CF Composing (1 Viewer)

[Liza-LaBoheme]

How many are everyone preparing? Parody? How long for each? 2004 examples? Four units of English and I still can't form sentences.

 

[nwatts]

Be careful with parodies. I've written a few (wrote one in the trial too), and it seems that they aren't all that well liked unless they're brilliant (like, Tom Stoppard 'Real Inspector Hound' brilliant). My last one involved a sex-crazy sleuth, involving the mystery of the missing lightswitches. It ended in nuclear fallout. Scored a 20/25, with the comment "this was a stupid, stupid story. you're incredibly lucky your writing skills are fantastic, otherwise this would have been a 5/25 mark."

Damn serious teachers.

 

[Liza-LaBoheme]

OUCH! that sounds rough.
I think it depends on how you handle the conventions (subversion, originality etc). The narrative voice is important too, and you don't want to piss off the markers by slagging off the genre too thoroughly.

 

[kami]

I agree with nwatts about parody - don't do it unless you are an absolutely superb writer with a fantastic idea. I've tried parodies on several occasions as apart from Poe style I can't do much else with genre, and the response I have gotten every time was "Keep it simple". Basically what I'm doing and what I'd suggest, is that you write in various schools of sub-genre till you are comfortable with the styles, and have a small stable of characters to use if you can(note:this does *not* mean prepared and regurgitating stories). Also fiddle with the characters from your texts and write them in ways you think they should be written so that you can get a handle on their "voice" if an exam question asks you to specifically write about a scene or a character from your texts.

 

[Kyroth***]

Something I did in the half yearlies, which may help...
If you're like me, thinking of a story of an appropriate length is very difficult, and many stories you think of could not be told in 8 pages in an exam. What I did in the halfyearly was exploit "write in any form you choose" and wrote the script of a conversation with one person telling the other about a story they just read. It means you can write much more concisly. I got a high B, and was averaging a C, so it works pretty well.
Of course, in the trial my story was too short, and only went for 2 pages, because that's all ther was to the story.

 

[nwatts]

Ah, Kyroth. You need to learn how to write well about nothing. Turn that 2 page story into a 25/25 8-pager .