Creative Writing and the HSC

It's a grand irony that students often memorise an essay and make up their creative writing on the spot. Really, it should be the other way around. If you know your texts well, it's easier - and more desirable - to make up essay paragraphs specific to the HSC® Exam question during the exam. Meanwhile, very few normal humans can make up convincing metaphors and similes on the spot: these need preparation.

And even though the essay feels more important than the creative writing component, they are both worth 15 marks - which makes them equally important to your HSC® Exam outcome.

So how do you plan your HSC® Exam creative writing? It's often ideal to prepare 2 or 3 different stories, but for each of them you should think about the following:

1. It's not Game of Thrones: We don't want fantasy, we don't want anything plot-heavy, and we don't want long and complicated. You've got 40 minutes, so be realistic. Write a domestic, character-driven story about an event that could happen to you. What does the character need to learn or change about themselves in order to grow?
    
2. It's more like a creative essay: The whole point of the creative writing task is to prove you know how discoveries work in the real world.  Specifically the process of discovery. So your whole story has to focus on this process including catalyst, obstacles and consequences of the discovery. Just like an essay, it's going to be too broad or complex if you try to explore all the possible aspects of discovery. Just pick one type of discovery, say, a character's spiritual discovery, and explore it in detail.
    
3. Use techniques. Lots of 'em: Don't forget to describe your characters and location using the five senses. Likewise, use plenty of similes, metaphors, personifications and a motif. These figurative language techniques are considered more sophisticated and you'll lose marks if you don't use them.

Try writing in third person perspective, like you're watching the character, rather than being inside the character's head, as this allows more sophisticated description and stops you from just narrating.