This educational resource is for Year 12 Mainstream English students studying in 2020: Unit 3 Reading & Creating Texts, Outcome 1, the Creative Task in Term 1.

This resource material assumes year 12 students have read their Creative Text or in some cases watched the movie related to this unit.

Most English classes discuss the Creative Task in their year 11 ‘Transition Classes’ to year 12 English (some schools call this ‘Head-start’) before the end of Term 4 in 2019.

If you have not read your text or watched the movie then please do this over the school holidays so you are ready for Term 1 in January 2020. 

What is Required in Outcome 1, The Creative Task?

To produce a written Creative Response to your text with an accompanying Written Explanation of the decisions made in the writing process and how these demonstrate an understanding of the text.  The Creative Task is worth 30% of Unit 3.  The Creative Task is assessed out of 20 (word length depends on the school but usually 1000-1200 words) with the Written Explanation (world length depends on the school but usually 250-300 words) assessed out of 10 = 30 total marks.

Most Important Aspects of the Task

1. Whatever form you decide to take in the Creative Task you must make a connection between the original text and your Creative Response.
2. There must be a tangible relationship present, through an in-depth understanding of the original text’s features.
3. These features include characterisation (what motivates these characters), setting, context, narrative structure, tone and writing/film style.
4. Establishing a clear nexus [link] between the original text and your creative piece does not mean you need to replicate everything of the text; you can stylistically choose to reject or contrast elements of the original text – as long as these choices are deliberate and unambiguous [clear-cut].
5. Therefore, your Creative Response must demonstrate that you read your original text closely and perceptively by acknowledging these features of the text.

Some Ideas for Developing a Creative Response

1. Explore ideas in the original text from an alternative character’s perspective:

Give voice to a minor character that didn’t have a detailed backstory =

1. allow the character to voice his/her attitude or experience about an important event or issue that is left unacknowledged by the main characters
2. find a place in the text where this character can give their thoughts
3. could be at a particular moment of crisis in the text
4. the character could adopt an internal monologue directly delivered to other characters or only to the audience
5. can contrast the views of the other characters
6. must still explore the values of the text and connection to original text
7. can be 1^st person voice or use 3rd person limited

2. Explore a gap or silence in the original text:

Describe what might have happened in the lead up to where the original text begins or what might have happened after it ends =

1. Ask yourself what are the big questions, events, ideas or values that are not answered?
2. Is there a mystery still not explained or explored?
3. Fill in the gap or silence by rewriting a scene in a different voice like from 1^st person to 3^rd person voice to offer insight into the different perspectives on an issue
4. Write a prologue or epilogue = what new insight can you can you add with this addition and extension of the text? It must add something new – otherwise it is a redundant addition
5. Develop the suspense, rising tension, climax and resolution of an event further than the original text = change the setting but stay as true to the world of the original text as possible

3. Re-contextualising the original text:

Putting the same type story or similar characters into a completely different context =

1. This works well with an original text that has short stories where you can use the views and values from the original story to create characters in a new story with a different narrative, setting, major event, crisis or point of view but still directly connects to the original text’s point of view
2. Works well if the original story has an accident that has ramifications for the characters, you could use this idea but create another type of accident aligning with the author’s views and values / or drawing attention to another thematic idea that was not explored in the original text

See my Example Creative Story from ‘The Boat’ in Island by Alistair MacLeod

Creative Essay on ‘The Boat’ short story in Island by Alistair MacLeod