band 6 creative writing hsc

How to Write a Band 6 Creative?

HSC Module B: Band 6 Notes on T.S. Eliot’s Poetry

Full mark band 6 creative writing sample.

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• creative writing sample

Following on from our blog post on how to write creatives , this is a sample of a creative piece written in response to:

“Write a creative piece capturing a moment of tension. Select a theme from Module A, B or C as the basis of your story.”

The theme chosen was female autonomy from Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (Module C prescribed text).

This creative piece also took inspiration from Cate Kennedy’s Whirlpool .

Summer of 2001

For a moment, the momentum she gained galloping in the blossoming garden jolted, and she deflated like a balloon blown by someone suddenly out of breath. A half-smile, captured by the blinking shutter.

Out spluttered the monochrome snapshot. A bit crumpled. A little too bright.

Two dark brown braids, held by clips and bands and flowers, unruliness constrained. The duplicate of her figure came out in the Polaroid sheltered between a stoic masculine figure, and two younger ones just as unsmiling as their father. The mother stood like a storefront mannequin, the white pallor of her skin unblemished by her lurid maroon blush.

Father told the children that their mother was sick. That’s all. Having nightmares about their grandmother who left mother as a child. “Ran off,” he had said, and his nose twitched violently. “Left a family motherless, wifeless.”

I run, too, the girl had thought excitedly. When she ran, she could see the misty grey of the unyielding lamp-posts, and hear the same grunts and coos of pigeons unable to sing, melodies half-sang, half-dissonant. Why don’t they ever sing? Like the parrots and the cockatoos and lorikeets?

Out spluttered another photograph.

Void of the many distresses as analogous to adulthood, her face brimmed with childlike innocence, untroubled by the silhouettes of her father and brothers. 

Spring of 2012

“Can you take a picture for us?”

She was on the other side of the camera, and for a moment she was lost in a transitory evocation of her childhood. The soft blush of the children and the hardened faces of the adults. The forced tightness of their figures. They too looked happy, she supposed, amidst the golden sand and waves that wash the shore.

Away from the flippancy of clinking wine glasses and high-pitched gossip, she felt could almost hear the ticking seconds of each minute, each hour.

She returned the phone to the family.

How still they stood! The unmoving figures on the compact screen. A snapshot of the present that has instantaneously become the past. If only her childhood could extend infinitely to her present, and future, then she would again experience that luscious happiness that seemed to ebb with age. The warm embrace by her mother. The over-protectiveness of her father. How strange it was, to think that she had once avoided both.

But no matter.

She can’t return to the past. All she could do is reminisce about it. It was futile, she knew. The physician had told her so.

“Think about the present!” he had said. “You live too much in the past! Talk to your family! Your husband!”. After a glance at the confounded face, he added, “You grew up with caring brothers, I believe?”.

She nodded.

“Surely,” he elongated the word so that it extended into the unforeseeable future, “they must understand.”

No, they didn’t, she thought. Not after their Marmee left.

She remembered how perfect  her family had been, captured undyingly on that monochrome photograph. Her brothers and her, mother and father. Yes, what a perfect family. Oh, how the opened eye of the camera would watch apathetically as they fastened together, to perfection.

It all fell apart five weeks afterwards, as they listened her father’s monotonous voice reading the last remnant of their mother – a note declaring how their perfection had compromised her, been too stifling, just as that Summer’s humidity had been. Wasn’t that what it meant to be a family, she had thought, to let give you to others willingly for the happiness of the entire family?

Absentmindedly, the grown woman picked up a bayberry branch and drew circles upon circles on the siliceous shore. Where it touched, the sand darkened and lightened again as the water rose.

The ultimatum of my life, she proposed to herself, a rebellious dive at sea! Amused by her dramatism, she continued to muse. How simple it would be, washed away and never coming back. Her family now was perfect enough. Big house. Big car. Big parties. Big dreams. But happiness? She thought of the riot of colour and flashing cameras that her husband loved. Oh, how they caused her migraines! And his insistence for her to abandon those childhood passions of hers, strolling amidst sunny afternoons amidst the greenery, only embody their “Marmee” and his “Honey”. How ridiculous!

Her hand halted to a stop.

For a fleeting moment, the continuum of her oblivion terminated, the angular momentum her hand gained by drawing those perfect circles on the shore jolted. She inflated with the sudden realisation of what she had written on the sand.

Short, and incomplete without the usual Jennings that followed it. But her name nonetheless.

Yes, those ephemeral imprints of her name will be washed away by the infinite rise and fall of the tide. But she still watched. So that when the present became the past, she would still have a snapshot in her memory to hold on to.

She knew she could not go, just like her name. Into the ocean and never come back. She could not possibly go like her mother, who when she was eleven, left a family without a mother and husband without a wife. She could not possibly go like her mother, who left a daughter crushed by the milliseconds of perfection that succumbs so soon after the click of a camera.

With a long sigh, she turned back and the sea becoming a reverberating picture of her past. Intangible, yet outrageously glorious…

11th March, 2015

The mother, on her phone, manicured fingernails swiping the screen absentmindedly. Across the room, the father looked concerned at both the inattentiveness of his wife and the sounds of clanking metal emanating from the cameramen.

“We’re ready, Mrs Jennings,” said one of them, “Please get into position for the family photo!”

The opened eye of the camera watched as the family fastened itself together, the rosy-cheeked daughter and son, the unison of the family creating the epitome of perfection. They smiled vibrant smiles, posed jovially at the flashing lights.

But immediately after the click of the shutters, they all fell apart, insubstantial as a wish.

• Amy #molongui-disabled-link How our ex-student and current tutor transferred to a Selective School
• Amy #molongui-disabled-link HSC Module B: Band 6 Notes on T.S. Eliot's Poetry
• Amy #molongui-disabled-link How to Write a Band 6 Creative?
• Amy #molongui-disabled-link How to Write a Band 6 Discursive?

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• ATAR Stories

Guide to Writing a Band 6 Creative Writing Piece

• 6 years ago
• Read Time: 2 minutes
• by Amelia Maccallum
• Leave a comment

How to get Band 6 Creative Writing Discovery? Whether you are taking Standard or Advanced HSC English it’s inevitable… you are going to have to write a creative writing piece, and a good one, if you want to get a top band mark.

Band 6 Creative Writing Tip 1

Instead of getting back into bed, curling up in the foetal position, and binge watching your guilty pleasure Netflix series, why not work on your creative writing skills now? With a little bit of effort, you can seriously improve your writing and ace the Paper 1 exam .

Band 6 Creative Writing Tip 2

The ‘imaginative writing’ section of Paper 1 is stimulus based. Students are given a written or visual stimulus and are asked to write a piece that ties in with the Area of Study – Discovery. A broad, yet equally risky category that lends itself to some cringe inducing clichés.

If you take only one thing away from this article let it be this: when you first see the stimulus think… what is everyone else going to write about?

Then, DO NOT write about that!

I repeat… even if it feels safe, DO NOT write about that!

Band 6 Creative Writing Tip 3

Every stimulus, whether it is written or visual, can be spun in some way. The whole point of ‘Discovery’ is to uncover unknown things. So there is no reason for an HSC marker to read the same story over and over in different hand writing.

Back at school I competed in a public speaking competition. The impromptu speech topic was simply “fire”. About ten students (myself included) rattled on about the danger and destruction of fire. However, it was the kid that told a hilarious anecdote that initially seemed to have nothing to do with fire, until the punch line “I was on fire”, that won. Most of us had interpreted ‘fire’ as the element, but he interpreted it as the idiom and captivated the audience.

This should be every HSC English students’ objective when writing creatively.

Band 6 Creative Writing Tip 4

The spin on the stimulus could be symbolic. Google search practice creative writing stimuli. Rather than writing a full blown story for just a few, expose yourself to many different types of stimuli and spend just one-minute brainstorming what your plan would be if it were the exam stimulus and how it could be interpreted differently.

Say you were given an image of an apple rolling off a table.

Instead of wasting valuable time writing and hand muscle strength using every word in the thesaurus to describe what the apple looks and tastes like, consider what it could symbolise.

The rejection of healthy foods leading to childhood obesity?

Sin and temptation?

Band 6 Creative Writing Tip 5

Whilst Discovery should still be at the forefront of every creative writing piece, these interpretations would inspire a much more engaging and unique story.

With these tips even the most unenthusiastic student can develop their creative writing skills and set themselves apart from the thousands of other students sitting Paper 1. Do your HSC marker, and in turn, yourself, a favour by allowing them to discover something novel!

Author: Amelia Maccallum

Amelia maccallum, related posts, what is a good/ an average atar score.

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How to Prepare for the HSC Creative Writing Exam

Some people have a natural flair for writing and creative ideas – however, if you’re like most students, completing the HSC creative writing exam in the space of 40 minutes can be a difficult and downright daunting task. Even if you believe don’t have a creative bone in your body, with some careful planning and study you too can ace the HSC creative writing exam – here’s how.

Refer to the syllabus

Just like the rest of your subject exams, a huge factor that determines success in the HSC creative writing section is ensuring you know the syllabus. Refer to the marking criteria to establish what is required of you – especially the study focus you must address (such as belonging or discovery) – and focus on this theme throughout your piece. The stimulus provided should also be a central focus and mentioned throughout your essay – not just haphazardly thrown in at the beginning or end. This way, the markers can clearly see that you have a solid understanding of the concept, as opposed to just memorizing a story word for word.

Know your language techniques

One thing you can learn and practice prior to your HSC creative writing exam that will boost your score greatly is language techniques. It’s best to build up an arsenal of 5-10 techniques that you understand well, and that makes your story more interesting to read. Similes, metaphors, and alliteration – you would have learned all of these and more when analyzing your set texts through the year, so put them to good use! A great one to use is sensory imagery, which makes the reader really feel as though they are in the story and puts to use a rule of any good writing – show, don’t tell.

Develop your characters

The way you develop your character, especially the protagonist in your story, can be a make or break factor for your HSC creative writing piece. It’s not enough to describe their physical appearance or overuse clichés like “troubled teenager” – you need to give them unique qualities that make them both memorable, and relatable in some way.

Write about what you know

The easiest way to succeed in HSC creative writing when you lack confidence in your imaginative ideas is to write about what you already know. Stories are the most organic and authentic when described in accurate detail. The best way to achieve this kind of integrity in your text is to write about an event that you have personally experienced – remembering the vivid aspects of what happened, as well as your emotional response to the situation – and convey this to your marker through your words. Alternatively, you can also write about a topic of interest that you have researched and have a good understanding of.  

HSC creative writing focuses on your ability to compose an engaging, grammatically correct and well-structured story that fits in with the area of study and stimulus. Need some help with preparing for the HSC creative writing exam and getting a Band 6?  Contact C3 Education  and speak to one of our professional  HSC tutors  today to see how we can help.

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HSC or IB Diploma? How to choose.

The very first topic is the ‘Common Module’, otherwise known as ‘Texts and Human Experiences’. The rubric for this feels frustratingly vague. To make it easier for you, here’s a quick rundown of the main concepts!

• Human experiences : Any experiences involved in being human! (human connection, our desire for community, self-expression, our response to hardship, our survival instinct)
• Human qualities : Things that make us human and thus shape our human experiences (emotions, love, empathy, self-expression, rational thought, community.)
• Behaviours and motivations : Consider how our motivations influence our behaviours, and then what influences our motivations.
• Individual vs collective experiences: The duality and tension between having unique individual experiences, and having common collective experiences (think about our desires to conform and belong but also our need to be a unique individual).
• Anomalies, paradoxes, inconsistencies : This dives into the complexities of being human, we aren't all black and white. Most of the time behaviours and motivations don't quite make sense and they seem contradictory and misaligned with expectations, (The example above was a good one, how can we simultaneously want conformity and individuality at the same time?)

This module, as you've heard, is all about the human experience. But what does that actually mean? Well, from reading texts you are supposed to not only understand the plot but go deeper and understand what the composer is trying to say about humanity. The key takeaway from this module is that society and human behaviour are reflected in literature and it is in reading literature that we get a better understanding of how humans behave and interact with the world.

For the HSC you will be required to answer a series of unseen short responses and a 45-minute essay on your prescribed text.

• Start practising unseen short-response questions early on in the year. It will quickly become second nature and you won't have to worry about learning it in the midst of exam cram chaos. It also sharpens your annotating and analysing skills which will help you in later modules. Do as many old HSC and trial papers as you can find and most importantly make sure you get feedback on your work to ensure you are improving every time!!
• For the essay portion, it's good to start planning essays early. Rather than taking notes like you would in chemistry or business studies, create a quote table throughout the term and turn them into essay plans. This will put you miles ahead come final exams.

Module A - Textual Conversations

Module A or ‘Textual Conversations’ is a comparative module where you study two intertextually connected prescribed texts, with the later text in some way influenced by the earlier. The aim is to understand how they align or collide upon common issues, values and perspectives. Why and how? Why did the later composers make the choices they did when they decided to mirror or reimagine certain aspects of the earlier text? Your essay should have a heavy focus on context and form and how they influence meaning in a text!

Likewise to common mod, you want to be compiling your quotes and ideas as you study the text throughout the term. This is a good template to fill out if you are unsure of how to structure your ideas and later on this will provide the perfect ground-work for you to construct your essays. Ensure a really good understanding of context and it influenced changes in the texts.

Module B - Critical Study of Literature

Module B deals with the ‘Critical Study of Literature’, which is simultaneously the most and the least straightforward module. This module requires you to explore your personal perspective on a prescribed text, as well as evaluate the opinions of others. (Quick tip: personal perspective does not mean you need to write ‘Yes I like this text. Fun read’, but rather that you are able to make insightful and unique points of analysis still in third person.) Module B also requires reading critical reviews to develop a deep and nuanced understanding of your texts and then supporting or countering these views in your own essay.

The main aim of your essay is to argue why the text has textual integrity , which we can define as these two aspects:

• How do all the different elements of the text come together to create a cohesive work/collection of work that has unity in its concepts?
• What makes the text significant? Why does it still have value? What sort of universal message does the composer communicate that makes the text timeless?

Module C - The craft of writing

Module C or ‘The Craft of Writing’ is exactly what it sounds like. We focus on the construction of texts, first by studying how composers represent their ideas in an extensive list of prescribed texts, and then through composing our own pieces of writing.

There are three main skills that you’re expected to develop in this Module:

• Analysing texts and understanding how composers use various language techniques to communicate their ideas
• Composing a short piece of writing. There are three main forms of writing that you’re expecting to be familiar with: the narrative, the persuasive and the discursive.
• Being able to reflect on your writing process in a reflective paragraph. In this paragraph you should be able to discuss the main idea in your writing, the relevant language techniques you utilised to represent your idea, and how you drew inspiration from 2+ prescribed texts.

How do you prepare for the craft of writing? In my opinion, this one is the hardest to study for. I mean how is one supposed to study creative writing? Well, there is only one way and some of you might not like the answer - READING!! Unless you read a wide variety of stories (ideally short stories because that is what will be asked of you in the HSC) you won't be able to write well. You need to find inspiration, discover and employ unique stylistic techniques and understand the elements that go into making a good story. Otherwise, your work will sound vague, generic and cliche. My best advice is to find yourself an author whose writing style you really like and mimic it in your own work.

Some  recommendations are;

• Samsa in Love by Murakami
• The Second Bakery Attack by Murakami
• There will come soft rains by Ray Bradbury
• Hills like white elephants by Ernest Hemingway
• The Lottery by Shirely Jackson

Want more personalised tips to drastically improve your English mark? A private tutor can make the biggest difference!

Written by KIS Academics Tutor for NSW English, Angela Wang. Angela is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Medical Studies/Doctor of Medicine at UNSW and loves helping students reach their academic goals! You can view Angela’s profile here and request her as a tutor.

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Bowdoin College forum keeps focus on plight of graduate jailed in Russia

Evan Gershkovich, a Bowdoin graduate and Wall Street Journal reporter, has been jailed in Russia on espionage charges since March.

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A forum at Bowdoin College Tuesday night for Evan Gershkovich. From left: Professor Henry Laurence, classmate Linda Kinstler, Professor Brock Clarke and Wall Street Journal Washington Editor Paul Beckett. Jason Claffey / The Times Record

Journalists and Bowdoin College officials said Tuesday night that they hope publicizing the plight of Evan Gershkovich, a Bowdoin graduate and Wall Street Journal reporter arrested in Russia, will help gain his release.

Gershkovich has been detained in Russia for six months on espionage charges, and there is no sign he will be released anytime soon.

“Evan was simply doing his job,” Bowdoin President Safa Zaki said. “As we gather here this evening, it is the middle of the night in Moscow, where Evan is jailed in Lefortovo Prison, a sprawling and notorious facility. … This is a prison know for the isolation and harsh conditions imposed on its inmates. We are told, through all he has endured, Evan has remained remarkably strong.

“The message we seek to underscore tonight is journalism is not a crime.”

The college hosted a forum Tuesday night to discuss Gershkovich’s work and the dangers faced by journalists.

Gershkovich’s arrest while he was reporting in Yekaterinburg in March garnered international headlines. Russian officials claim he was spying for the U.S., which American officials and the Journal deny. Media organizations across the globe have condemned the arrest, seen as part of a crackdown on journalism by Russian authorities. Advertisement

Last month, a Moscow court extended his detainment until at least November, and his upcoming trial could last a year. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison.

American and Russian officials have said they are discussing a possible prisoner exchange for Gershkovich.

Author and editor Linda Kinstler, a Bowdoin classmate of Gershkovich who organized the forum, helped create a website calling for his release and has organized a letter-writing effort to keep him connected to those who support him.

“We’re all here for him,” Kinstler said.

Gershkovich wrote for The Bowdoin Orient and graduated from Bowdoin in 2014. Professor Brock Clarke, who taught Gershkovich in a creative writing class, recalled that he was a gifted writer.

“Our job is to keep his name in people’s ears,” Clarke said. Advertisement

Paul Beckett, Washington editor for The Wall Street Journal, said Gershkovich was doing important work reporting on Russia’s economy during its war with Ukraine.

“There are precious few insights we get into a country like Russia,” Beckett said. “Evan is one of a small band of reporters who have dedicated their careers to covering Russia.”

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Gershkovich traveled to the Belarus-Ukraine border and was the only American reporter to witness the first  wounded Russian forces returning home , according to the Journal.

Russia’s Federal Security Service said in a statement that Gershkovich was conducting “espionage in the interests of the American government” and that he was gathering “information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex,” according to The Associated Press.

“All he was doing in Russia was reporting for The Wall Street Journal,” Beckett said. “He was doing his job and only his job.”

Beckett said the moment the Journal learned Gershkovich was arrested, it began advocating for his release. Advertisement

“Being loud was our only option,” he said. “We hope this case remains top of mind for the people at the top who will help get him out. We have to keep going until it’s done.”

Kinstler said it’s “heartbreaking” to see Gershkovich in a glass cage during his recent court appearances in Moscow.

“At least we get a glimpse of him,” she said.

The son of Soviet émigrés, Gershkovich moved to Russia in 2017 to report for The Moscow Times. He was hired by The Wall Street Journal in 2022.

“He had so many options to do something else but he kept on wanting to stay (in Russia),” Kinstler said. “One of the most heartbreaking things about Evan’s situation is we don’t have the stories he would have been reporting on.”

Gershkovich was arrested six days after the U.S. Department of Justice accused 37-year-old Russian national Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov of spying for his home country. The timing was “awful coincidental,” according to one expert .

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich stands in a glass cage in a courtroom at the Moscow City Court in Moscow on June 22. Dmitry Serebryakov / AP file photo

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