Recently a reader wrote to me through the website and asked me to talk about braiding.
This is how I replied:
I talk about the braided novel a lot in my author talks or ‘in conversation’ discussions. Braiding is a little different to sub plots. For me a braided novel has distinct stories that connect to each other, yet each has its own unique beginning, middle and end. They way they connect will differ, the way they end will differ, but the compilation of stories results in something more than if each story was told alone.
I usually plan the braids that will go together, but I don’t plan where they will break. So I brood over the shape or concept for the novel, work on bits and pieces, work on characters, knowing I will sort out the braids later. Remember too that TO SING OF WAR started out as a long short story. It turned into a novel sometime after I had a late night chat with my Dad.
The Japan story was different at first, and then I wasn’t going to write about Japan, and then I knew I must. So nothing is ever set in stone. It evolves. The trick is to trust your story-making instinct. Because I had written Storyland, another braided novel, I wasn’t frightened of the form. Also, I love Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. And time and location jumps interest me. Key, I think, is a mix of both overall design and then lots of writing bits and pieces and weaving them together. At some stage it all becomes more structured (but even then after the structuring it can be blown apart again.) The creative process is about being very loose at the start, and then slowly as you work towards the end, getting more and more structured and focused.
I wrote about braiding forA-Z of Creative Writing Methods; a book that came out in 2023. In this book a selection of Australian and international writers each wrote a short piece about a particular writing technique. Our pieces had to come in at exactly 1000 words, no longer, no shorter.
I thought you might like to read my excerpt below, and there are many other great short essays in that book.
HERE IS THE EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK: ‘Braiding’, A-Z of Creative Writing Methods, eds Deborah Wardle, Julienne Van Loon, Stayci Taylor, Francesca Rendle Short, Peta Murray, David Carlin, Bloomsbury Academic, London.
A braided novel is weaved delicately, adventurously, consciously, in order to pay attention to the unconscious: to pay attention to the unknown, the secret, the hidden. Trust is involved, also risk. It’s like walking through a forest at night with only the moon as guide; many paths are possible, not all are visible.
References
Aronson, Linda. (2010), The 21st Century Screenplay, Crows Nest, New South Wales: Allen and Unwin.
Bancroft, Corinne. (2018), ‘The Braided Narrative’, Narrative, 26 (3): 262–282.
Dicinoski, Michelle. (2017), ‘Wild associations: Rebecca Solnit, Maggie Nelson and the lyric essay’, Text 21 (1), in Rachel Robertson and Kylie Cardell (eds), Special Issue Series, The Essay (39):1–12.
Krauth, Nigel. (2019), ‘Fragmented narratives: Minding the textual gap’, Text, 23 (2):1–21.
McKinnon, Catherine. (2017), Storyland, Sydney, Australia: Fourth Estate, Harper Collins.
Miller, Brenda. (2012), “A Braided Heart: Shaping the Lyric Essay, in Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola (eds) Telling It Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction, 234–44, New York: McGraw Hill.
Sinor, Jennifer. (2014), ‘Deserting the Narrative Line: Teaching the Braided Form’, Teaching English in the Two Year College: Urbana, 42 (2): 188-196.
Walker, Nicole. (2017), ‘The Braided Essay as Social Justice Action: Between the Lines’, Adaption, 64:1–8. Available online: https://www.creativenonfiction.org/online-reading/braided-essay-social-justice-action
Zalasiewicz, Jan. (2019), “Results of binding vote by AWG Released 21st May 2019” Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy Working Group on the Anthropocene. News Article. Available online: http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/working-groups/anthropocene/