Help!? (1 Viewer)

[tinkerbell]

Hey! im one of those people that sooo shouldnt be doing 3u english! hehe im doing crime fiction and i was wondering if anyone could give me some help? I do snow, real inspector hound and The big sleep! I have no notes on them well nothing that is worth writing about, or actually passing in the hsc! im so stressed hehehe xoxox

 

[Jellymonsta]

theres some decent notes on RIH on this site. dont know much about the others, i had to write my own notes and they are illegible.
basically you should know quotes, conventions, values, contexts etc, like in advanced english. your essay is supposed to be longer and more sophisticated than the 2u english essay type. Look around for some past questions, see what kind of thing they expect you to talk about, and prepare quotes and other material to talk about.
the essay is going to be pretty tricky, but the creative task should be pretty simple (fingers crossed it is actually creative).

 

[alys]

the essay isn't tricky, i love the essay. i may be a freak. the creative could go either way, our trial one was gross, but i've seen others that are okay.

for crime fiction, it's worthwhile looking at the whole thing as one big long contimuum, and then you can make links between texts, contexts and other texts and their contexts to show how things have developed and changed in response to a change audience, that sort of thing. and with conventions, be prepared to be flexible. just know that crime doesn't begin and end with agatha christie and sherlock holmes (which you know from your texts), and so go on about why it doesn't, how the conventions change and so on.

also, techniques help, as in advanced, so make sure that you have a few. i'm sure you know this, but for the big sleep you'd talking about film noir stuff - shadows, settings, etc; the dialogue of hard-boiled detectives; characterisation, all that sort of thing. trih you'd go for the parody, irony, melodrama, exaggeration. that's a short one, so read it again if you've got time and see what you can find. sfoc i don't like so much, but it has stuff in it too. just your standard novel techniques. of course, the important thing is their significance to crime, and how they develop all the stuff that you'll be talking about - conventions, other concerns, all that sort of thing.

 

[Jellymonsta]

because we should only need 2 of our prescribed texts, SFOC and RIH are probably going to be better to study because they are much more flexible than BS, and have more focuses (historical, absurdism etc). BS would be harder to use if we get a hairy question.
and if the creative question is like last years, i am totally fucked. there were like 10 parts to that question

 

[tinkerbell]

Hey, thanks for all that help! im still a bit unsure like WHAT to say about contexts and all that stuff on the three texts? i am sooo worried i wanna cry! hehehe we never did context or techniques or anything like that in class... anyone got any idea... xoxo

 

[McLake]

Originally posted by Jellymonsta
because we should only need 2 of our prescribed texts, SFOC and RIH are probably going to be better to study because they are much more flexible than BS, and have more focuses (historical, absurdism etc). BS would be harder to use if we get a hairy question.
and if the creative question is like last years, i am totally fucked. there were like 10 parts to that question

Stupid 2001 "creative" task ...

tinkerbell, just regurate yr11-ish contexts junk (you did do some, right?) ....

 

[alys]

hm, well, i disagree with jellymonsta about the big sleep. it's true that for some questions it's not as flexible, but for others it works a lot better. it's worthwhile knowing all three texts, because they're all extremely useful depending on the question that we get. the big sleep is good because it provides a sort of starting point - it's a part of the establishment of conventions, whereas the later texts are challenges to them.

from context you take values (kind of like the first question in this year's advanced paper 2). basically, you're looking at how the context influences the way that crime texts are produced. so for the big sleep, you'd talk about the end of wwii, and the impacts on that for the national psyche, and you'd talk about crime in la, and all that sort of stuff. for trih, absurdism is great, and you can probably bring in stuff about the 1960s as an era. sfoc you have a contemporary context, and you look at issues like racism and its increasing prominence in our society. all that sort of thing, and then relate it back to how it influences the texts.

 

[tinkerbell]

Thanx heaps for all that! we havent done anything like that in class all our teacher has done is read the things to us. hes so dumb. Ok so what happens if i get a question on how they subvert the genre, what would i see in rih? and snow? sorry to ask all this! im having such a stress cos i just dont know how to study crime fiction!! xoxo

 

[alys]

okay, well, the basic starting point for almost all crime fiction questions is quite simple. you look at the conventions of the crime genre. i think they're around in another post somewhere, stuff like the detective, the crime, the accretion of evidence, the sense of mystery and suspense. there are lots, but most of them aren't used in all modern crime fiction texts (and many are even violated in some of the earlier works). if they're talking about a subverting of the genre, it's basically how it undermines or challenges these conventions.

trih is full of it. you can look at things like the complexity of the denouement (ending) - the fact that it is impossible to guess, because magnus ends up being about fifteen different characters in disguise. the improbabiltiy of such a solution is sending up crime writers who went for much more low-key things but with similar levels of improbability (such as some of agatha christie's texts), but also subverts the whole idea that crime stories are 'logical', within the world that is created. also look at things like the detective, that's a good reference point. those sorts of things.

for sfoc, you'd note stuff like the absence of a crime or a real detective, as two of the central issues. then consider why the composers did that for each text.

but again, with every question, consider the conventions, how they're violated, the contexts, the texts themselves in the context of the genre (ie, how they fit into it, what makes them different from others, how they have changed from previous texts, and why), and other concerns explored in the texts.

and don't stress, it doesn't help. good luck.

 

[tinkerbell]

THANX HEAPS! ur the best, thankyou so much for all that help! u will go great on monday! good luck! i wish i could do this silly topic heheh oh well good luck for monday! xoxo

 

[user]

HI, I am also one of those people who shouldn't be doing english extension 1.

this site is really good for the big sleep though
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/E/noir/noirxx.htm