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Crime Fiction creative questions (1 Viewer)

jo_mon

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Jul 30, 2002
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Has anyone got any of the creative tasks for crime fiction? Like from the independant trial or half yearlies? Or even just ones for genre in general?
 

Jellymonsta

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I got last years HSC one (though i guess u probably got that):

Imagine you are an external investigator inquiring into the circumstances and revelations of a crime case in ONE of the prescribed texts. In your answer, clearly identify which case you are investigating.
Write in script form (for radio, TV, film or play) your questioning of any character from that text. The aim of your inquiry is to have the character reflect on and justify his or her actions in the case.
Draw on what you have observed about the skills of investigative questioning in your reading of the prescribed texts and other related texts.

The markers actually said that was a really tough question, and the examples in the Standards Pack are generally not what you might expect.
Other than that, i think there are links from the main boredofstudies page... or you can look at the real BoS page for past exams - they go back to 1995, but i dont know how much good they will be. http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/hsc_exams/index.html
 

smegger_em

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these are the ones i have had...

pretend you have just written a crime fiction novel. write a character summary for two characters to send to your publisher, displaying your knowladge of the conventions of crime fiction.

write a converation about the genre you have studied making the participants either authors of or charactres from examples of the said genre

write a crime fiction short story

write a feature article discussing the changes that have occured in crime fiction genre over time
 

user

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1. Imagine you are the composer of ONE of the texts you have studied. You are speaking at a writer's festival. The topic of your speech is "Is the murder mystery dead?"

2. Compose the opening chapter of a textbook, intended for HSC students, on your chosen genre. Introduce your chapter by explaining clearly what the term 'genre' means and what elements you consider essential components of this genre. Then, with these components in mind, create your own imaginative composition to give student readers a clear example of this genre.

3. Compose a radio interview with sleuths from two of your texts. One must be from a prescribed text. The topics discussed will be their methods of investigation and their perspective on justice.

4. Starting with the following quite, write a composition which clearly establishers an imaginative response in your chosen genre. "I never meant to be a private eye"


5. Using the following news story as a starting point, compose a plot outline for a television mini series. Write in detail the scene where the criminal finds out that he has committed a crime (you don;t have to make your characters chinese)
[news paper article about a criminal with amnesia in Hong Kong being jailed even though he can't remember the crime]

6. Generic Imaginative
Stimulus Material provided, for example: cartoon, photo with caption, short contemporary, newspaper article, a lead in or concluding phrase or quote
Using the above stimulus amterial for ideas, compose the opening fo a new text in the genre you ahve studied which reflects the understandig of the genre you have gained through your study of the prescribed and other related trexts. You may write in any style or form you choose and in any context.

7. Then there's that question with the screen play based on a real life crime where there's 4 or 5 different scenarios in different countries. it's too long to type up, think it's one of the ETA things


Trial Question: Using the accompanying photograph as a stimulus, compose the opening of a new crime fiction text that reflects your understanding of the genre. (picture of a guy staring through a lattice kinda thing, Later we got told that it was a guy in a paddywagon cos he raped kids or something)

We got some more, but I can't find them.


(thanks to Ms Young/Mrs Godby @ HAHS):D
 

Milly

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Thanks for those questions guys! :)

So how long are the creative writing responses meant to be? I haven't been able to top more than 5 or 6 pages at the most... I am not one of those spontaneously creative people...
 

Jellymonsta

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5 or 6 pages is about as much as i expect to do. Which is plenty, so long as there is enough detail to make the markers happy. from memory some of the band 5/6 responses in the standards pack werent any bigger than that.
just remember that the idea behind the creative tasks is to demonstrate you have a working knowledge of the genre.
 

user

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I read it somewhere that the average response was 8 pages long- but that could have been the essay bit.
 

Jellymonsta

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yeah its an average... but bear in mind some of last years responses could only fit 4 words to a line. so in fact, some of the 6 page responses were just as long as the 15 page responses. it largely depends on the size of your writing. if you write small (like me) i dont think it is really something to worry about if you are still getting most of a booklet filled.
 

smegger_em

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Just out of interest, what would everyones ideal creative question be? I think i would really like a short story or a radio drama/conversation where you get a really straight forward question.
And ext 1 scales quiet well, better the ext 2 and ext 1&2 maths. check the link of the hsckidz site.
 

Weisy

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My ideal question would be a completely creative question which allowed me to develop my own subversions of the genre (which is what I've been working on most of the year). I think the knowledge about conventions, values, contexts should be brought through in the essay-type question, not the creative. Having the same objectives in both (like last year's HSC question is silly. Why have two separate questions when they're not really testing anything different?

btw, I thought maths scaled better.

Rank Mean
2 Mathematics Ext1 4UC 45.0 *
3 Mathematics Ext2 4UA 43.9
14 English Extension 1 38.4

what do you mean, smegger_em?
 

*cajunga*

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3unit isn't really that hard to study for - it's only one topic - crime fiction for me - and about 5/6 texts
the thing i'm worried about is them putting a really crazy hard word in the question, in an effort to make the paper more 'sophisticated' than advanced...
and the creative task.... last year's was really hard, but apprently the exam commitee got heaps of complaints about it last year, so *hopefully* that means they'll make it a little easier this year, to save their reputations....
the beginning of a crime fiction story would be good, or a pitch to a publishing company for a crime fiction story
 

bex

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I hate the creative question!!! I havent got any good stories!!!
Im gonna have to make one up in th next day or 2...
 

ameh

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I started to appreciate Crime Fiction and it's complexities after watching ''Wire In The Blood'' on ABC, Friday Nights at 8.30pm
 

ishq

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The whole 6/7/b page response is confusing.
Could you define it in words please? I usually end up fitting about 10/11 words in a line, so my paper usage is minimum...
For the essay question, I write about 2000-2100 words.
How much would you recommend for the writing?
 

zmenke02

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hey.. do you have any crime fiction stories that i can read?? ANYONEEE
 

smegger_em

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It depends on what you want... I found that it was good to read a couple of examples of all the sub genres. In other words, don't read ten Agetha Christie's and nothing else, try and cover a variery of material, it will give you a better, deeper understanding of the genre and will be more interesting for you.

Examples...
Hard Boild - Any Dashiel Hammet (novels or films based on them)

Soft Boiled - I have to say the Christie is my favourite, very easy reads. Other people like to go with a Sherlock Holmes

Tart Noir (Or Sexy-Chick-Lit-Crime-Fiction) - Janet Evanovich is again pretty easy to read and also easy to find

Parody- I am sure that there are a lot of different texts out there that fall into this catogry, but the only one that comes to my mind at the moment is 'And Then There Was One,' a send up of Christie's 'And Then There Were None'

Psychological/Procedural Thriller - Heaps and heaps of this out there, Patrica Cornwell, P.D. James etc

Televison/Film - There are so many examples of this out there that I am sure you don't need a list of them, but I personally really like Rebus (the books are good too) - good to have a mix of American and British. One of my favourite Crime Fiction films would be Gosford Park, a great movie.

Hope thats of some help to you!
 

Trillium

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I would *love* it if they just told us to write either a short story/ introduction to a Crime Fiction PI text and subvert as many conventions as possible.
Something simple an fun. Alas, i don't think it'll ever happen *sighs*
I'm doing the question... about being a PI, and writing a script interviewing one of the caharcters at the moment. It's hard :(
~Trill
 

smegger_em

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In the creative section of my HSC exam we were allowed to write anything we wanted, in any style we wanted, as long as we used a sentance that they gave us as the first lineof whatever we wrote. I wrote the most over the top parody - i figured that it was a really easy, if not really subtle, way to show all of the difffernt features of the genre. It was a really kick-arse question i thought, but i know some people got a little thrown by the first sentance that we had to use.
 

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