Write Now: The Narrative Braid - a four-week creative incubator for introverts

We know sometimes generative workshops can leave you with an overwhelming amount of raw material. In this four-part series (guided by videos featuring our resident mermaid Lidia Yuknavitch) you’ll read, get inspired and discover the germ of an idea, write it, revise it, and finish it—and for those interested in publication, we’ll offer strategies towards that end as well.

This is the Introvert edition of The Narrative Braid — you’ll receive access to four weekly videos, along with readings and writing portals, to work through on your own time, at your own pace. We sometimes offer Extrovert modules that put writers together in groups. You can check in with Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com if you want to know of any Extrovert groups starting up soon.

What is a Narrative Braid?

If you find yourself with more than one story strand in a piece of writing BE EXCITED—because it likely means your imagination is trying to create a narrative braid. Put simply, a narrative braid essay or story weaves more than one story thread back and forth, under and over to establish a braided form.

Narrative braids thus may have more than one storyline or piece of content or theme, and/or they may also employ more than one voice or style or discourse. Narrative braids tend to have recurring elements or images or ideas, just like braided hair—the same threads come back to create a woven story.

Over the last five years as Lidia Yuknavitch has been studying narrative braids, working collaboratively with other writers to create them, and writing her own—such as the essay “Woven” published in Guernica—she has noticed that some stories truly vibrate and multiply meanings within this form. Specifically, the narrative braid is a great hybrid form for:

• weaving the personal with the political

• exploring multiplicity of voice or polyphonic storytelling

• developing layered storytelling that carries more than one time and place

• multiplying meanings, opening up experiences, images, places, history to multiple meanings

• holding open questions rather than resolving them

• emphasizing the meaningfulness and power of repetition, echo, and the ways in which experience and storytelling always already have many strands 

Four-Part Series—How it Works

• Week One ::  Lidia will talk through her relationship to braids and their possibilities. You’ll have links to eyeball some beautiful narrative braids for inspiration and strategy. Some of these will be pieces that were written in in-person versions of this course that ran in Portland and were later published! You’ll throw down some ideas of your own—and then commit to one of these projects to carry through to the end.

• Week Two :: You’ll begin a full draft of the braid idea to which you’ve committed. Lidia will offer guidance—both practical and abstract/artistic—on structure and process as you bring the disparate threads of your stories on to the page.

• Week Three :: Soon enough, it’s time to take what you’ve written and revise. Lidia will offer up some of her tried and true revision techniques, such as vertical reading, to help you look for missed opportunities in the text. You’ll be given tips for both opening up the work and paring it down to its essentials.

• Week Four :: You’ve got a finished draft. Now what? Our workshops are often visited by people who don’t intend to try and get their writing published, but for the most part people are longing to put their narratives out in the world. Strategies and advice as well as reminders to celebrate—you had an idea and you carried it through to completion. Fuck yes.

Payment plans are always available. Please contact Daniel Elder at registration@corporealwriting.com to set one up or if you are feeling challenged by the financial requirements of this offering.