GENERAL ENGLISH FIA3 - imaginative response

sonia

Hi, I'm in Grade 11 and for some reason my school decided to do the imaginative response as an exam (or is it an exam? the qcaa thing says assessment. Anyway, creative writing is not my forte and I'm sick of getting B's in general English. Now that Unit 3 is right around the corner I've decided to start putting more effort into English. Does anyone have any tips on how to get an A for this one? If you could show me your responses I would be so grateful.

jinx_58

sonia
What exactly is your imaginative response like/ what is the task? What does it expect of you?

-jinx_58

sonia

jinx_58

We have to pick a poem, and then write a creative short story using the themes in the poem and using figurative language and all of that stuff. We are doing poems written by Aboriginal authors. I just don't know how to write a short story.

jinx_58

sonia
Okie dokie. So basically, make sure your story is realistic, simple and straight to the point. Try and vary sentence structure. Show don't tell. Take a message from the poem and see how you can explore it in a story. Don't have too many characters and only give necessary background info. Write from a personal perspective if you want to, because you don't deviate from a straightforward storyline. Also, remember you can manipulate the message however you wanna. If the poem itself has a storyline, you could just write it from another perspective ngl.

I'm pre sure I did chuck a short story I wrote somewhere on this website, maybe in the QCE general English questions thread.

Hope this helps,
-jinx_58

sonia

jinx_58

this is what ive got so far
Short Story: Only the Animals
Pigeons, A Pony, The Tomcat, and I: Soul of Cat, Died 1915, France

We are allowed to do a short story. This one is from the perspective of a French cat who was in the trenches during WW2.

Theme: Love, War.

Characters: From the perspective of the pigeon, who is delivering a message, and is flying to his partner (pigeons keep a mate for life).

Events: 1. How the animals are involved in a war that they didn't start. Story builds up to the pigeon's hard journey, of being a messenger pigeon always being separated from his partner, and in the end he gets shot.

same thing but when he is shot he doesn't die, and he is so determined that he delivers the message and gets back to his partner and then he dies or doesn't die at all.

I dont know if it follows the 'arc' of a short story. Like intro, leading action, climax, and then resolution.

jinx_58

sonia
This sounds good. I'd suggest you actually do the arc and check to make sure it follows it because it helps form the story well.

-jinx_58