, and video channels, improving the ways in which people connect. In this case, digital media has become a modern form of communication among its users, and it has replaced traditional letters and telephones in full. Hence, even if people are far away from each other, they can write letters or call their family members, friends, colleagues, or anyone they want.

V. Sample Conclusion of a Braided Essay

The historical evolution from letters to digital media is real evidence of a dramatic shift in communication styles and human interactions that people have today. While letters suggested depth and emotional connection between senders and recipients, telephony allowed them to hear each other irrespective of distance. Furthermore, digital media helps people connect with each other anywhere in the world. In turn, each stage in the evolution of communication reflects changes in trends, values, and technologies. As a result, a better understanding of this evolution can provide new ideas into not just how people communicate but also the changing nature of social interactions and human relationships.

20 Tips for Writing a Braided Essay

When writing a braided essay, it is essential to intertwine different narratives harmoniously. In this case, selecting correct strands that are distinctive and share a thematic connection at the same time allows writers to connect and contrast each other meaningfully. Hence, you should think about these 10 dos and 10 don’ts when writing your braided essay.

10 Dos for Writing a Braided Essay to Consider:

Choose Complementary Strands
Maintain Clarity in Each Strand
Use Smooth Transitions Between Threads
Balance Strands in a braided essay
Highlight Connections and Contrasts
Write About Varied Critical Points
Keep Your Audience in Mind
Reflect on a Bigger Picture
Revise for Cohesion
Experiment With Structure
Overcomplicating Strands
Neglecting Transitions
Losing a Focus on a Central Theme
Using Unrelated Strands
Disregarding the Purpose of Each Strand
Missing a Balance Between Strands
Providing Non-Connected Critical Points
Repeating the Information in a braided essay
Forgetting to Proofread
Ignoring a Braided Narrative Structure

Summing Up on How to Write a Good Braided Essay

Select Interconnected Strands: Choose narrative threads that are distinct yet thematically linked, allowing for writing a rich and meaningful braided essay.
Develop Each Strand Fully: Focus on each narrative with enough detail and depth, ensuring that each thread stands strong on its own while contributing to the overall theme of a paper.
Provide Smooth Transitions: Seamlessly intertwine your narratives, using thoughtful transitions to maintain the logical order of ideas and coherence of the overall essay.
Maintain a Balanced Approach: Give equal weight to each narrative strand, avoiding the dominance of one strand over others.
Highlight Connections and Contrasts: Use connections of different narratives to draw out and emphasize both the similarities and the differences, enriching the reader’s understanding.
Engage Readers Emotionally and Intellectually: Strive to connect with your readers on both an emotional and intellectual level, making your braided essay writing both thought-provoking and relatable.
Keep a Central Theme in Your Focus: Ensure that all narrative strands correspond to each other and explore a central theme of your paper.
Revise for Cohesion and Clarity: Use your time to revise your essay, focusing on improving its coherence, unity, and clarity.
Incorporate Personal and Analytical Elements: Blend personal narratives with analytical insights or research, suggesting a well-detailed argument or story.
End With a Reflective Conclusion: Conclude by connecting together various strands, offering a final synthesis that covers a central theme and leaves a lasting impact on readers.

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The braided essay may be the most effective form for our times

I was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. The nouns in that sentence define nearly all of my writing. I write from a first-person point of view, from a place that defines and makes that “I”—I am as much Salt and Lake and City as anything. Salt is a place noun but, here, also acts as an adjective, describing the kind of lake. Salty also describes a kind of writing—irreverent, maybe even sailor-like. The lake part is misleading if it suggests to you potable water and schools of fish. This lake is undrinkable. Until recently, the city part also seemed inaccurate. Tumbleweeds still roll down State Street—street number one on the grid, a perfect square, each road big enough to turn an ox-cart around. The city seems more like a map of a city than a city itself.

Salt Lake City is an intense kind of place. The Mormon Church dominates most of everything—or at least it did while I was growing up. Or seemed to. My parents, having both been raised in the church, then having left Utah so my dad could go to grad school in New York City, thought Mormonism stifled their hippy ways. They would have stayed in New York, but the job market was weak, and my dad, a geological engineer, found a job with his grandfather’s drill-bit diamond company back in Salt Lake.

Geology, or at least the results of geological formations, brings a lot of people to Utah. Brigham Young, the second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, after trekking up the Rocky Mountains, wended his way down through what is now called Emigration Canyon, saw the vast bowl that was Salt Lake Valley, and declared, “This is the place.” No matter that the big body of water—which would have suggested to any pioneer that this valley was a good place to start a new civilization—turned out to be full of salt. The mountain streams would supply the pioneers with enough water to turn this desert into a Midwestern oasis, with less persecution than they had suffered in Illinois and Missouri.

The glaciers that cut through the canyons of the Wasatch Mountains; the rivers that flowed between banks of granite cut by those glaciers; the water that irrigated farms and chchchchchhed out of lawn sprinklers; and the river Jordan, which collected all the canyon streams, and their attendant sewage and pollutants, into one and funneled the leftovers into the stagnant Great Salt Lake, were powerful forces. The Mormon Church, Manifest Destiny, and 19th-century Revivalist culture proved to be equally powerful at shaping those mountains and those rivers.

The church pushed, tucking rivers underground, turning a brown valley green, pumping water up and down and around the valley until it looked like a kind of Eden—a green Zion. Orchards and gardens, fountains and trees. Sometimes, though, the mountains pushed back. In 1983, 700 inches of snow, rather than the usual 300, fell. That spring, rain compounded the melting snow, and those ox-cart wide streets turned to rivers. As much as the Mormons had sculpted those mountains to fit their grid, the mountains took their turn to undo it.

What is creative nonfiction writing but the shaping and reshaping of self against fact? You take a personal story and give it syntax, grammar, language, punctuation. The simple fact of putting it on paper reshapes it. But now you’ve got to give it context, associate meaning to it. So next to that personal story, you set a paragraph about apples, or condoms, or chickens, or gun violence. Suddenly, your personal story is reshaped by these new facts, and the facts of your personal story cut into the hard statistics of your paragraph about imported apples or the failure rate of condoms.

The facts are the glacier to the soft canyon of your own history. You see the history newly. You see the facts a little more softly.

The geological forces that shaped Salt Lake City, and the work the church did to shape the geology, played out on the bodies and psyches of Mormon children. Or, at least, this child. Technically, I was Mormon if only by relation. My grandmothers were both LDS. My parents were both baptized although I never was. I went to church on Sundays only when I slept over at my grandma’s on Saturday nights. School was mostly fine, except when it wasn’t, or when my friends couldn’t come over to play because my parents drank wine, or when my friends went to after-school church activities like Mutual and I went over to the non-Mormon neighbor’s house where my body got shaped further by the neighborhood boys. At some ages, we’ll do anything to belong. In my book Quench Your Thirst with Salt , in an essay about a slide that happened after that 700 inches of snow melted and changed the landscape of many parts of Utah, and also about the hernia I developed from carrying my twin sisters around, I braided together scenes of land and scenes of body.

Symptom: I was showering in my mom and dad’s bathroom when my mom opened the shower curtain to hand me a washcloth and noticed the lump. She asked how long it had been there. I did not like her looking at my vagina. I told her as much. But she kept looking anyway. I told her I was OK and showed her my neat trick. If you pushed on the lump, it went away. I thought she would like that—it was a little like ironing—press it down and the protruding wrinkle goes away. She did not like it. She called the doctor.

Symptom: For a while, those floods transformed the riverbeds and the canyon floors, but the most dramatic changes came from underneath. As the water sopped into the sandy ground far above in the mountains, the underlying valley aquifers began to fill. The aquifer just above Thistle filled to the brink and then it bubbled over like any lid that tries too hard to hold the contents of its burgeoning cup. The land that capped the groundwater spectacularly split from the underlying ground and steamed right in to the town of Thistle. Thistle—dry, pokey, brittle. Nothing wet about it. Not usually. Not until 1983, when the rules changed and the lid was no longer tight enough and the cup no longer big enough and the whole side of the mountain shifted its weight up and over and then down on the town of Thistle.

How literally can you take the metaphor between land and the body? My body houses a number of species of mite and yeast and bacterium and occasionally another human body. A chemical imbalance of any sort can disrupt that number, but even if I manage to kill all the mites off of my eyelashes, if they were to go extinct all over me, six billion other human-planets would continue to sustain the very same species of mite. The Earth, though it may have six billion other brothers and sisters in the universe, as far as we know, is the only one to house anywhere from one-and-a-half to six million species on it. See how a body repairs itself. See how a planet does.

Reality is not my strong suit, which is rough for a nonfiction writer. Happily, the braided essay lets me pop in and out of different realities—not so much manipulating the facts as pacing them—and digest reality in drops.

Forces that shape your childhood parallel forces that shape the natural world. That should be an easy enough metaphor to make. But add toxins to the mix, and you have a ready-made drama on your hands. In Salt Lake, drought presses down from the parching August sky. Mercury and nitrates trickle downstream, layering the Great Salt Lake with bird-killing bands of poison. Oil refineries hidden behind the folds of the mountains spew layers of carbon, which combine with the parching sky to stave the clouds off. In Salt Lake, there used to be rain in August. Combine that dark narrative with a story about a girl who was born in that valley, whose friends weren’t allowed to come to her house because she wasn’t a member of the predominant religion. Add a trickle of paternal alcoholism and a band of sexual abuse. Press those layers together in memory’s time-lapse. Let them sit for a few years. Start writing. Start digging.

A problem for both memoir and nature writing is that some authors assume that nature and hardship inherently signify meaning: an addiction overcome must be meaningful; a bird, flying, must be meaningful.

I do think, depending on how you write it, that birds and addictions can make meaning, but I think meaning often lies in what F. Scott Fitzgerald called “first-rate intelligence”: the ability to hold two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time. The tension between two unlike things working against each other does, with enough stress and repetition, press out meaning.

Environmental writing, like any political writing, can be preachy, overly earnest, and super reverential. The authorial habit of invoking birds and trees and turtles, and imagining that just invoking these names conveys significance, can be off-putting to anyone who doesn’t think turtles or birds are inherently significant. As for critics of memoir, there’s a whole contingent of people who say, You’re only twenty-seven years old: how can you write a memoir? You haven’t even lived yet. You’re not famous. You’re not an addict. Your insights about life and living cannot possibly be significant.

In fact, it is memoir that offers something unique to environmental writing. By situating the self in the story, the writer personalizes what in some nature writing might come off as eulogizing and obvious. When I toggle between myself and the rest of the world, not only do I stop myself from boring myself with what I already know, I also find surprising commonalties with prairie dogs, or gutters, or the way geological formations seem permanent until they’re not, which reminds me that my bad habits or unattractive character traits, like writing about myself, are not necessarily permanent either.

The braided essay isn’t a new form. In fact, I think nearly every essay uses a kind of braiding—a New Yorker story about Bill Clinton’s fundraising skills, for example, toggles to scenes from his Arkansas childhood. But radical braiding is a foundation of creative nonfiction. The first book I read that I consider creative nonfiction was Terry Tempest Williams’s Refuge . Braiding together stories of the Bear Lake Migratory Bird Refuge and her mother’s cancer, Williams develops the idea that environments, personal and global, are inextricably related: the way the cancer moves, conversations move; diagnoses, hope, healing, and death proceed as the plover, the seagull, and the long-billed curlew migrate.

Perhaps the braided form is most effective when the political and the personal are trying to explain and understand each other. The process of pulling together two disparate ideas allows for surprise. In an essay I wrote about geothermal power in Iceland, I asked the question: although geothermal power is a sustainable, green energy, is it infinite? Will the supplies run out? Research revealed that an overtaxed well could, in fact, run dry, and the power produced by that particular natural hot-spring could come to an end. In a parallel story, I got mad at my husband and stormed off, wondering whether or not a church on a hill was Catholic, and angry that he had made me walk there if he didn’t want to know. Neither of us would let the issue go. I wandered by the ocean long enough to make myself abysmally sad. I stayed gone long enough to get really mad. I came home and fell asleep on the bathroom floor. When I awoke, I couldn’t find my husband. I found him waiting for me across the street, letting it go, forgiving me. The essay led me to understand that our relationship might be elastic and strong, possibly infinite in its resources, but perhaps I should be cautious before I tax it.

The form of the braided essay embodies the subject of the essay. The braided form is one of resistance. The further apart the threads of the braid, the more the essay resists easy substitutions and answers. I write politically, but I have found that political writing is often shallow and ideological; in political writing I agree with, I often find nothing new, and in political writing I don’t agree with, I find nothing persuasive. I keep my Facebook friends close as we confirm each other’s beliefs, sarcastically commenting, “But her emails!” on every new political spectacle. We don’t even have to explain. But the braided form expands the conversation, presses upon the hard lines of ideology, stretches the choices beyond right or left, one or the other. Metaphor helps challenge the stultified pathways of our neural networks and test the elasticity of thought. Two ideas. One time. The brain resists new ways of thinking, but resistance is an important political tool. Resistance is the metaphor that will rule all other metaphors.

I tend to write in braided essay form, but in a recent essay about wolves, I took it to a different level. In this essay, I didn’t make so many explicit transitions. Instead, I used the research itself to catapult the essay’s questioning. I found “62 Interesting Facts about Wolves” using Google and considered how each one was really a fact about humans. If so many of the facts involve human-and-wolf interaction, can we imagine the wolf as a separate existence-worthy species? Or are wolves only a reflection of human fears, violent capacities, love of wilderness, ability to adapt? Should humans save them to save these elements of ourselves, or does wolf existence matter for reasons beyond its relationship to the human?

If the essay is a chalkboard onto which we scrape our ontological questions, then this essay fits right in. Who are wolves? Are humans wolves? Can facts exist without humans? If the wolf changes, does the very being of wolf change? As climate change and habitat loss force the wolf to breed with the coyote, do we lose not only a species, or even two species, but also a metaphor for how we understand ourselves? How is the wolf and human already a braided idea? If one is being eradicated, is the other? Or is it just the idea of the other that is eradicated?

Is braided form a broken form? Perhaps. If so, perhaps it is the form that best represents a broken self and a broken world. But there is also something reparative about the braided essay. The way one dips into one section of research, looking for that one right word to express the personal brokenness. As you stitch an essay together, you stitch yourself into the world. The world, stitched by you, is made more whole. I think it’s incumbent upon us to make a case for what we believe. I also think it’s incumbent upon us to check our beliefs against a prismatic understanding of facts. Humility and curiosity come from the same place. “How does the world work?” and “Who am I?” are two sides of the same coin. The personal story asks the reader to hear you say, Isn’t this what it’s like to be human? The research-based story says, See how being human is like being everything else in the world? Strange and wondrous. Wild and mutable. The job of the creative nonfiction writer is to say, Here I am world, and here is the world, and out of this oxymoronic writing, we are here to make each other.

Thanks for putting a name to Thanks for putting a name to a style of writing that I seem to naturally fall into. I can’t wait to read some of your essays. I so enjoy reading essays that explore a sense of place, and the myriad relations that grow from it.

Writing the Braided Essay

Available section, summer 2024 | 24u1.

In her Creative Nonfiction essay “The Braided Essay as Social Justice,” Nicole Walker argues: “The braided essay isn’t a new form. In fact, I think nearly every essay uses a kind of braiding…perhaps,” she continues, “the braided form is most effective when the political and the personal are trying to explain and understand each other. Among personal essays, braided essays are a form particularly welcoming to the vast array of ways—our obsessions, expertise, and contexts--that each of us uses to try to explain the personal. How distinct do the threads in a braided essay need to be and how regular does the movement between strands need to remain in order to guide readers through the piece?

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The Braided Essay

The image of the braid is powerfully suggestive of attempts to reconcile threads that are sometimes difficult to reconcile. In this way, the braided essay can be a helpful teacher: an exercise in creative nonfiction that encourages non-linear storytelling. Three narratives are brought together by connecting words or images that puts the threads into conversation with each other. This can be a refreshing change of pace in the ELA classroom, where so much essay writing instruction is built around the five-paragraph essay rarely seen outside the classroom.

Off the Beaten Path The memory images so faded they appear to be edged in sepia, the echo of a character’s voice from something dear and dog-eared, the conversation fragments still playing in our heads on an unpredictable loop: bringing the flotsam and jetsam floating around in our minds into contact can produce new stories of self. In their book Beyond Literary Analysis , Allison and Rebekah describe how we can help students explore ideas by inviting them to sort evidence by categories. I love this suggestion because it asks students to identify connections while looking for footprints. The braided essay offers a similar opportunity by asking students to traverse memory lane by visiting it in a deliberately roundabout way. The braiding paves the way for exploratory writing that can help them see every thought and image as a new, possible fruitful connection. What may appear off-topic or loosely connected in a different type of essay is, in the braided essay, seen as worthy of further contemplation.

Before we wrote our braided essays, we studied three mentor texts. We looked at Brian Doyle’s essay to study explicit craft writing moves in prose, while we looked at Heather Swan’s and W.H. Auden’s poems to study the use of structure and allusion:

“Joyas Voladoras” by Brian Doyle
“Victor” by Heather Swan
“Musee des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden

The stated parameters for writing the braided essay were as follows:

At least one of the braid narratives should be personal and involve details from memory
At least one of the braid narratives should include factual information gleaned from research
Use at least three mentor text moves we’ve studied together (from “Joyas Voladoras,” “Victor,” and/or “Musée des Beaux Arts”) to help you build your narratives
Use connecting images, words, ideas or even events that can get these narratives to speak to each other as you braid them

Mentor Text Move: Repetition

A hummingbird’s heart beats ten times a second. A hummingbird’s heart is the size of a pencil eraser. A hummingbird’s heart is a lot of the hummingbird. (“Joyas Voladoras”)

Doyle’s essay is one that can be revisited endlessly for its delightful consideration of the hummingbird. As the reader is led through a maze of facts about this “flying jewel,” they began to realize that Doyle is talking about more than one thing at once: the hummingbird’s heart, the size of one’s heart compared to the interior chambers of the blue whale’s heart, the question of how one will spend their heartbeats in their lifetime. My students and I discussed how skillfully Doyle’s essay stages an animal encounter as an opportunity for self-confrontation. The roundabout path to the question of how one will spend their heartbeats was mapped out by the careful layering of facts, extended analogy, and use of repetition. We can observe how one of my students adopted these craft moves in one of her “threads”:

The repetition of the word, “Butterflies,” at the beginning of successive sentences mimics Doyle’s use of anaphora with the phrase, “A hummingbird’s heart.” Exploring the experience of introversion through the image of butterflies beautifully weaves the next thread’s reference to the words “floating” through her head – she recalls the times when she’s been asked, “Why are you so quiet?”. The poignant mention of how a human’s touch will erase some of the butterfly’s wing color, thus making it more vulnerable to predators, indirectly yet effectively suggests how an introvert may feel enervated after spending too much time interacting with others.

Mentor Text Move: End with a question

What war do we think / we’re winning? (“Victor”)

The braided essay is often woven by threads representing the past, present, and future. It occurred to us as we read and studied Heather Swan’s poem “Victor” that the present of the poem registered the process of disappearing – how bee populations are declining as a result of toxic pesticides. “Victor” is the brand name of a line of pesticides; by giving the name to the poem, Swan invites the reader to think about the cognitive dissonance involved with linking victory with chemicals that contribute to the decline of our precious pollinators. In one of his essay threads seen below, my student deliberately invokes the antithesis of “slowly” and “fast,” as he draws attention to the declining health of the global ocean. Much like the beekeeper in Swan’s poem, my student contemplates the deterioration of something inextricably linked to human survival. In his earlier thread, he makes reference to the coral composing reefs, something not frequently thought about but another example of a rapidly vanishing keystone species.

By ending his thread with a question – “Who will this really be hurting at the end?” – this student mimics the closing lines of Swan’s poem. This terminal placement has been a powerful craft move to imitate. Usually, my students reserve questions for an essay’s opening “hook.” Placing it at the thread’s closure keeps the conversation in play with the other essay threads and hammers the point that self-annihilation constitutes the void where other species disappear.

Mentor Text Move: Use a line from one of the mentor texts as a sentence starter

About suffering they were never wrong, / The old Masters: how well they understood

(“Musée des Beaux Arts”)

The pleasure of writing a braided essay can be found in abandoning non-linear storytelling about the personal – the pressure to plot a narrative onto a trajectory of unfolding points in linear time may create some artificiality in how the topic is being discussed. Instead, introducing a topic in the first thread of the narrative braid, then temporarily abandoning it in the second, only to loop back and pick up the thread again can be the circular motion creating a pressure valve that gives vent to difficult-to-express emotions. As I was thinking about which mentor text writing moves to practice with my students, my mind kept returning to W.H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts.” This ekphrastic poem embeds narratives: a myth (Icarus) is alluded to in a painting (Bruegel’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”) that is described in the second half of Auden’s poem. The idea of nested stories is a helpful model to have in mind when trying to braid unwieldy elements and create texture. Most interestingly from my students’ perspective was how the embedded myth of Icarus – and the image of his fall from the sky – offered a cautionary tale about the limits of human ambition. As seen below, my student’s final essay thread begins by echoing Doyle’s description of the hummingbird flight, which is physically demanding. The image resonates with the description of the drowning Icarus in Auden’s poem, who tried to will an illusion – a boy who could fly with artificial wings – into existence.

My student cleverly weaves in the imagery for these nested stories as she ponders the transition from youth to adulthood – something Icarus was not able to do. By echoing images and lines in her braided essay, she contemplates her own coming of age story and how the journey began seemingly without hardship, “just cruising through time.” These echoes almost work like a musical riff, creating an expectation that you know where the writer is going. By incorporating the poem’s first line (“About suffering they were never wrong”) as a sentence starter for her concluding thought, she invokes the speaker’s thoughts about the skill of the painters whose works are displayed on the museum wall in Auden’s poem. The common experience of human suffering, so vividly expressed on painting canvas, is undeniable, but my student’s variation on the theme – “but what we do with that suffering is ours to decide” – circumvents an attitude of defeat and inevitability.

Writing braided essays mid-school year strengthened the sense of community in our classroom. For many teachers, personal narrative writing is reserved at the beginning of the year, when we’re trying to connect new faces with new names. Giving students the opportunity to express stories of self-identity in an exploratory, experimental manner during a time associated with all kinds of tumult was the right chord to strike.

How would you teach the braided essay in your classroom? How can we rethink the role of essay writing in school? Share your reflections in the comments below or find me on Twitter @dispatches_b222 .

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How to Write a Braided Essay: Case Study

At a recent residency for the Regis University’s Mile High MFA program, I presented a craft seminar on the process of creating a braided essay, a beautiful form of the essay that weaves different “threads” together. I used as a case study one writer’s revision process that focused on framing and metaphor-patterning and turned a rough compilation of “this happened and then that” into a beautiful meditation on personal and universal “black holes.” River Teeth: A Journal of Narrative Nonfiction picked up this essay within a couple of weeks of the writer (okay, he’s my husband) submitting it.

After presenting my craft seminar, I had enough students and fellow faculty come up to me after the presentation saying how much they had learned about revision, framing, and metaphor in the braided essay that I asked Essay Daily if I could publish a write-up of the seminar with them. They said, yes! And here it is:

Kathryn Winograd On the Intimacies of Revision.

Leonard Winograd’s essay,” The Physics of Sorrow,” appears in River Teeth Journal: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative, Issue 21. For readers with access to Project Muse, you can read it here . Or, even better, subscribe to River Teeth here .

Published by Kathryn Winograd

Kathryn Winograd is a Colorado poet, essayist, and photographer. Her work includes Air Into Breath, a Colorado Book Award winner and alternate for the Yale Series, Flying Beneath the Dog Star: Poems from the Pandemic, a semi-finalist for the Finishing Line Press 2020 Open Chapbook Contest, and Slow Arrow: Unearthing the Frail Children, a Bronze Medalist in Essay for the 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards, and her newest book, This Visible Speaking: Catching Light Through The Camera’s Eye. Her essays have been published in numerous journals including River Teeth and Terrain.org and her poetry in places as diverse as The New Yorker and Cricket Magazine for Children. View all posts by Kathryn Winograd

I think that you already know how impressed Tom and I are with Leonard’s essay! And thanks for your recent comment!

Ahhh deb!! Smokey up here!

WRIT42602 - Writing the Braided Essay

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Amanda Parrish Morgan is the author of Stroller (Bloomsbury) which The New Yorker named one of the best books of 2022, noting that “the central strength of the book is not comprehensiveness but the way the stroller, and Morgan’s experience of her own strollering years, become an omnidirectional magnet, pulling disparate material into friendly proximity.”

Some of Amanda’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Wired, The Rumpus, LitHub, Guernica, The Millions, n+1, The American Scholar, The Washington Post and elsewhere.

Amanda lives in Connecticut with her husband and two kids where she teaches at Fairfield University, The University of Chicago’s Graham School , and the Westport Writers’ Workshop .

WRIT42602 - 24U1 - Writing the Braided Essay

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Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Finding Your Footing: Sub-genres in Creative Nonfiction

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Memoir is perhaps the “flagship” of creative nonfiction, the sub-genre most familiar to those outside of literary and academic circles. Most human beings lead interesting lives filled with struggle, conflict, drama, decisions, turning points, etc.; but not all of these stories translate into successful memoir. The success of the memoir depends on the writer’s ability to sequence events, to tell a story, and to describe characters in believable ways, among other things. Writer Carol Spindel reminds us that in the mid-2000s a scandal surrounding writer James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces erupted after he was forced to admit that large sections of his “memoir” were “fictionalized:” he’d embellished, made things up. A memoir that strays from the truth is not far removed from lying, because regardless of the writer’s intention, the story deceives the reader. Spindel writes that, unlike in novels, “The knowledge expressed in the memoir has the legitimacy acquired through first-hand experience.” Good memoir also provides reflection on the events that have happened to the writer, so it “can give readers insights into society, and even into the larger meaning of life itself” (Spindel).

The Braided Essay

The braided essay is a good tool for introducing writers—especially student writers—to the CNF genre. In a braided essay, the writer has multiple “threads” or “through-lines” of material, each on a different subject. The essay is broken into sections using medial white space, lines of white space on a page where there are no words (much like stanzas in poetry), and each time there is a section break, the writer moves from one “thread” to another. Braided essays take their name from this alternating of storylines, as well as from the threads the story contains; there are usually three, though to have four or two is also possible. Though there is not a strict formula for success, the form usually contains at least one thread that is very personal and based on memory, and at least one thread that is heavily researched. Often, the threads seem very disparate at first, but by the climax of the essay, the threads being to blend together; connections are revealed.

Topical Writing

Perhaps the genre closest to an essay or a blog post, topical writing is an author’s take on a given topic of specific interest to the reader. For example, nature writing and travel writing have been popular for centuries, while food writing is gathering steam via cooking blogs. Nature writing involves exploring the writer’s experience in a beautiful and thoroughly rendered natural setting, such as a cabin on a mountaintop. Travel Writing, as the name implies, details the writer’s experiences while traveling, whether by choice on a vacation or out of necessity due to business or serving in the military. Finally, contemporary food writing explores the writer’s connection to cooking and enjoying food of any variety. All three will occasionally step into the writer’s personal experiences via memories, but these episodes are always related to the topic driving the essay.

Whatever form a creative nonfiction piece takes, it must remain based in the author’s actual lived experiences and perceptions. Like academic writing, the piece must be accurately researched and the sources must be documented. Finally, the author must also always leave room to reflect on how their experiences have shaped them into the person they are now. It’s the reflection that makes the reader feel satisfied: it offers something to the reader that they can carry with them, a way of seeing the world.

Works Cited

Cokinos, Christopher. “Organized Curiosity: Creative Writers and the Research Life.” Writer’s Chronicle 42.7: April/May 2015. 92-104. Print.

Ironman, Sean. “Writing the Z-Axis: Reflection in the Nonfiction Workshop.” Writer’s

Chronicle 47.1: September 2014. 42-49. Print.

Spindel, Carol. "When Ambiguity Becomes Deception: The Ethics of Memoir." Writer's

Chronicle (2007): n. pag. AWP . Association of Writing Programs, 1 Dec. 2007. Web. 13

Sept. 2015.

Terrill, Richard. "Creative Nonfiction and Poetry." Writer's Chronicle (2004): n. pag. AWP .

Association of Writing Programs, Oct.-Nov. 2004. Web. 3 Oct. 2015.

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The Braided Approach to Memoir

Our lives are made up of many strands—some of experience, some of memory, some of meditation and reflection, some of ongoing action. Those who write memoir must find the appropriate forms for ensuring that the textures of life will have their full expression.

What we know about the braided essay offers us a plan for making sure that we put a fully lived life on the page. Taking our cues from this form can invite us to dramatize important moments from our lives, blend the past with the present and the future, and find a place from which we can reflect, meditate, think, and make meaning.

So here’s a writing activity designed to allow you to wrap past and present through the lens of action and memory, to move from the role of participant to spectator, to project the course of our lives through the present and on into the future.

First, identify a line of action from your past, something that has stayed with you long beyond its resolution in real time. I might, for example, choose the night I stole my father’s car when I was a teenager. Write the first scene of this narrative thread.

Second, find another story line from the present that in some way connects to the one from your past. You don’t need to know how it connects at this point. Trust your instinct. Say to yourself, “When I think of that story from my past, I also think of this story from the present.” Write the first scene of that present-day narrative.

Third, slip into a more reflective mode. Maybe begin with the line, “If I could tell my younger self what I know now, I’d say. . . .” Speak from a wiser perspective. Allow yourself to make meaning from the past experience.

Fourth, attach what you’ve written in the third step to the present-day story line. Maybe begin with the line, “And what would my younger self tell me now? Maybe he or she would tell me to. . . .”

Fifth, continue to wrap steps two and three around the first one until you arrive at a place where you can make some sort of statement about the future. Maybe begin with the line, “I know that tomorrow. . . .”

Once you have a draft, you can decide whether to take liberties with the form of the braid. The purpose of the exercise is to invite past, present, and future onto the page through the discourses of dramatization and reflection. Now that you’ve gathered your material, you can relax the form if you wish or make it even more stringent, depending on how well it serves what you’ve come to the page to think more about.

The strands of our lives are multiple and complex. Our memoirs should formally allow those strands to converse, and by so doing, to make them resonate with us and our readers.

15 Comments

You have no idea how much your post helps me this morning. If only I could get some discipline and WRITE. I have a book inside of me dying to get out. I find some reason to ñot sit and my desk and WRITE. Time’s awasting. I’m not getting any younger. But meantime, I enjoy what others write. Especially your latest book: “Late One Night.” It kept me interested until the very end. Thanks!

I’m so glad to hear that his was helpful to you this morning, Eileen! And thank you so much for the kind words about “Late One Night.”

Brilliance, as usual, without pridefulness–not to overlook the part-the-waters miracle clarity. Wow.

Thanks, Lee.

Thanks, Roy. You have me wondering whether this braided approach works for writing poems–maybe through different images, etc?

Lee, you’re a godsend. I have spent three years on writing scenes for my memoir, only to hit a brick wall when I tried to find the right structure. After being suggested to write a braided narrative, i first tried a frame narrative, couldn’t get it to work for me. When I decided to write a braided narrative, I searched different articles online, and thankfully came across your piece.

Thank you so much for your wealth of knowledge on this subject! Don

You’re very welcome, Don. I’m glad I could be of help. I put a new post up every Monday. You might also be interested in my craft book, Telling Stories: The Craft of Narrative and the Writing Life , which will be out October 1, although friends tell me their pre-ordered copies from Amazon.com have already started to arrive. At any rate, thanks so much for visiting my blog and for taking the time to leave this comment. I wish you all the best for your work.

I am glad there is a name for what I have written. Critiques say I should be more chronological. Others like it, but they know me. I don’t know if I CAN rearrange it.

Thanks. I enjoy this and others of your posts.

Thanks for reading my blog and for taking the time to leave a comment. The thing I love about creative nonfiction is the fact that there are so many different approaches–and all of them are valid!

I am stuck on deciding on the right structure. I’m leaning toward braided narratives. Could you possibly shoot some advice? I’ll give you some info on my memoir if you email me. Thank you!

[email protected]

Josh, if you’re interested in braided approaches, find a book called “Writing Creative Nonfiction,” edited by Carolyn Forche and Philip Gerard, and read the piece on braided essays by Brenda Miller. Good luck!

A friend forwarded this to me. Your exercise just produced ideas and an essay outline ready for development. Appreciate the template. I have struggled with how to add complexity to linear pieces: braiding is the answer. Thank you!

Heidi, I’m so glad that my exercise worked for you, and I thank you for taking the time to leave this comment.

This was a very helpful post. I am struggling with structure on a rough draft of my memoir which I feel could benefit from being rearranged into a more present/past/present/past braid. This post gave me an idea of how to go back and examine what I have and rework. Structure is my biggest challenge. Thank you very much.

I’m so glad you found my post helpful. Thank you for reading and for taking the time to leave a comment.

I hadn’t heard of braided memoire writing before this – thanks for explaining, Lee.

btw, I love anything to do with books & would be thrilled if you’d write a guest blog post for my site, which is for anyone who enjoys writing, or books, and all the arts. If you think it might be fun or helpful to have my followers (who total about 10k across my various social media) meet you, here’s the link for general guidelines: https://wp.me/p6OZAy-1eQ

best – da-AL

A Guide to Lyric Essay Writing: 4 Evocative Essays and Prompts to Learn From

Poets can learn a lot from blurring genres. Whether getting inspiration from fiction proves effective in building characters or song-writing provides a musical tone, poetry intersects with a broader literary landscape. This shines through especially in lyric essays, a form that has inspired articles from the Poetry Foundation and Purdue Writing Lab , as well as become the concept for a 2015 anthology titled We Might as Well Call it the Lyric Essay.

Put simply, the lyric essay is a hybrid, creative nonfiction form that combines the rich figurative language of poetry with the longer-form analysis and narrative of essay or memoir. Oftentimes, it emerges as a way to explore a big-picture idea with both imagery and rigor. These four examples provide an introduction to the writing style, as well as spotlight tips for creating your own.

1. Draft a “braided essay,” like Michelle Zauner in this excerpt from Crying in H Mart .

Before Crying in H Mart became a bestselling memoir, Michelle Zauner—a writer and frontwoman of the band Japanese Breakfast—published an essay of the same name in The New Yorker . It opens with the fascinating and emotional sentence, “Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart.” This first line not only immediately propels the reader into Zauner’s grief, but it also reveals an example of the popular “braided essay” technique, which weaves together two distinct but somehow related experiences.

Throughout the work, Zauner establishes a parallel between her and her mother’s relationship and traditional Korean food. “You’ll likely find me crying by the banchan refrigerators, remembering the taste of my mom’s soy-sauce eggs and cold radish soup,” Zauner writes, illuminating the deeply personal and mystifying experience of grieving through direct, sensory imagery.

2. Experiment with nonfiction forms , like Hadara Bar-Nadav in “ Selections from Babyland . ”

Lyric essays blend poetic qualities and nonfiction qualities. Hadara Bar-Nadav illustrates this experimental nature in Selections from Babyland , a multi-part lyric essay that delves into experiences with infertility. Though Bar-Nadav’s writing throughout this piece showcases rhythmic anaphora—a definite poetic skill—it also plays with nonfiction forms not typically seen in poetry, including bullet points and a multiple-choice list.

For example, when recounting unsolicited advice from others, Bar-Nadav presents their dialogue in the following way:

I heard about this great _____________.

a. acupuncturist

b. chiropractor

d. shamanic healer

e. orthodontist ( can straighter teeth really make me pregnant ?)

This unexpected visual approach feels reminiscent of an article or quiz—both popular nonfiction forms—and adds dimension and white space to the lyric essay.

3. Travel through time , like Nina Boutsikaris in “ Some Sort of Union .”

Nina Boutsikaris is the author of I’m Trying to Tell You I’m Sorry: An Intimacy Triptych , and her work has also appeared in an anthology of the best flash nonfiction. Her essay “Some Sort of Union,” published in Hippocampus Magazine , was a finalist in the magazine’s Best Creative Nonfiction contest.

Since lyric essays are typically longer and more free verse than poems, they can be a way to address a larger idea or broader time period. Boutsikaris does this in “Some Sort of Union,” where the speaker drifts from an interaction with a romantic interest to her childhood.

“They were neighbors, the girl and the air force paramedic. She could have seen his front door from her high-rise window if her window faced west rather than east,” Boutsikaris describes. “When she first met him two weeks ago, she’d been wearing all white, buying a wedge of cheap brie at the corner market.”

In the very next paragraph, Boutskiras shifts this perspective and timeline, writing, “The girl’s mother had been angry with her when she was a child. She had needed something from the girl that the girl did not know how to give. Not the way her mother hoped she would.”

As this example reveals, examining different perspectives and timelines within a lyric essay can flesh out a broader understanding of who a character is.

4. Bring in research, history, and data, like Roxane Gay in “ What Fullness Is .”

Like any other form of writing, lyric essays benefit from in-depth research. And while journalistic or scientific details can sometimes throw off the concise ecosystem and syntax of a poem, the lyric essay has room for this sprawling information.

In “What Fullness Is,” award-winning writer Roxane Gay contextualizes her own ideas and experiences with weight loss surgery through the history and culture surrounding the procedure.

“The first weight-loss surgery was performed during the 10th century, on D. Sancho, the king of León, Spain,” Gay details. “He was so fat that he lost his throne, so he was taken to Córdoba, where a doctor sewed his lips shut. Only able to drink through a straw, the former king lost enough weight after a time to return home and reclaim his kingdom.”

“The notion that thinness—and the attempt to force the fat body toward a state of culturally mandated discipline—begets great rewards is centuries old.”

Researching and knowing this history empowers Gay to make a strong central point in her essay.

Bonus prompt: Choose one of the techniques above to emulate in your own take on the lyric essay. Happy writing!

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Braiding: Using and Understanding Complexity in Creative Nonfiction

This critical thesis examines the structure of braiding and how two authors use it to depict complex topics: BK Loren in her essay “The Evolution of Hunger” and Rebecca Solnit in her book The Faraway Nearby. The structure for a braided essay includes three types of strands: the research line, the narrative through line, and the past-tense strand. This thesis probes techniques to braid themes, such as direct statements, using related scenes and terms, theme variations, and other types of intertwining. Techniques for guiding the reader through complexity are analyzed, such as how Loren connects strand types and how they both use clear first sentences. Finally, it also shows how the authors use braiding to explore complex feelings about family members.

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This article explores the genre of creative nonfiction, highlighting the largely hidden processes that influence our appraisals of it. Using a framework that builds from genre theory, this work argues that by exposing and confronting the complexity of the mechanisms by which we judge writing to be factual, we can productively intervene in debates about writing’s veracity, and more broadly, we can better understand why we tend to discount divergent views on facts.

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In an effort to write responsively to young adult literature in a collaborative, reflective, and purposeful way, I explore here a classroom experience encouraged by Miller and Paola’s (2004) Tell It Slant, Kajder’s (2010) Adolescents and Digital literacies: Learning Alongside our Students (2010), and NWP’s (2010) Because Digital Writing Matters. The braided essay, derived from the lyric essay (Fischer, 1976), offers students a unique way to collaborate and respond to young adult literature. The braided essay involves the repetition of an idea. For example, two students’ collaborative braided essay involved pulling out meaningful quotations from literature, and they braided their essay around those quotations. No matter how the repeated idea is handled, the repetition is “braided” into the essay- and at the same time set apart. The two different parts, the essay and the repeated idea, are woven together so that they flow. The braided essay offers an interesting way to collaborate and respond to young adult literature. Since this essay form is based off the lyric essay, the option of the musical addition through a multimedia product is natural segue. Students can learn to be reflective in transactional ways as they develop their emerging voice in writing. This braided, collaborative essay, written in response to young adult literature, and followed by the multimedia composition serves to share the readers’ experience and elicit voice, an important component in the production of both written and digital composition and reader response.

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How do creative writers transform the complexity of life into literature? Remix Perspectives presents a bricolage synthesis of transdisciplinary insights for workshop leaders and creative writers, appropriated from selected artistic and literary voices from more or less the last hundred years. Seminal concepts from arts such as painting, poetry, dance, music, and photography are gathered here as they inform the arts of literary fiction and creative nonfiction. Thinkers from philosophy, psychology, literary theory, complexity, and metaphysics address the inner and outer realms where the work of the writer is generated and goes forth.

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Applying a stylistic analysis on certain texts refers to the identification of patterns of usage in writing. However, such an analysis is not restricted just to the description of the formal characteristics of texts, but it also tries to elucidate their functional importance for the interpretation of the text. This paper highlights complexity as a hallmark of a stylistic analysis in "A Rose for Emily", a short story by William Faulkner (1897-1962). The analysis is done by adopting Halliday's (1985) approach to analyzing complexity in sentence structure; and Lauer, et al. (2008) approach to analyzing narrative from a macro perspective in relation to the story acts. The analysis rests upon the assumption that since form conveys meaning, Faulkner's multilayer usage of complexity is extremely functional. This paper tries also to detect and prove that stylistic complexity is manipulated to convey the main themes, events, and successfully lead to identify the distinctive structure of this story.

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examples of a braided essay

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Braided Essays and How to Write Them

What is a braided essay?

What counts as a “thread?”

What makes a braided essay coherent?

Braided essay examples

How to write a braided essay

1. Get inspired and generate ideas

2. Do a freewrite

3. Read your freewrite

4. Begin writing your primary thread

5. Start on your other thread(s)

6. Read what you have so far

7. Continue writing

8. Repeat steps 4-7 until satisfied.

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Braided Essays

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How to Write a Braided Essay: Easy Steps & Example

Importance of Writing a Braided Essay

What Is a Braided Essay and Its Definition

How to Start a Braided Essay in 5 Steps

1. Identify Distinctive Strands (2-4 Threads)

2. Develop Each Strand Individually

3. Interweave Strands

4. Highlight Connections and Contrasts

5. Conclude With Synthesis

Examples of Braided Essay Topics

Simple Outline Template for Writing a 5-Paragraph Braided Essay (Structure of 3 Threads)

Braided Essay Example

I. Sample Introduction of a Braided Essay

II. Body Paragraph Example 1: The Era of Letters

III. Body Paragraph Example 2: Emergence and Impact of Telephony

IV. Body Paragraph Example 3: The Digital Media Age

V. Sample Conclusion of a Braided Essay

20 Tips for Writing a Braided Essay

10 Dos for Writing a Braided Essay to Consider:

Summing Up on How to Write a Good Braided Essay

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A Guide to Lyric Essay Writing: 4 Evocative Essays and Prompts to Learn From

1. Draft a “braided essay,” like Michelle Zauner in this excerpt from Crying in H Mart .

2. Experiment with nonfiction forms , like Hadara Bar-Nadav in “ Selections from Babyland . ”

3. Travel through time , like Nina Boutsikaris in “ Some Sort of Union .”

4. Bring in research, history, and data, like Roxane Gay in “ What Fullness Is .”