braided essay examples

How to Write a Braided Essay: Easy Steps & Example

Icon Calendar 18 May 2024
Icon Page 2118 words
Icon Clock 10 min read

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.

To Learn More, Read Relevant Articles

Online Education and Traditional Classroom Learning: Differences and Similarities

Icon Calendar 17 January 2024
Icon Page 869 words

The Obesity Epidemic: Simple Lifestyle Changes for Better Health

Icon Calendar 13 December 2023
Icon Page 696 words

Resource Library
_Beta Reading
Publications
_Guest Blog Posts
_My Writing
_Writing Tips
_Writing Life
_Shelby's Thoughts
_Recomendations
__Audiobooks

Social Icons

How to Write a Braided Essay

Saturday, january 13, 2018 • writing tips.

What is a Braided Essay?

A braided essay is an essay that uses 2-3 events or topics to create an essay surrounding an event or question. Writers “weave” the “strands” (events or topics) together to form a “braid.” Sometimes when you say that out loud to yourself, it makes no sense. Therefore, let’s look at Joann Beard’s “ The Fourth State of Matter. ” Beard’s main strand is her narrative about taking care of her sick collie that is dying. Her first strand is dealing with the squirrels in her spare bedroom and the breakdown of her marriage. The last strand is the Iowa University Physics department shooting. These events are woven together to create one essay about an author’s inability to control the events happening in her life. Braided essays can have more or less than three “strands.” Essays have been known to have just two strands or four to five. The most important thing to note about braided essays is repetition of the braid “strands.” The repetition of these elements are what makes an essay braided rather than just a collage. If you place multiple fragmented events and don’t repeat them, you are making a collage, not a braided essay.

How to Construct a Braided Essay

The worksheet is pretty straightforward and basic. It by no means encompasses what your braided essay can be, but I thought it would be easier to go over a simple braid.

First you will chose the anchor of your essay, otherwise known as the main strand or core event. This can also be a theme if you’re exploring different facets of something. In Beard, her main core event is taking care of her collie. (You can also say it’s the shooting, I believe it’s open to interpretation, but either way this method works no matter what you choose as the core). With this core event, Beard weaves two other strands. The first other strand is the Beard’s failing marriage and the squirrels infesting her guest bedroom. This event ties in the collie because it is another thing Beard doesn’t have control over and can’t deal with on her own. You will need to choose another event that makes sense when related to your core event. Pick a longer scene or topic in order to continue the repetition pattern that has to happen. After choosing two events, you will need to pick one more to round out your essay and complete the braid. It doesn’t have to relate to the first other strand you chose, but needs to relate to the core event somehow. In “The Fourth State of Matter,” Beard talks about the Iowa University Physics Department shooting. This relates to the collie because Beard discusses the collie with her coworkers, but also later because of Beard not being able to save her coworkers and their own death she has to deal with. Again, the key here is the repetition. Beard is constantly weaving these events in her essay to create the braid. You must do this too, to create a proper braided essay.

More Inspiration and Examples

If writing braided essays intrigues you, or you enjoy reading the format, I have a few sources of inspiration to share with you. Along with Beard’s “The Fourth State of Matter,” other braided essays include Biondolillo’s “ How to Skin a Bird ” and Redsand’s “ A Good Stranger .” Biondolilo’s “How to Skin a Bird” is a more fragmented version of a braided essay and discusses the author’s relationship with her daughter while instructing on how to skin a bird properly. Redsand’s “A Good Stranger” discusses the author’s religious identity, braiding Christianity, Judaism, and Navajo tradition. “A Good Stranger” is an outstanding example if you are looking to write on a theme rather than focus on a certain event. You can also find more information and other works to read on this website .

The Braided Essay as Social Justice Action

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.

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!