shinny's guide to context writing

[Toudai]

Just wanna say that I'm impressed with your level of commitment

[Hutchoo]

I would like to transform into someone really sexy and kissyou. TY MANG

[kyzoo]

Last year, I put a lot of effort into mastering the 'cause' style essays and did to a full mark level as practically every commercial trial exam had this style of question for 'Whose Reality?' and it seemed to me like the most obvious style of question to ask as I thought consequence questions would probably have too much overlap with the Conflict context. But no. A consequence question did indeed come up on the exam and I pretty much got screwed over as I did none of these for exam practise.

Rereading this a year after my first read, I still don't understand this distinction between "cause" , "consequence" and "big ideas" prompts. The way I see it, context is a similar thing to text response just on a broader scale. For a particular text you have a particular set of themes that tend to crop up in essay topics; same for context. E.g. for Whose Reality?, the major themes would be something like:

~ Individual subjective perception and the way it is constructed
~ Conflict of realities
~ Illusions and fantasies
~ Memories and our past

[shinny]

It's not particularly important if you don't understand it and the distinction isn't very clear in Whose Reality prompts as I've stated. Simply put, causes would be why there are different realities. i.e. Subjective perception, illusions/fantasies and memories and our past are the ones that would fit under that. Consequences usually just means conflict so thats the one that'd go under that. The reason why I group them like this is because there is significant interplay between any of the topics within any of these major categories, but little interplay between them.

[milkcarton]

Hi shinny,
             How would I make a connection to the texts studied if I were to write an imaginative piece? Would it be alright to explicitly state (studying SCND) "I feel like Blanche.." or can I create a piece that answers the prompts and brings in ideas from Streetcar

[shinny]

Imaginative isn't my particularly my strong point and if you don't already have a template to go off, now's probably not the best time to think about going for this form but there's several ways. Firstly, decide if you want a direct link or not i.e. how explicit you want to be. Either write from the perspective of the characters and actually be part of Streetcar, writing a sequel, prequel, alternate ending or whatever, or write something which is totally independent and stay away from any explicit links. Don't go half way and write from the perspective of another character then say 'I feel like Blanche'. It feels very forced and ruins the flow of your piece. You could try and take some of the symbols, quotes or character traits from the story and parallel them in yours, but don't be overly explicit. Ultimately though, these are mostly just gimmicks if you use them on their own. The whole purpose of the texts is to use them to guide your ideas, and copying any of the characters, symbols, quotes and such are merely a vehicle for allowing you to more clearly represent such ideas within your own piece.

[Studyinghard]

How many references to the book is important in your piece? or is there no minimum number?

[m.arcus]

Sorry for bumping this ancient thread, but can someone please provide me with the link to shinny's expository writing guide? I've searched but I couldn't find it