HSC Stuff > HSC English Extension 1
Literary Worlds Help
angewina_naguen:
Hey, hemlock! :)
I'd love to have a read of your story once you've finished it! Even if it's too late to provide you with any feedback, it'd be great to just see what your final piece looks like and how we can build on it leading up to the final exams next year ;D
--- Quote from: hemlock on December 01, 2018, 05:22:20 pm ---
I'm doing a piece about a young woman named Edith who works as a receptionist for the Company. Her encounter with Marlow who has returned from the Congo plants the seed for her investigation and instigates the beginning of challenging the values that colonial Brussels adheres to and that she works for.
Over the course of the response, she slowly unpacks the exploitation of the company by snooping around its filing room. She discovers the pamphlet written by Kurtz and its scribbled annotations, as well as an unpublished journal entry by Kurtz or maybe a newspaper article which was prevented from being released, detailing his own realisations of colonial imposition that lead him to cry "The horror, the horror! + his description of the grove of death.
--- End quote ---
I love the revised premise and how you have reimagined the characters! Make sure you still keep a great focus on setting because the module is centralised on literary worlds. Your character interpretations and reinventions are quite compelling and this will be really effective if you balance it well with your descriptions of place!
--- Quote from: hemlock on December 01, 2018, 05:22:20 pm ---
I need help with form here - should I have segments of the journal littered about the piece that reflect her stages of discovery? Like maybe she doesn't discover them? I'm not sure.
Her perception of Brussels and members of the company begins to change - maybe a parade/rally occurs in Brussels when she's on the street.
Edith gradually self-reflects; will she continue to be a proponent of idealism that the Company and Kurtz champions, when in reality she is aware of the core of darkness that hides behind noble ideas of civilisation + commerce? I want to parallel this idealism that I think Conrad challenges - and let her come to a realisation that the darkness exists in Europe, coated by surface-level idealism. I'm thinking of making her unable to choose what to do; torn between both worlds and it ends ambiguously? I'm not sure, I need help here.
--- End quote ---
It really shows how much you have considered your ideas and how you wish to represent them! I like the idea of scattering the journal segments throughout your creative writing to keep the reader on their toes. You could look at a fragmented approach to writing and using hyphens or asterisks to signal where you have shifted from narrating to the journal entries, as shown below. This is an extract from my earliest Ext 1 creative draft (I ended up taking a completely different route and loving that story much more but you can just use it as a structural example) where I used fragmentation to interchange between present and past tense. You could give the reader a break every fragment to absorb your character's self reflection and to let them know that you are shifting to a journal entry or, conversely, going back to the main narrative.
Spoiler-
-
His hands had that fighting spirit and it was apparent from the way they remained clenched, adjacent one another on the cable. It was beautiful in all its twisting, its twisted coils filling in the creases of his palm like the bodies fixed in the plasters of Pompeii. Some likened the barbed wire below to vines but he saw it as veins; how they were intricate, how they intertwined and flowed together.
Sometimes, they were still but not still enough. Other times, they were still but far too still.
-
“Lass’ sic nach Berlin Kommen. Let them come to Berlin.”
Cheers erupt and they invite but the men around me patronizingly clap too, in their own ironic way. They seem to mock the man, speaking on behalf on none when they think with their eyes,
“Nobody wants to be here, not like this.”
-
A refrain permeates through his mind;
“You are suppressed, not oppressed.”
Steel was cold but not frightening. He grasped with less force, relaxed his fists and tamed it.
-
“Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put up a wall to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us.”
Inside kindles a newfound respect. When one recognises flaws in oneself, the flaws of others become equally apparent. The people are listening and so are the authorities surrounding the vicinity.
They hardly do that.
-
Patrolling guards were unable to tell the difference between the swaying of the winds and the swaying of an acrobat. There was a distinct rhythm to his act- to, fro and up on the ropes when the arms began to sore. It was far from the unpredictability of the gushes from the East of Berlin, but they failed to notice.
They always had.
-
“Freedom is indivisible.”
I watch as a child’s fingers encapsulate around his mother’s.
-
He could see the fringes of the West and it was in that moment that the fall had hit him. His body was broken, but he was whole somehow.
-
“I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner".
In those seconds, he was lost in the applause because for that moment, it was if they were for him and every other Berliner who had escaped the other side of the wall,
And who was yet to escape.
The entries will assist in your intense characterisation as well and allow you to offer the feminist lens you have chosen to place on the original text. It also combines this well with post-colonialism and the movement away from portraying characters such as Edith as subalterns or side characters serving only the purpose of forwarding the plot and the lead's agenda. Choosing to reimagine the world of HOD from an unlikely perspective, such as hers, will be a huge advantage if you execute it with conviction and demonstrate the research you have put into it in your writing ;D
All I can suggest now is to start writing 8) Your ideas are very well-developed and all you need to do now is get them on paper. Once you have done that, you can come back to all of this and evaluate; you can see much clearer what areas you think you did really well and where you might like to revise elements of your story to reflect certain aspects more thoroughly. I hope that helps and do let me know how it goes ;D
katede21822:
angewina_naguen this is AMAZING! What was your ext1 story about // would you be able to tell me the name of the haiku you used? It seems really interesting. I was thinking about utilising a similar structure for my creative next week - where you intersperse a haiku or poem throughout the story to add depth....
angewina_naguen:
--- Quote from: katede21822 on August 10, 2019, 02:58:43 pm ---angewina_naguen this is AMAZING! What was your ext1 story about // would you be able to tell me the name of the haiku you used? It seems really interesting. I was thinking about utilising a similar structure for my creative next week - where you intersperse a haiku or poem throughout the story to add depth....
--- End quote ---
Hey, katede21822!
Welcome to the forums! I actually wrote my own haiku for the creative :D I positioned it at the beginning in my original draft to show the desolation and banality of 1970's Shinjuku in Japan but in the HSC, I ended up placing it at the very end to suit the question. The haiku works really well because it condenses the overall message and feel of the creative into a few syllables. This can show the marker that you have clarity in your intention for the piece and can articulate it simply. I've attached the one I wrote below with the lines before it so you can have some context :)
Touches of a Drifting ShadowIt was hard to believe that anything could be dead in a city of life. It was even harder to believe that anything could be alive in a city that was dead.
This was the world. It was strophic. It repeated. It was constant and time swirled in concentric circles that never ended, but never truly began at all.
He waved and whispered a sayonara.
-
Time is yet to claim you;
Your framework will hold you down.
Urban mountains stand.
Hope that makes sense! Good luck with your own haiku and all the best for your Extension 1 Trials :)
Angelina ;D
elania2171:
Also, there are so many questions that could be asked for the Literary Worlds module AGHHH its soo stressful haha :-[ ;D ;D
elania2171:
--- Quote from: angewina_naguen on August 11, 2019, 11:18:23 am ---Hey, katede21822!
Welcome to the forums! I actually wrote my own haiku for the creative :D I positioned it at the beginning in my original draft to show the desolation and banality of 1970's Shinjuku in Japan but in the HSC, I ended up placing it at the very end to suit the question. The haiku works really well because it condenses the overall message and feel of the creative into a few syllables. This can show the marker that you have clarity in your intention for the piece and can articulate it simply. I've attached the one I wrote below with the lines before it so you can have some context :)
Hope that makes sense! Good luck with your own haiku and all the best for your Extension 1 Trials :)
Angelina ;D
--- End quote ---
Hi Angelina,
This forum has really helped! Would you mind detailing // telling a little more about your story - like a summary?? It sounds really interesting, and I am looking at including extracts of poetry in my work (hopefully it will be done tonight) :o ;D - I'll be sure to upload it to the notes section when everything's completed!!
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version