Hello everyone,
Has anyone done a creative writing assessment on the Australian movie The Dry (2020)?

    I am writing a short Australian gothic story based on the movie The Dry.
    To do this I am using the themes, the storyline and the setting to create my own original Australian Gothic story.
    The difficult part about this exam apart from memorising my story, is that there must be a clear connection to the parent text (the movie).
    I have to choose either to fill a gap in the storyline or use the setting, theme and ideas presented in the film to create my short story.
    What do you think?

      VectorMusic

      Yeah that's a good idea. So there are multiple ways to ensure a solid connection to the parent and your interventional approach is one of the ways for sure. I guess the only other way is to adopt the tone and writing style of the movie The Dry. Obviously since it isn't a text-based media, when I say "writing style", I mean how the directors have scripted the dialogue between characters and how the background sounds (diegetic and non-diegetic) play into the overall tone and message of the movie. So, for example and from a brief scan of The Dry, you could maintain the similar rural Australian town with the same oppressive atmosphere and tension. The recurring themes of drought, isolation, etc. could be central.

      So in summary, if you're worried, the recommendation would probably be doing an interventional writing which is what you're doing. So in doing this, I've seen people write a story that focuses into the backstory of a secondary character or expand on a certain event that was only hinted or foreshadowed at in the movie.

      Anyways, hope it helps!

      • PP

          PhytoPlankton Thank you very much for your feedback.
          Sorry, I’m not quite familiar with the term “interventional writing”. Could you please help me understand what you mean by this?
          My ideas got rejected on my only discussion time I am given because confusingly, the connection to the parent text wasn’t clear enough.
          I think this is because I almost recreated a scene from the movie with gothic elements but with completely different complication which would completely alter the storyline of the movie. This may have been too similar to the option of filling a gap in the storyline because I don’t know how to do either. However I’m unsure on this.
          Either option I choose I have to make my own gothic short story but need to make sure there is a clear connection to the parent text in someway.

              VectorMusic

              So interventional writing is you just intervening/pushing a part of your writing into the plot somewhere.

              Yeah, so generally when you do interventions, you have to make sure the start and the end will match up to wherever the plot you interject your writing into. Sometimes what students will do is just make the first sentence of their writing the last sentence of the actual book and then their last sentence is a line in the actual book too. I think this is a good way to do it because it will make sure you don't go down a different storyline or tangent in your writing and you also have to ensure that you don't give any important details prematurely of the plot in the book too. I think it's just something you have to keep in mind while writing.

              Hope this helps!

              • PP

                  PhytoPlankton Thank you very much. If I wasn’t doing a movie I probably would try the first and last sentence from the book trick. It’s such a neat idea. Maybe I will match the ending of the scene in the movie.

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