Thanks so much Susie! Also, I was wondering if you made plans for different types of essay questions for the other sections?
Hmm depends what you mean! The day before exams in order to maximise time I'd write essay plans rather than full essays, but these weren't exactly ones that I memorised, just ones to practice my comprehension of the content.
If you mean memorisable essay plans -- kind of? However they sort of came naturally as I wrote practice essays (I wrote A LOT of them...). I realised early on that I could only comprehend the content of The Bolshevik Consolidation of Power section, or the Trotsky Part B section through a factors essay, whereas for pretty much all of the Cold War and Stalinism I could only understand them thematically. Thus, as I always wrote them in a similar way, the content, no matter the question, pretty much always remained the same, it was just how I use it to justify my judgement upon the question.
For example, no matter what Bolshevik Question I got, I would always have a paragraph on the social and political reforms, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Civil War and War Communism, and the NEP. This structure never changed, and the general content never changed, it was just how the content related to my argument (which is something that I worked out on the spot - however again there are only so many questions they can ask and by the HSC I had come across most of them).
So yeah basically you could say I kind of had these plans, but I don't really recommend memorising them beyond an adaptable structure. One of the most common marking centre feedback comments is that essays read like a pre-prepared response, because students want to stick so strongly to their memorised essays and plans that they neglect to incorporate key aspects of the question.
Hope this helps!
Susie