HENG Notes Talent 100

HSC English

Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

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AREA OF STUDY III ANALYSIS EXERCISE: 2005 HSC PAPER 1 [Handout – 2005 HSC comprehension] a) The title, “Mind Wide Open”, is printed in serif, typewriter font with grainy print. It were as though this “journey into the working of [the] mind” was like a detective’s investigation into a thrilling mystery. b) The front and inside cover appeal to readers seeking to understand and explore their internal psychology. The opening series of rhetorical questions on the inside cover places the science of psychology within everyday contexts. These questions invoke very real, very relatedable dilemmas, like “Why is it sometimes easier to remember a conversation form three yars ago than what we did last week?”, to engage a wide readership. Readers may also be very attracted the personable relationship with the author which is created by the amiable photograph of him and a vivid insight into his own “mental foibles (such as an embarrassing phobia of bees)”. c) The bolded headline of the inside book cover uses acutely descriptive language, “one man’s extraordinary voyage of discovery into the secrets of his mind” to convey the notion that a journey is about self-discovery and apperception, a process that delves into our internal workings which are perhaps, on the surface, unknown to us. The use of ambiguous language “Intrigued by the mysteries of the human brain” demonstrates the idea that the journey is an intricate process that provokes self-conscious thought and intrigue, giving rise to experiences that challenge and inspire. The use of the collective pronoun and figurative analogy, “an astonishing glimpse into the strange world within our heads”, gives rise to the concept of the inner journey, one which focuses on a transition into our internal processes that function, as the encompassing word “world” suggests, on a completely separate plane to our external environments. d) The reviewer’s journey into the artwork is ‘a daunting task’ the prospect of becoming engulfed by the work ventures out of his comfort zone, taking him to a new place which is neither “intimate” nor “gentle”, but rather “intruding” and “imposing.”

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HSC English

Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

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e) The reviewer crafts the extended metaphor of a journey through the inside of a boat to evoke his tactile experience of walking through an artwork. A figurative simile “the room looks a bit like a skateboard rink” provides the reader with an immediate, clear vision of the work as hollow and incredibly vast. Vivid aural imagery “An eerie sound comes out of the piece” creates a sombre, intensified mood of constrainment within a silent, remorseful vessel in which he feels alone and engulfed by his surroundings. The use of second person narration “The boat you’ve boarded” includes the reader in his experience, allowing them to journey with him through a object with which they can identify. f)

Both of these texts open up our minds to the concept of journeys by unlocking intellectual, internal and figurative passages through the mind and an external environment respectively. Text one and two open up the notion of the journey as a means of self exploration, reflection, intellectual stimulation and spiritual discovery: the cover’s hyperbolic visual image of a larger head placed atop a smaller body evokes the notion of mind body duality, reiterated in the inside cover’s acute description “baffled by some of his own mental foibles” which embodies the idea that our own superficial vices and contemplations within our everyday lives can open up a closer exploration that facilitates emotional growth. This potential outcome is indicated through the later collective pronoun and listing “everyone’s brain… is unique… can help us understand our own phobias, habits and mood swings”, opening up our minds to the concept of journeys as a process through which we can come to learn and discover things about ourselves. Text three encompasses the implications of the journey on our imagination, the shrewd use of tactile description “there are angles and the rise matches the fall”, visual imagery “radiata pine is definitely not the wood of choice” and aural evocations “inside a giant loudspeakers” demonstrating our own capacity to journey somewhere into our conscious where we are free to imagine a world that exists beyond our own. This idea is embodied in the strong word choice of the final sentence “rich in paradoxes and beauty of a stressful kind” that suggests both the confusions and ironies existent within such imaginative journeys, but also their potential for finality, success and poignant “beauty.”

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HSC English

Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

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IN-CLASS PRACTISE OF SECTION 1: TIMED

(55 mins) (5 for explanation) This is our last lesson – at least for now – during which we will focus on Section 1 of the HSC Paper 1. Before we move on to tackling the writing and extended response sections of the paper, we thought it would be best to give you time to complete a full timed practise of a sample section in class (seeing as you may not have the time to do this at home right now, what with all of your other work and demands). This is what’s going to happen. You will be given a sample Section 1 on the focus area “Belonging”. It is set out as the HSC would be. You will be given 8 minutes reading time- remember that you are given a total of 10 minutes for Paper 1, but you must allow yourself time to look over the other two sections as well, so our time limit is aimed to prepare you for that. You will then be given a full 40 minutes to respond to the questions. If you finish early, look over your answers, but you should aim to be using most of your time effectively.

Good luck!

POINTS TO REMEMBER • Don’t OVERWRITE your 1 and 2 mark responses- they only require 1 or 2 sentences respectively • USE THE WORDS OF THE QUESTION- i.e. respond directly and efficiently • There is no one ‘correct’ answer
you should show them this by exploring a range of different responses from around the class, all of which could be correct.
As long as you SUPPORT/JUSTIFY your interpretation with evidence from the text (language features), you will be awarded marks. • Take care to spend sufficient time looking at the 5 mark response. [Handout – Paper 1 Timed]

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HSC English

Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

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ETA PRACTICE EXAMINATION QUESTIONS Section I - Reading task Total marks: 15 Attempt Question 1 Allow about 40 minutes for this section Answer the question in a writing bookie!. Extra writing booklets are available. In your answer you will be assessed on how well you: •

demonstrate understanding of the way perceptions of belonging are shaped in and through texts

•

describe. explain and analyse the relationship between language. text and context

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HSC English

Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

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Question 1 (15 marks) Examine Texts One, Two, Three and Four carefully and then answer the questions which follow. Text One - Poem "My Parents Kept me from Children who were Rough"

My parents kept me from children who were rough and who threw words like stones and who wore torn clothes. Their thighs showed through rags. They ran in the street And climbed cliffs and stripped by the country streams.

I feared more than tigers their muscles like iron And their jerking hands and their knees tight on my arms. I feared the salt coarse pointing of those boys Who copied my lisp behind me on the road.

They were lithe, they sprang out behind hedges Like dogs to bark at our world. They threw mud And I looked another way. pretending to smile. I longed to forgive them, yet they never smiled.

Stephen Spender

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HSC English

Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

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Text Two -Prose Without the connection of family and friends to hold me together, I felt molecularly unstable, the way ice in water forms into a puddle and finally sighs into water vapour. It makes the soul sick to be truncated from its origin, splintered, a genetic shard. I longed for someone to push my buttons - I missed having someone know me well enough to irritate me. The people who love us don't care what we stand for, who we vote for, what our large achievements in the world are. They want to know what we ate for breakfast and if we prefer Special K with the almonds and honey or without. They know our shoe sizes and our colour preferences. They know we collect babushkas or owls or bookmarks or Chinese lanterns. They want to know if we've also had piles and what ointment we recommend. They'll phone us specifically to find out whether we also wet ourselves laughing at that scene in You Don't Mess with the Zohan when the Zohan did that thing with the hummus. We're connected to the people we love, not through Justice or Peace or Democracy or God, but through a million mundane details of everyday life that get lost; a confetti of broken intimacy when we leave. From "When Hungry Eat' Joanne Fedler (Reproduced with kind permission of the author) Text Three - Magazine article Cool World What makes somebody cool? And I don't mean air-conditioners and slices of cucumber over the eyelids. I'm talking about the indefinable quality that puts some people in a magic realm denied to the rest of us, an unattainable low-key fabulousness that follows them around like a trail of ectoplasm. I've been mulling this over ever since my niece rang to tell me about her recent trip to Paris. It was a most pleasing conversation because, unlike so many people to whom one helpfully offers travel trips, gleaned from years of visiting a place, she actually followed some of them up. Thus it was most pleasant to discuss the joy of the hot chocolate at Angelina, followed by a wintery walk through the Palais Royal. Also the very special experience of taking afternoon tea at the original Laduree on rue Royale, rather than any of the branded-up new venues. Making this chat even more satisfying was the baton-passing aspect when she then passed her Paris tips on to me - one of which was to stay at the hipper-than-hip hotel Mama Shelter, way out in the 20lh arrondissement, just inside the Peripherique ring road. TALENT 100: HSC SUCCESS. SIMPLIFIED.

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HSC English

Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

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A bit of a hack in and out on the Metro, according to my niece, but so worth it for an amazing Philippe Starck interior at just over €100 a nigh!. Best of all, she added, it had an amazing bar that was always full of "cool people". Her choice or words. I could immediately picture the scene or, more accurately, imagine the atmosphere. That special feeling you get when you have stumbled upon - or in her case, carefully researched - the place where the Cool People gather. And that really does get to the nub of what I'm trying to figure out here, because, while coolness is undoubtedly connected to appearance, there is more to it than that. It's more of a mood someone gives off than what they are wearing. It's not available off the peg, just by going to certain shops and buying particular things. That was made clear to us all right back in high school, wasn't it? When acquiring whatever thing it was the cool ones were carrying at that particular moment (Led Zeppelin LPs in my day) did not guarantee membership of their elite. We've all wasted hard-won babysitting money trying that out. No, while I think you can buy glamour and possibly even elegance with the right advice (and enough money), you definitely can't buy cool. Indeed the people who care the most about it and kill themselves to live in the right part of town, dine at the hot spots, carry the right phone and so on, fall farthest from the cool's catchment. In fact, trying to be cool- and really, actively caring to be perceived in that way - is the most certain way to be uncool. No wonder it's so torturous being an adolescent. Taking a mental census of Cool People I Have Known, I've come to the conclusion it's an inborn quality, and then instinct naturally guides the coolster to situations and environments that increase it. Coolsters have a radar for finding their own kind, who can be picked out just by the way they carry a bag, or even sit in a chair. There's a relaxed quality to it. But in all of this, what I am really most thrilled about is that my 25-year-old niece - and her boyfriend, who works on one of the world's most certifiably cool magazines - still use the ancient old term. Cool is still cool and that's cool with me. Maggie Alderson SMH Good Weekend, February 20, 2010, P 52 (Reproduced with kind permission of the author) TALENT 100: HSC SUCCESS. SIMPLIFIED.

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HSC English

Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

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Text Four - Photograph

Text One - Poem a) Provide two examples of simile from the poem and explain their effect.

(2 marks)

Text Two - Prose b) How is the concept of belonging explored in this text?

(3 marks)

Text Three - Magazine article c) Why did the speaker find the chat with her niece particularly satisfying?

(2 marks)

Text Four - Photograph d) How has the photographer used visual language to communicate ideas?

(2 marks)

Texts One, Two, Three and Four e) Choose TWO of the above texts to analyse and compare, considering which text most effectively conveys a message about belonging. In your response you should consider the ways in which both texts use form, structure and technique to present perspectives on belonging.

(6 marks)

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HSC English

Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

MARKING THE PAPER

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(30 mins)

Swap papers with the person sitting next to you. We want you to mark honestly: read through their responses in full, and decide how many marks you think that they should receive for each question. Remember to look at their ISE (IDENTIFY, SUPPORT, EXPLAIN): i.e., for a 2-mark question have they done this TWICE? Etc. Mark in pencil – I will also collect these papers and mark them later! Teaching Tip: Ask the students for volunteers to read out sample responses from the paper they are marking that they think are of a high standard and worth full marks. Then compare these to the sample responses. Teaching Tip: Upon the completion of marking the paper in class, ask the students if anyone received full marks, and congratulate those people. Collect the responses (with their marks by other students on them), and explain that they will now be marked by the tutors and given comments, suggestions etc., and handed back in the following lesson.

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HSC English

Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

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FINISHING OUR STUDY OF SECTION 1, PAPER 1 We have now reached the end of our study of the first section of Paper 1 for this term. We will most likely come back to look at this section as trials, and then HSC, approach. You need to remember that even though we will be moving forward in class, you should STILL BE PRACTISING YOUR SKILLS IN THIS SECITON AT HOME- because this is the only way to improve! A useful strategy to try is pinning your glossary of literary and visual language features above your bed, and trying to learn a couple each night, before you go to sleep.

A FINAL RECAP: IMPORTANT POINTS TO REMEMBER FROM OUR STUDY Teaching Tip: First, ask the students for their input here: ask them about what they think would be the most important thing/s to remember when approaching this section, and generate a list that they should copy down. • Use your READING TIME effectively- spend most of it reading through these texts and picking out mental answers in your head. • When looking at an unseen text, first identify the FORM, PURPOSE & INTENDED AUDIENCE
This will tell you about the REGISTER, the language appropriate to form, purpose and audience. • Deconstruction = I + S + E = IDENTIFY + SUPPORT + EXPLAIN.
The HSC operates on a 1 mark per 1 point of deconstruction system - no identification of language features, no marks, no matter how great your explanations are!! • Language Features (also referred to as Language techniques or Language devices)= HOW the composer shapes meaning through his/ her text • There are two types of language features: LITERARY AND VISUAL


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HSC English

Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

© TALENT 100

Some texts will combine literary and visual features for an intended purpose/effect • 5 and 6 mark responses will usually ask you to ‘compare and contrast’ 2 or all of the texts provided, or comment on which text/s is/are the most effective in exploring a certain comment about belonging. This will require you to USE THE LANGUAGE OF CONNECTION: ‘similarly, conversely, alternatively, like, unlike, in conjunction with, both, whilst’ etc. • DON’T OVERWRITE- particularly in the 1 and 2 mark responses! • Be sure to USE THE WORDS OF THE QUESTION in your answers (i.e. make sure you are responding DIRECTLY to the stimulus)

SOME SECTION 1 ‘JARGON’ • Often the initial few questions will ask about the ‘nature’ or ‘source’ of the belonging being presented- this is referring to the type, quality or feature/s of the belonging: is it personal, or is its source the community? Is belonging presented positively or negatively and why? • When you see the word ‘HOW’, it always means, identify the LANGUAGE FEATURES used to convey/represent a certain idea • Words like ‘Evaluate’, ‘Assess’, ‘Justify’ (usually found in the final 5 or 6 mark responses) mean MAKE A JUDGEMENT- i.e. critically identify which of the texts best explores an idea or otherwise, SUPPORTING your answer with textual analysis! You should practise as many Section 1s as you can at home. Use past HSC papers and other independent school trials – even though the focus area will not be belonging, the skills which you need to employ are the same. Remember, you should be continually trying to get your hands on any practise papers that you can: ask your teacher for your school’s past independent papers, do your own research- the more practise you get, the better chance you have of full marks in this section.

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Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

HSC English

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THE ENGLISH PAPER 1: TACKLING SECTION 2 Section 2 consists of a Writing Task: you will be required to compose a creative piece that explores and/or reflects on your knowledge of the concept of Belonging. Our study will focus on the requirements of – or what you can expect from – this section, the different forms and contexts in which, and purposes for which, you may be asked to write, and ways of developing, structuring and composing a creative response with originality and creativity, but also sophistication of idea and comprehension of the syllabus criteria. The marking criteria for Section 1, in the most recent HSC papers, assesses how well you: •

Express understanding of belonging in the context of your studies

•

Organise, develop and express ideas using language appropriate to audience, purpose and context

A BIG MISCONCEPTION ABOUT PAPER 1, SECTION 2

(5 mins) Many students imagine that Section 2 of the AOS paper is really about one of two things: either that it simply requires you to “memorise a story about belonging” and regurgitate it, or that this section is impossible to prepare for, because there are unlimited ideas that could be asked of you and thus pointless to learn any one particular synopsis, or outline, for a creative composition. BUT THIS IS NOT THE CASE!!! Neither of these preconceptions is correct. For one thing, you cannot assume that memorising a creative piece and writing this straight down is going to award you the maximum amount of marks; in the same way as Section 1, this section will test your ability to ADAPT your ideas and material to any given stimulus insight and/or question, often in a specified form and context, and intended for a given purpose and audience. On the other hand, it is also inaccurate to say that this means that you cannot possibly prepare for this section. Whilst you will be required - like in all of the sections of the paper – to ‘mould’ and adjust your composition so that it directly responds to a given situation or question, you will still be able to think about and plan certain ideas, synopses, language features and ways of composing your response before you go into the exam.

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HSC English

Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

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Indeed, the key to mastering Section 2 is finding a balance between these two extremities: that is, preparing a variety of ideas and structures in your head in your pre-exam time, whilst also understanding that, when you go into your exam, you may be required to let go of some of these ideas and/or embrace new ones that you may not have necessarily preconceived, in order that you are responding DIRECTLY to the stimulus provided.

SECTION 2: WHAT TO EXPECT

(5 mins) Section 2 will always provide some kind of STIMULUS – a central idea, through line or focus area – that you are required to use as a jumping off point for your own creative composition. The nature of this stimulus varies from year to year. It could be: •

An image or collection of images (from which you might be asked to choose only ONE)

•

A quote or collection of quotes

•

A starting or concluding line of a story

•

A statement/insight similar to those provided as stimulus in Section 3

(We will look at examples of each of these types of stimulus.) In addition to the Stimulus provided, you will also be given some kind of instruction, question or contextual basis that will largely inform the form, style and/or purpose of your piece of writing. Sometimes, this ‘instruction’ will specify the FORM in which you are required to compose in. This could be a: •

Narrative

•

Feature article

•

Speech

•

Journal entry/ies

•

Letter

(We will look at examples of each of these forms, and methods of composing each one.)

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HSC English

Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

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With this in mind, you need to be aware that you may very well have to ADAPT AND/OR RESTRUCTURE any story you write to comply with the conventions of any one of these forms. In most cases, however, Section 2 will provide you with some kind of context for which or circumstance in which you must write, and allow you to compose in the form of your choice. In the same way as Section 3, this ‘context’ will usually prescribe a certain ASPECT or CONSTITUENT of the Area of Study to which you must make reference in your composition (eg. The idea of ‘change’, of the landscape, of experience, of perspective, of awareness, etc.). So altogether, there are four main components of Section 2 that will merge to inform the nature of your composition: 1. The STIMULUS that jumpstarts the response 2. The FORM (whether specified or unspecified) in which to write 3. The CONTEXT in which to write 4. The IDEA/INSIGHT about which to write. Before you begin to craft your response, you need to be able to identify and directly address each of these components. Let us look at a couple of examples of what has been provided in terms of stimulus, form, context and idea/ insight in the past few years of HSC examinations.

CLASS EXERCISE

(25 mins- 10 minutes for exercise, 15 minutes for class discussion) Work in pairs to identify the Stimulus, Form, Context, and Idea/Insight in each of the examples provided.

Teaching Tip: Each example should then be discussed together as a class

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HSC English

Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

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EXAMPLES OF SECTION 2: PAST HSC EXAMINATIONS THE 2006 HSC: QUESTION 2 (15 MARKS)

‘He told me one last story. He used his aged, ruined voice like an old man’s hands to pick the lock on his past…’

Use this extract as the opening for a piece of writing that explores the concept of journey as discovery.

Write in a form appropriate to your purpose.

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HSC English

Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

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THE 2007 HSC: QUESTION 2 (15 MARKS)

Select ONE of the following quotations. Use this quotation as a central idea in your own piece of writing that explores the experiences a journey may hold.

a) ‘Everywhere he goes people chat to him…’

b) ‘The past may be another country. But the only passport required is empathy…’

c) ‘…A mosaic, a dance of broken, gleaming fragments…’

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Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

HSC English

BEGINNING POINTS

TO DEVELOP YOUR

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CREATIVE COMPOSITION: SOME STARTING

(15 mins) Composing a piece of creative writing is a very different exercise to that of writing an essay. More often than not, students completing the HSC Advanced Course find developing and composing a response for Section 2 a far more difficult task than that of constructing their essay-type responses for Section 3; even those students who are extremely strong essay-writers. There are a number of reasons for this difficulty: a) Creative writing has far less prescriptions and structural limitations than essay writing. Ironically, this does not make the task easier, but harder: whilst essays are circumscribed by a certain structure, paragraph order and formality of language (that about which you learnt in our study of Section 3), creative compositions are open to interpretation, moulding and freedom of construction – often, they can start and begin anywhere, use a variety of tenses and narrative voices, include a variety of characters and explore an endless amount of themes and/or ideas. b) Creative writing requires you to move away from your clear-cut methods of analysis and deconstruction and USE YOUR IMAGINATION. You are forced to move one step beyond identifying and evaluation other composers’ use of language features, and apply your knowledge to infuse such features into your own composition itself. However, composing a creative composition does not have to be as daunting a task as it seems. Like with Sections 1 and 3 of Paper 1, you can go about tackling Section 2 according to some distinctive starting points, and planning and drafting methods, which we will look at in our lessons. Before you begin to develop ideas for you composition, there are two KEY pieces of advice about writing. These will not only help you in your HSC task/s specifically, but also in ANY means of creative writing you seek to do in the future:

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HSC English

Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

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a) SHOW, DON’T TELL Imaginative writing always works best if it’s about a particular event rather than general or abstract thoughts. As you flesh out each of your ideas for a creative piece, make it into an incident, on a specific day, in a specific place, happening to specific characters. If you can start an idea with the words ‘One day…’, then your idea is specific, and therefore has a good chance of working. If not, then it may just be too general, and less likely to be interesting. (Remember this is just a hypothetical exercise- you do NOT need to start your piece with the word’s ‘one day’; in fact, you shouldn’t, because you may be stepping into clichéd territory!) This is a version of the oldest and most valuable advice to writers: ‘Show, don’t tell’. Showing things happening, so that the reader can truly see the event unfolding in what feels like real time, is much more interesting than you just telling the reader a summary of what happened. Eg. Compare ‘I felt nervous’ with ‘My legs seized up, my stomach felt fluttery and my hands suddenly fidgeted by my sides, cold, clammy and uncontrollable.’ b) WRITE ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW Writing ALWAYS seems to have more energy when it comes out of something the writer has experienced in reality. If you try writing about characters and situations you know nothing about – or have had no credible experience of – you writing will end up thin, flat and full of clichés you’ve borrowed from books or films. This doesn’t mean you have to write about yourself, or something that has happened directly to you. Take what you know, what you’ve seen, heard, (even if it was from a distance!), then give these experiences to the characters you create. What this really means is write about the world you know: DON’T write about plane crashes, mass murders, Armageddon etc. It may seem like a good and exciting idea at the time – but it won’t work. Melodrama is one of the most common (and worst) kinds of creative writing which markers will be forced to deal with. Ransack your memory, stories your mother told you or something you read in the paper last week for juicy details that you can adapt for your piece.

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HSC English

Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

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THE SIX STEPS OF COMPOSITION Good

writing

involves

much more than putting pen

to

paper.

From

gathering ideas to the final polishing, there is a stepby-step process that all essayists follow. Different instructors call the stages different names, but no matter what they are called, the core process writing steps remain the same: prewriting, drafting, revising,

editing,

publishing.

Developing and then composing a creative response can be broken down into six main steps: 1. Getting ideas - in no particular order 2. Choosing - selecting the ideas you think will be the most useful 3. Outlining - putting these ideas into the best order- making a plan 4. Drafting - completing a first draft from beginning to end, without going back 5. Revising - cutting, adding or moving parts of this draft where necessary 6. Editing - proofreading for grammar, spelling and paragraphs

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and

HSC English

Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

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Whilst we may not have time to go through all of these steps together as you develop and compose your creative compositions (as you may all be at different stages), you should always refer to these six steps when looking to construct a response from scratch.

CLASS EXERCISE: ANALYSIS OF SUCCESSFUL CREATIVE WRITING TECHNIQUE It’s all very well to talk about creative writing technique in the abstract – but how does it actually manifest itself? Let’s look at some examples of the kind of creative writing which you most probably be required to do: the short story. The amount of space which you have in your exam is extremely limited – it is rare for professional authors to write such short pieces. Here are a couple of short short stories. As we read through them, note down features which make them stylistically successful. Also consider how the idea of belonging is represented in the story.

Ernest Hemingway – Indian Camp At the lake shore there was another rowboat drawn up. The two Indians stood waiting. Nick and his father got in the stern of the boat and the Indians shoved it off and one of them got in to row. Uncle George sat in the stern of the camp rowboat. The young Indian shoved the camp boat off and got in to row Uncle George.

The two boats started off in the dark. Nick heard the oarlocks of the other boat quite a way ahead of them in the mist. The Indians rowed with quick choppy strokes. Nick lay back with his father's arm around him. It was cold on the water. The Indian who was rowing them was working very hard, but the other boat moved further ahead in the mist all the time.

"Where are we going, Dad?" Nick asked. "Over to the Indian camp. There is an Indian lady very sick." "Oh," said Nick. Across the bay they found the other boat beached. Uncle George was smoking a cigar in the dark. The young Indian pulled the boat way up on the beach. Uncle George gave both the Indians cigars.

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HSC English

Paper 1 – Area of Study (Belonging) III

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They walked up from the beach through a meadow that was soaking wet with dew, following the young Indian who carried a lantern. Then they went into the woods and followed a trail that led to the logging road that ran back into the hills. It was much lighter on the logging road as the timber was cut away on both sides. The young Indian stopped and blew out his lantern and they all walled on along the road.

They came around a bend and a dog came out barking. Ahead were the lights of the shanties where the Indian bark-peelers lived. More dogs rushed out at them. The two Indians sent them back to the shanties. In the shanty nearest the road there was a light in the window. An old woman stood in the doorway holding a lamp.

Inside on a wooden bunk lay a young Indian woman. She had been trying to have her baby for two days. All the old women in the camp had been helping her. The men had moved off up the road to sit in the dark and smoke cut of range of the noise she made. She screamed just as Nick and the two Indians followed his father and Uncle George into the shanty. She lay in the lower bunk, very big under a quilt. Her head was turned to one side. In the upper bunk was her husband. He had cut his foot very badly with an ax three days before. He was smoking a pipe. The room smelled very bad.

Nick's father ordered some water to be put on the stove, and while it was heating he spoke to Nick.

"This lady is going to have a baby, Nick," he said. "I know," said Nick.

"You don't know," said his father. "Listen to me. What she is going through is called being in labor. The baby wants to be born and she wants it to be born. All her muscles are trying to get the baby born. That is what is happening when she screams." "I see," Nick said. Just then the woman cried out. "Oh, Daddy, can't you give her something to make her stop screaming?" asked Nick.

"No. I haven't any anaesthetic," his father said. "But her screams are not important. I don't hear them because they are not important."

The husband in the upper bunk rolled over against the wall.

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The woman in the kitchen motioned to the doctor that the water was hot. Nick's father went into the kitchen and poured about half of the water out of the big kettle into a basin. Into the water left in the kettle he put several things he unwrapped from a handkerchief.

"Those must boil," he said, and began to scrub his hands in the basin of hot water with a cake of soap he had brought from the camp. Nick watched his father's hands scrubbing each other with the soap. While his father washed his hands very carefully and thoroughly, he talked.

"You see, Nick, babies are supposed to be born head first but sometimes they're not. When they're not they make a lot of trouble for everybody. Maybe I'll have to operate on this lady. We'll know in a little while."

When he was satisfied with his hands he went in and went to work. "Pull back that quilt, will you, George?" he said. "I'd rather not touch it."

Later when he started to operate Uncle George and three Indian men held the woman still. She bit Uncle George on the arm and Uncle George said, "Damn squaw bitch!" and the young Indian who had rowed Uncle George over laughed at him. Nick held the basin for his father. It all took a long time. His father picked the baby up and slapped it to make it breathe and handed it to the old woman. "See, it's a boy, Nick," he said. "How do you like being an interne?"

Nick said. "All right." He was looking away so as not to see what his father was doing.

"There. That gets it," said his father and put something into the basin.

Nick didn't look at it. "Now," his father said, "there's some stitches to put in. You can watch this or not, Nick, just as you like. I'm going to sew up the incision I made." Nick did not watch. His curiosity had been gone for a long time.

His father finished and stood up. Uncle George and the three Indian men stood up. Nick put the basin out in the kitchen.

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Uncle George looked at his arm. The young Indian smiled reminiscently. "I'll put some peroxide on that, George," the doctor said.

He bent over the Indian woman. She was quiet now and her eyes were closed. She looked very pale. She did not know what had become of the baby or anything.

"I'll be back in the morning." the doctor said, standing up. "The nurse should be here from St. Ignace by noon and she'll bring everything we need." He was feeling exalted and talkative as football players are in the dressing room after a game. "That's one for the medical journal, George," he said. "Doing a Caesarian with a jack-knife and sewing it up with nine-foot, tapered gut leaders."

Uncle George was standing against the wall, looking at his arm.

"Oh, you're a great man, all right," he said.

"Ought to have a look at the proud father. They're usually the worst sufferers in these little affairs," the doctor said. "I must say he took it all pretty quietly."

He pulled back the blanket from the Indian's head. His hand came away wet. He mounted on the edge of the lower bunk with the lamp in one hand and looked in. The Indian lay with his face toward the wall. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. The blood had flowed down into a pool where his body sagged the bunk. His head rested on his left arm. The open razor lay, edge up, in the blankets.

"Take Nick out of the shanty, George," the doctor said.

There was no need of that. Nick, standing in the door of the kitchen, had a good view of the upper bunk when his father, the lamp in one hand, tipped the Indian's head back.

It was just beginning to be daylight when they walked along the logging road back toward the lake. "I'm terribly sorry I brought you along; Nickie," said his father, all his post-operative exhilaration gone. "It was an awful mess to put you through."

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"Do ladies always have such a hard time having babies?" Nick asked. "No, that was very, very exceptional." "Why did he kill himself, Daddy?" "I don't know, Nick. He couldn't stand things, I guess." "Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?" "Not very many, Nick." "Do many women?" "Hardly ever." "Don't they ever?" "Oh, yes. They do sometimes." "Daddy?" "Yes." "Where did Uncle George go?" "He'll turn up all right." "Is dying hard, Daddy?" "No, I think it's pretty easy, Nick. It all depends."

They were seated in the boat. Nick in the stern, his father rowing. The sun was coming up over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning.

In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing; he felt quite sure that he would never die.

1924

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James Joyce’s Eveline SHE sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired. Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way home; she heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete pavement and afterwards crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there used to be a field there in which they used to play every evening with other people's children. Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it -- not like their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The children of the avenue used to play together in that field -- the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns, little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters. Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her father used often to hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep nix and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive. That was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters were all grown up her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to England. Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home. Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided. And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word: "He is in Melbourne now." She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her. O course she had to work hard, both in the house and at business. What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening. "Miss Hill, don't you see these ladies are waiting?" "Look lively, Miss Hill, please." She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.

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But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that. Then she would be married -- she, Eveline. People would treat her with respect then. She would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father's violence. She knew it was that that had given her the palpitations. When they were growing up he had never gone for her like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girl but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother's sake. And no she had nobody to protect her. Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages -- seven shillings -- and Harry always sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money from her father. He said she used to squander the money, that she had no head, that he wasn't going to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad on Saturday night. In the end he would give her the money and ask her had she any intention of buying Sunday's dinner. Then she had to rush out as quickly as she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather purse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through the crowds and returning home late under her load of provisions. She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to hr charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly. It was hard work -- a hard life -- but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life. She was about to explore another life with Frank. Frank was very kind, manly, open-hearted. She was to go away with him by the night-boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home waiting for her. How well she remembered the first time she had seen him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He was standing at the gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward over a face of bronze. Then they had come to know each other. He used to meet her outside the Stores every evening and see her home. He took her to see The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part of the theatre with him. He was awfully fond of music and sang a little. People knew that they were courting and, when he sang about the lass that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly confused. He used to call her Poppens out of fun. First of all it had been an excitement for her to have a fellow and then she had begun to like him. He had tales of distant countries. He had started as a deck boy at a pound a month on a ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada. He told her the names of the ships he had been on and the names of the different services. He had sailed through the Straits of Magellan and he told her stories of the terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Ayres, he said, and had come over to the old country just for a holiday. Of course, her father had found out the affair and had forbidden her to have anything to say to him. "I know these sailor chaps," he said. One day he had quarrelled with Frank and after that she had to meet her lover secretly.

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The evening deepened in the avenue. The white of two letters in her lap grew indistinct. One was to Harry; the other was to her father. Ernest had been her favourite but she liked Harry too. Her father was becoming old lately, she noticed; he would miss her. Sometimes he could be very nice. Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire. Another day, when their mother was alive, they had all gone for a picnic to the Hill of Howth. She remembered her father putting on her mother’s bonnet to make the children laugh. Her time was running out but she continued to sit by the window, leaning her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odour of dusty cretonne. Down far in the avenue she could hear a street organ playing. She knew the air Strange that it should come that very night to remind her of the promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together as long as she could. She remembered the last night of her mother's illness; she was again in the close dark room at the other side of the hall and outside she heard a melancholy air of Italy. The organ-player had been ordered to go away and given sixpence. She remembered her father strutting back into the sickroom saying: "Damned Italians! coming over here!" As she mused the pitiful vision of her mother's life laid its spell on the very quick of her being -- that life of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness. She trembled as she heard again her mother's voice saying constantly with foolish insistence: "Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!" She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape! Frank would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness. Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He would save her. She stood among the swaying crowd in the station at the North Wall. He held her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying something about the passage over and over again. The station was full of soldiers with brown baggages. Through the wide doors of the sheds she caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat, lying in beside the quay wall, with illumined portholes. She answered nothing. She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of distress, she prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty. The boat blew a long mournful whistle into the mist. If she went, tomorrow she would be on the sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Ayres. Their passage had been booked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? Her distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in silent fervent prayer. A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand: "Come!"

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All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing. "Come!" No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish. "Eveline! Evvy!" He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.

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CLASS EXERCISE: ANALYSIS OF SUCCESSFUL CREATIVE WRITING TECHNIQUE (25 mins) Reproduced from Glasson, T. (1999). English at eleven: VCE English units 1 & 2. Milton: Jacaranda Wiley: 136-49.

POINT OF VIEW He waited, without revolt, for Patricia to say 'Quick! Hurry back, it's snowing!' and to pack him in out of the day before his feet were wet. Patricia can't have seen the snow, he thougllt at the top of the hill, though it was falling heavily, sweeping against her face, covering Iler black hat. He dared not speak, for fear of waking her, as they turned the corner into tile road that led down to tile park. From Patricia, EditlJ, and Arnold by Dylan Thomas I once saw a bloke try to kill himself. I'll never forget the day because I was sitting in the house one Saturday afternoon, feeling black and fed up because everybody in the family had gone to the pictures, except me, who'd for some reason been left out of it. 'Course, I didn't know then that I would soon see something you can never see in tile same wayan the pictures, a real bloke stringing himself up: I was only a-Kid at the time, so you can imagine how much I enjoyed it. From The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveller. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; tile TV is always on in tile next room. Tell the others right away, 'No, I don't want to watch TV!' Raise your voice - they won't hear you otherwise - 'I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!' Maybe they haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: 'I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!' Or if you prefer, don't say anything; just hope they'll leave you alone, From If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Ilalo Calvina

VOICE My mother and I have a pretty good relationship, if a bit erratic. One minute we love each other to bits and spend hours in deep and meaningful conversation and next minute we'll be screeching at each other about the most ridiculous tiling, from my room being in a state of chaos to tile fact that she won't let me stay overnigl1t at a friend's home. From Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marclletta

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Hey, what is going on here? I've got my VCE, I'm not too ugly to look at, I can hold my own in a conversation, but no matter how hard I try I can't get a job. So far I've responded to dozens of advertisements, travelled allover town on the Met knocking on doors - even tried the Internet. No luck. I just don't get it. What do I have'to do to be noticed? In the meantime, of cours~, I've been down to the local Centrelink office and I'm officially a dole recipient. I don't like it. It makes me feel bad. Not good for the old self-esteem, you know? OK so there are hundreds of thousands like me. It doesn't really help to know that. What I want to know is, if it's my fault I'm unemployed, what can I do about it? If it's not my fault, what's somebody else doing about it? Or perhaps I've got it all wrong. Perhaps nobody gives a stuff. D. McKenzie, Oakleigh My acquisition of the flat was followed by a further undertaking. With some apprehension on both sides, it was agreed that my younger brotller should share the place with me. My job in advertising had re-established me in Ben's good books. He was still at the hotel school and it seemed possible that we would see little of each other. His catering skills were welcome in a flatmate and he was domesticated in other ways, having learnt how to sew on buttons and iron shirts as well as prepare beautiful-looking food. From Tile Tap Dancer by Andrew Barrow

TENSE I'm in a playground on Classon Avenue in Brooklyn with my brother, Malachy. He's two, I'm three. We're on the seesaw. Up, down, up, clown. Malachy goes up. I get off. Malachy goes down. Seesaw hits the ground. He screams. His hand is on his mouth and there's blood. Oh, God. Blood is bad. My mother will kill me.

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And here she is, trying to run across the playground. Her big belly slows her. She says, What did you do? What did you do to the child? I don't know what to say. I don't know what I did. She pulls my ear. Go home. Go to bed. Bed? In the middle of the day? She pushes me toward the playground gate. Go. She picks up Malachy and waddles off. From Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt I wandered through the city examining hotels from the street, b.ut they all seemed a bit grand for me, and eventually ended up at the central tourist office, feeling mildly lost and far from home. I wasn't quite sure what I was doing here. I looked through racks of leaflets for shire-horse centres, petting zoos, falconry centres, miniature pony centres, model railways, butterfly farms, and something called - I jest not - Twiggy Winkie's Farm and Hedgehog Hospital, none of which seemed to address my leisure requirements. Nearly all the leaflets were depressingly illiterate, particularly with regard to punctuation ... From Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson

CHARACTER APPEARANCE . .. Barney , .. went to inspect the lodgings. A woman with a carefully powdered face and waved black hair opened the door to him. A discreet smear of lipstick outlined her lips, and there was a hint of eye,-shadow beneath her myopic-seeming eyes. She was wearing a flowered overall, which she removed in the hall. Beneath was .a navy-blue skirt and a cream-coloured blouse that had a foxterrier brooch pinned to it. She folded the overall and placed it on the hallstand.

.

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From In Love With Ariadne by William Trevor CHARACTER DIALOGUE 'Georgina,' Mr Arbuary said, in his headmaster's rather than his father's voice, 'has much to mend this holidays. So, too, has Harriet.' 'My report wasn't too awful,' Harriet insisted in an unconvincing mutter meant mainly for herself. 'Speak clearly if you wish to be heard, Harriet. Reports are written to be assessed by

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parents. I would remind you of that.' 'I only meant-' 'You are a chatterbox, Harriet. What should be placed on chatterboxes?' 'Lids.' 'Precisely so.' A silence fell around the table. Mrs Arbuary cut the fruitcake, TI18 Headmaster passed his cup for more tea, Eventually he said: 'It is always a pity, I think, when Easter is as early as it is this year.' From Children from the Headmaster by William Trevor

CHARACTER BEHAVIOUR I knew that Jan wouldn't like what I had to say, but she made me wait several minutes before she answered. Slowly and deliberately she raised the coffee cup to her lips, sipped quietly, and, just as carefully, replaced it on the table. Then she stood and walked over to the sink. I saw her hands clench the bench-top and her back straighten. She took a (Ieep breath before she turned. The muscles of her face twitched, her mouth struggled to shape the words. Then, without uttering a single sound, she rushed from the room.

WAYS OF STARTING A SHORT STORY Suspense The knock on my door gave me no reason to hesitate. I wasn't expecting anyone in particular, but people do sometimes call on me out of the blue and, being a woman on my own, I have always liked friends just dropping in. I like phone calls for the same reason: there is always that deliciously gravid moment when you pick up the phone, wondering who it might be. From Houseguest by Hugh Mackay With a particular event George died. He choked to death on a peanut, on the eve of his sixty-seventh birthday. Such a ludicrous way to die, I have often since reflected, as unexpected as dying from earache. We were at a dinner party at the time, waiting to sit down to eat, and the peanuts, lying innocuously in little silver dish_es, were but a prelude to the meal. From Out of Season by Barbara Gamble TALENT 100: HSC SUCCESS. SIMPLIFIED.

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By setting the scene The novel begins in a railway station, a locomotive huffs, steam from a piston covers the opening of the chapter, a cloud of smoke hides part of the first paragraph. In the odor of the station there is a passing whiff of station cafe odor. There is someone looking through the befogged glass, he opens the glass door of the bar, everything is misty, inside, too, as if seen by nearsighted eyes, or eyes irritated by coal dust. The pages of the book are clouded like the windows of an old train, the cloud of smoke rests on the sentences. It is a rainy evening; the man enters the bar; he unbuttons his damp overcoat; a cloud of steam enfolds him; a whistle dies away along tracks that are glistening with rain, as far as the eye can see. Frolll If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvina With dialogue 'I'm finished with boxing,' I said. 'I don1 go and I don't watch it on TV.' 'Why not?' Jack Spargo drew a stick figure in the dust on my office window. He gave the figure boxing gloves. 'I read about a British medical report on the brain damage boxers suffer. One fight can do it, an amateur fight even. A bloody spar can kill a few thousand brain cells.' From 'Box On' by Peter Carris With a one-sentence paragraph It turned out exactly the way I'd feared it would. By introducing a character It was impossible to see her approach without a shudder of distaste. She was a grotesque parody of a woman, so fat that her feet and hands and heat protruded absurdly from the huge slab of her body like tiny disproportionate afterthoughts. Dirty blonde hair clung damp and thin to her scalp, black patches of sweat spread beneath her al·mpits. Clearly, walking was painful. She shuffled forward on the insides of her feet, legs forced apart by the thrust of one gigantic thigh against another, balance precarious. And with every movement, however small, the fabric of her dress strained ominously as the weight of her flesh shifted. She had, it seemed, no redeeming features. Even her eyes, a deep blue, were all but lost in the ugly folds of pitted white lard.

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From Tile Sculptress by Minette Walters By introducing a problem The noise from next door - the blaring music, tile shouting voices, the drunken laughter - had been part of her nightly experience ever since she'd moved into the inner-city terrace house. She'd rung the landlord to no avail, bought ear-plugs, investigated sound-proofing. There didn't seem to be any easy solution. By stating a purpose I know you think that because I did what I did I deserve the punishment I have received. But it's not really that simple. It never is, is it? And so I've decided, after remaining silent all this time, that I will tell my side of the story.

STRUCTURING TIME SEQUENCE Chronological In its simplest form, however, it can be quite boring. If you're not careful, it can lead to excessive use of the word 'then' or to the tendency to ill.c1ude every last bit of detail. The trick is to think of other ways to indicate the passing of time. Sentence openings such as 'The next day ... ', 'After much discussion ... ', 'It seemed like hours later when ... ' and 'When I woke up the next morning ... ' are ways in which you can move the narrative on at a brisk pace. Flashback The flashback technique often begins at the end or climax of a series of events and then returns to the start in order to explain what led to that ending. Circular A circular structure begins at a point just before the climax, backtracks to the start and then works forward past the climax to the conclusion.

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HOMEWORK TASK Now that you have some idea of what kind of material would be suitable, create a mind-map with which you brainstorm initial ideas for our creative composition/s, entitled ‘SECTION 2 BRAINSTORMING’. Remember that it will be beneficial, down the track, to have 2 or even 3 possible responses on hand, in order that you are prepared for any stimulus and question thrown at you – so don’t worry if you have more than 1 idea. Think about things that have happened to you, to your family, to your friends. Brainstorm funny stories or experiences from the past (or present) that could be written in an entertaining and/or sophisticated manner. Also, think about what YOU like reading: do you like sad, emotional tales of heartbreak and loss? Do you like comical pieces full of satire and sarcasm? Do you prefer reflective, poignant pieces that comment on large philosophical issues? Remember that, at the end of the day, you are creating a composition that explores the concept of BELONGING. This means that your composition needs to include the word equation that we learnt in one of our first lessons: • A catalyst which causes the protagonist to move towards/away from one of the poles of belonging/alienation • Complications in which a new position is negotiated • An outcome – some final point on the continuum of belonging/alienation is reached; the protagonist may reflect on the experience. Stuck for ideas? There are two things that you can do: • Wander around your house, your environment. Really LOOK at the things around you, and try describing them in descriptive detail. Look at what is happening outside, on your street corner. Truly seeing your everyday surroundings may just spark some inspiration. • Go to the library or get on your computer and do some research. You could start by simply typing in the word ‘Belonging’, or any other words/phrases that might interest you. This does NOT mean that you should plagiarise creative compositions written by others - but reading the work of others may just provide you with a brainwave!

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