OK, we all accept that reflection statements blow. Unless you're into some serious navel-gazing it's impossible to reflect genuinely on something you've a) only just written and b) would never have done if you hadn't absolutely had to. Most reflection statements require you to explain creative choices you made in a piece of writing, and... Continue Reading →
Free your mind – an end of term writing exercise
Usually at the end of term I like to play short films for my classes, because I foolishly trust that they've worked hard and need a break. Good short films are also excellent related texts, and are much easier to work with than 2+-hour megamovies. Unfortunately, no one seems to share my taste in short... Continue Reading →
Advanced Mod C about urbanisation
No action or event is really complete until you’ve told the story of it. By putting it in some kind of order you develop an understanding of what it meant, as well as what happened. (a) Use this statement as the stimulus for a piece which concludes with a new understanding of a problem. You... Continue Reading →
Some freebie practice questions
Try to keep all your answers to 40mins max, since this is all you'll have in the exam. If you want to imagine there's a (b) part asking for a reflection statement, then imagine that the (a) part is worth 12 marks and the (b) part 8 marks. Good luck! * Compose a piece of... Continue Reading →
Advanced Mod C Imaginative
Only the characters that we love to hate exist outside the story. Their strength allows them to breach the walls of their text and enter our world. Write about a character, persona, or speaker who is hateful. * The new boy had longish hair and long, slightly skeletal fingers. That was all she noticed before... Continue Reading →
A tour of Kinsella Mansion
a schoolboy on holidays, resting in the still shade, / confident within the granary of empire, wealth / that keeps home secure (John Kinsella, ''After 94 degrees in the shade' by Lawrence Alma-Tadema' * In the edifice of his text, the poet keeps them separated in different poems, like two prisoners who don’t know that... Continue Reading →
Ned Kelly: Soldier of Future Time
How queer and foreign it must seem to you and all the coarse words and cruelty which I now relate are far away in ancient time. Peter Carey, The True History of the Kelly Gang * My father is an empty iron suit, a trash-can of quarter-inch metal as crude and dented as a hobo's... Continue Reading →
Good intentions and emojis
What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. –George Orwell, ‘Politics and the English Language’ * Once upon a time I had a boss (at a tutoring business) who sent out a fortnightly email. It was a relentlessly – sometimes exhaustingly – exuberant piece.... Continue Reading →
The Craft of Writing 