Some stories can’t be contained by the tidy linear narrative—they need to spill out into multiple streams, running alongside each other, telling more than one story at a time, bringing in research, art, and other outside references in order to make themselves clear. Braided essays are complicated and layered, like real life; built on association and resonance rather than a singular A-to-B storyline. They can also let us approach stories from our lives that are overwhelming—either emotionally or conceptually. Refracting and weaving can present new entry points into writing about experiences that may have felt intimidating or murky when appraised head-on.
This independent study course will guide you through the process of writing a braided personal essay that incorporates research, criticism, and/or other external elements—from generating an idea and identifying the various strands, to developing those strands, and, of course, braiding them together.
In this preparatory section, you'll read a few of my favorite braided essays and do a little reverse-engineering to see how they're built.
Through a series of generative essays, you'll develop ideas for several possible braided essays. If you already have a braided essay topic in mind that you’d like to write during this independent study, you can skip this section. (Or do it anyway, and save additional ideas for later!)
Decide on an essay topic to work on for the rest of the course, and then determine the different threads you'll be developing and (later) braiding together.
Next you'll develop each thread in its own document, with different prompts for personal and researched threads.
Now, finally, it’s time to bring your threads together into a braid. (And then rearrange them a bunch of times through a series of tactile exercises involving color-coding, patterning, and rhythm.)
Finding the structure of a braided essay is challenging and fun, but the work doesn't end there. Once you've built your braid, it's time to fill in the gaps and lean into the resonances between threads even more.