Jodi Picoult and the Braided Narrative Story Structure

October 12, 2026

Jodi Picoult ignores linear narrative structures in many of her novels, opting instead to make use of a braided narrative presentation. In that way, she uses her characters, timelines, and forms of narration to present a novel’s central story without simply advancing the plot chronologically. She has successfully created a series of bestsellers with variations of this structure. Among these are Mad Honey (with Jennifer Finney Boylan), My Sister’s Keeper, The Pact, and Nineteen Minutes. Another example is Small Great Things, where she presents her story with alternating first-person narrators that allows her to show the same conflict through very different experiences and attitudes.

Her braiding technique involves several narrative switches, with each new strand serving a purpose: One strand might present new information that a previous narrator didn’t have access to, one strand might contradict what the reader learned in another strand, another strand could be used to explain what has just happened, one strand might show why a character acts a certain way, or a strand might present an event in a totally different light from what the reader has previously seen.

Picoult’s braided narrative structure provides us with a bonus: In addition to an always interesting story plot, she makes her structure an interesting and living part of her novels as well.