"essay, essay, essay..."
I'm a bit confused about how you would challenge throughout the essay instead of having a challenge paragraph. Would this plan work instead? I've listed what could be explored in each para.
Para 1: How individual acts of defiance are engaging
Para 2: How the greyness of morality is engaging
Para 3: How defiance humanises the characters and exposes readers to their darker, more selfish sides which makes it more engaging
Some new worries...
Does having all challenge paragraphs but 1 work? So in this case, 2 challenge paragraphs. (I've tried to base them on how the text can be engaging for different reasons)
I'm scared I'm going off topic with 3 challenge paragraphs! 
Okay, you seem a few steps ahead of the average student, so forgive me if this is just reinforcing what you already know but I figured I may as well go through the whole process for the benefit of others.
Let's backtrack a bit and return to the prompt for a second.
'It is individual acts of defiance that makes Stasiland so engaging. Discuss.'What you
definitely shouldn't do is completely agree or completely disagree with no challenging whatsoever. I'm guessing you probably already know this, but just to reinforce it... an essay structure like:
P1: Miriam's defiance is very engaging to readers
P2: The defiance characters show against the Stasi is also engaging
P3: Funder engages readers by showing how characters can be defiant against laws and expectations
...or something like that would be incredibly flawed and weak. All of these "arguments" are basically boiling down to just 'YES. PROMPT IS RIGHT. LET ME REPEAT THAT AGAIN USING SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT WORDS.' And that's... not a valid argument, let alone the kind of strong, well-supported points you're expected to construct at a VCE level. As such, complete agreement is a bad idea, and completely disagreeing is, if anything, even worse. For a prompt like this, it's really hard to argue 'No. Individual acts of resistance
don't make
Stasiland engaging' because how the hell do you show something
doesn't lead to something else? What will invariably happen is that you'd end up 'topic dodging' by saying either:
'No, it's the
sense of camaraderie and perseverance that makes
Stasiland engaging.'
or
'No, the individual acts of defiance actually make
Stasiland unrelatable because of how confronting they can be.And in either case, you'd be neglecting to talk about a key element of the prompt because you'd've supplemented your own focus and effectively 'dodged' the topic. 100% disagreeing would mean that you'd have to stick with those key terms the whole way through and just continually talk about how they don't connect with one another, and that's a pretty unrealistic approach.
So we're left with the choice to either mostly agree, or mostly disagree. And let's assume we're mostly agreeing for this prompt seeing as that's probably the easiest interpretation to argue for in this case.
Here's what most students in the state would do:
P1: Yes, the individual acts of resistance make the text engaging, and here's an example of that.
P2: Yes, the individual acts of resistance make the text engaging, and here's another example of that.
P3: However, the individual acts of resistance don't always make the text engaging, and here's an example of that.
But what are you left with at the end? Your conclusion has to try and pick up the pieces and tie things together into some semblance of a sensible interpretation, and if all you've done is let examples drive the discussion, you'll have very little chance to impress the assessors on the basis of your ideas.
My recommendation: you devise a contention that's more
holistic, meaning that you have an overarching interpretation that contains a bit of a challenge but still expresses a clear point of view in response to the prompt.
The best way to do this is to use the following format:
'Although X , ultimately Y '
...whereby X = some form of challenge, and Y = your primary line of argumentation.
For that prompt above, for example, you might argue that:
Although the instances of defiance depicted in Stasiland complicate the text's portrayal of morality, ultimately these actions are an integral part of Funder's attempts to communicate her fascination with the engaging stories of those affected by the Wall. Then, within each body paragraph, you explore how this is achieved. It's kind of like each individual B.P. will contain an element of 'challenging' the prompt, but you're also doing more than just blatantly agreeing/supporting it. When I was in Year 12, I used to like thinking of it as reconfiguring the prompt into a more substantive interpretive point - kind of like the assessors had provided this vague outline of an idea, and then I'd dismantled and rebuilt it into a proper contention
Now let's look at where your contention is at:
I didn't want my contention to simply be "Yes I agree." I wanted to be something along the lines of this : "Although individual acts of defiance make the text engaging, ultimately there are also other factors which render the text engaging in different ways."
Structurally, you've got the right idea, but if you want to mostly disagree,
you need to do more than just say 'there's other stuff that makes the text engaging' because your argument hinges on EXAMPLES, not IDEAS!Compare the following:
Defiance does make the text engaging, but it also complicates the notions of morality and justice throughout.
vs.
Defiance does make the text engaging, but defiance does other stuff too.
or
Defiance does make the text engaging, but this is primarily because of the context of that defiance and the fact that the characters being defiant do so for valid and justifiable reasons.
vs.
Defiance does make the text engaging, but there's other stuff that makes it engaging too.
I'm not saying your intro/contention has to be highly specific in terms of which evidence you'll explore; rather that you need to give us a sense of where your ideas are going. The challenge you've got is a good start, but if you are going to disagree,
be careful not to turn the discussion into a topic dodge by saying 'no, and here's some different stuff.'So the reason you may be a bit unsure of your topic sentences is that your contention runs the risk of veering into less than relevant territory. That's why, for the original T.S.s you listed, you'd be best to modify your second and third one to ensure you're still looking at the ideas of defiance and engaging-ness because
every paragraph has to touch on both of those two ideas to some extent - even if you're disagreeing.
For these versions:
Para 1: How individual acts of defiance are engaging
Para 2: How the greyness of morality is engaging
Para 3: How defiance humanises the characters and exposes readers to their darker, more selfish sides which makes it more engaging
Few questions/notes:
- How would paragraphs 1 and 3 differ; what would you talk about in 1 that wouldn't be covered by 3? It seems like there's a bit of overlap at the moment since 3 is almost like a subset of 1, so making 1 more specific might help avoid that potential redundancy
- What's the connection between the greyness of morality and the notion of defiance? I know it exists, you know it exists, but if it's not in your T.S. then it's tough to judge what you've written as being accurate. (And there was probably a lot of thinking and planning in your head that you didn't explicitly give away in your T.S. which is totally fine, but I'm just making sure that you know what the assessors would need to see.)
- It seems like you're agreeing more so than disagreeing here(?) though because you've listed general ideas rather than argumentative points (which is also totally fine for the sake of your own planning - I actually preferred doing it that way sometimes) I'm not 100% sure.
- What you've got for 3 is a pretty strong point, but it doesn't really align with your current contention, so you'll have to make a decision as to which one you're going to alter.
And to address these concerns:
Does having all challenge paragraphs but 1 work? So in this case, 2 challenge paragraphs. (I've tried to base them on how the text can be engaging for different reasons)
I'm scared I'm going off topic with 3 challenge paragraphs!
You can mostly challenge/disagree with prompts, but not all prompts would let you do this. You
don't have to just agree as your default option because there will be other prompts that actively invite disagreement (eg. 'None of the characters in
Stasiland are sympathetic. Discuss.')
But I think it will be more helpful if you go from thinking about essays in terms of:
- Contention: disagreeing with the prompt
- P1: agreeing with the prompt
- P2: challenging the prompt
- P3: challenging the prompt
...to...
- P1: backing up contention
- P2: backing up contention
- P3: backing up contention
The assessors want to see you mount a case for your interpretation, and simply agreeing/disagreeing is only the starting point for doing that, so if you're able to shift your mindset from thinking about
'prompt-->paragraphs' to
'prompt-->contention-->paragraphs,' you'll be in a much better position.
Let me know if any of that didn't make sense!
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