you get to choose from a form to do your major work in. so you can choose from short story, critical response, poetry, film, video, multimedia... speeches... there's a few other ones i cant remember
you have a word limit, or time limit depending on the form you choose. and basically, you spend the entire year working on it, researching it, you have a teacher who mentors you and can help you out. its also good because you can get one unit of your hsc out of the way because you hand in your project a few weeks before the actual hsc exams to be externally marked.
sorry about making it sound daunting >< (our teacher did that to us during our very first lesson and gave most of us panic attacks) it is hard work though/ or it takes some time but it's worth it