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.
- 1, 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.
- 2. It’s summer, 2020. Where I live — in New South Wales, Australia — forests are burning and smoke drifts through the trees that front my house. I check the Fires Near Me app every hour. In-between, (and with a packed bag by the door ready to leave if the fires come too close), I braid stories for a new novel. There are two different locations for the novel — New Mexico and New Guinea — and five interconnected narratives focused on five characters. The story takes place from November 1944 to August 1945. I’m choosing where and how to jump from one tale to the next. Each crossing offers different meanings. I make decisions quickly, trusting a deeper knowledge of story learnt from a life lived entangled with narratives.
- 3. What is a braided novel? For some (Bancroft, 2018: 266) the braid is made up of different tales that belong to one storyworld. For others, the separate braids might belong to the same story and have a shared conclusion — although this type of braid might be confused with subplots. For me, it’s about narrative weight. A braided novel interweaves distinct stories that each have their own main characters and narrative drive, whether or not the story climax is shared or independent.
- 4. The braided novel form encourages readers to contemplate the gaps between stories. The individual tales create a context for what is unknown. Like the lyric essay, braided nonfiction and poetry, the braided novel is ‘full of new spaces in which meaning can germinate’ (Miller 2012: 235). Readers are encouraged to ‘think across and between gaps’ (Krauth, 2019: 2).
- 5. When I wrote my last braided novel, Storyland (2017, Fourth Estate), I wanted the gaps to raise questions about changes to the land and weather. The wartime novel I’m currently writing braids distinct tales connected to the first atomic explosions — cited by some as marking the beginning of the Anthropocene (Zalasiewicz 2019: 3) — but what questions am I attempting to raise?
- 6. By autumn, the fire season has passed but COVID-19 has arrived. We are in lockdown. I sit by a window that overlooks burnt trees. On brown paper I write out my five story plots. Using coloured pens, I draw lines between plot points, tracing threads of connection and disconnection — a method of sorts. A writer braids with intention, looking for patterns, shapes and motifs that have sometimes formed unintentionally. I use a red pen to trace ‘violence’ threads, orange to chart courage, sexism, racism. Then I’m stumped. How to bind the stories?
- 7. The binding of a braided novel operates like a bridge across a river or a ravine. When I wrote Storyland I set each tale on land adjacent to the same water course. Certain places reappear in different stories: a rock with a fish carving, a tree cave, mountain caves, a home. Other things bind the tales: an Aboriginal axe, a small-leaved fig (Ficus obliqua), birds. In a crossing from the 1900 story, a white-bellied eagle ‘hovers looking for prey’ and enters the first sentence of the 1998 story and is seen by a new protagonist diving into ‘reeds in the lake’ (118). Jennifer Sinor says that a ‘purely lyric form relies on images’ (2014: 189) to bind the narrative, likewise for the braided novel.
- 8. Juxtaposition is key to the braided form. The juxtaposition of stories offers readers a new vision of the world and our place in it (Dicinoski, 2017: 2). The whole is more than the part, yet each part is needed to comprehend the whole. A braided narrative can extend the time scale of fictional storyworlds, making leaps from one era to another, one place or character to another — useful when dealing with complex subject matter.
- 9. In winter, I buy a red notebook. In it, I list the new novel’s characters, putting names at the top of the page, qualities in a column below, charting difference and similarity. Does each character have a strong story function? How best to introduce a large cast?
- 10. A braided narrative offers multiple voices, multiple perspectives. It challenges the idea that there is one ‘true’ tale to tell about a particular set of events and instead suggests there are many differing ones. Characters, eras and places are entangled; ethics and moralities are varied. Braiding disparate stories and their distinct characters together creates a narrative that confirms individuals as individuals within a more complex system (Bancroft, 2018: 272–273).
- 11. Nicole Walker says the braided essay ‘expands the conversation, presses upon the hard lines of ideology’ (2017: 7). The braided novel does this too, illuminating new ways of imagining how we are together. ‘Braided narratives do not advocate a particular ethical stance, but rather invite a way of reading and relating that strives to be open to different experiences, aware of the tensions between them, and accountable to these sometimes conflicting claims’ (Bancroft, 2018: 264). However, reading Linda Aronson’s thoughts on ‘consecutive stories’, I understood that a braided narrative often needs one climatic scene to operate as the narrative’s moral heart (2010: 328–375).
- 12. By spring, 2020, lockdown is over but social distancing is still in place. Sheets of paper covered with squiggly lines, dots, circles and loops stretch out beyond my writing room and take over the house. Staring at the story maps, I notice the ‘moral heart’ scene is missing. Instead I have a scene that speaks to the loss of a moral code. Perhaps this is okay? Writer’s write from their own historical moment. Like a virus, it infects the work. You can’t force meaning onto the braid, meaning emerges from it. By spring, I still haven’t found the image system that will jump readers from one story to another, but I trust it will find me.
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/