Planning and composing the Extension 2 Major Work under the 2024 HSC English syllabus

New syllabus (first HSC 2027). This page follows the English Extension 11-12 (2024) syllabus. If you are sitting the 2026 HSC, use the older Major Work and Reflection pages on this subject instead. See what's changed.

Start with a concept you can state

The Major Work succeeds or fails on its concept. In one sentence, finish this: "My work explores or argues that ___, and it does so through ___." The first blank is the idea. The second is the form and method.

A weak concept: "My story is about grief."

A stronger concept: "My story shows how grief reorganises a household's small routines, and it does so through a single evening told in close third person, so that the reader feels the weight of ordinary objects."

The second can guide choices. It tells you what to include, what to cut and what the ending must do.

Check that the form fits the limit

Use the limits from the previous page. If your concept needs a long build, such as a sweeping family saga, it does not fit a short fiction limit. Narrow it. A single event, a single relationship or a single place usually fits better. For time-based forms, time yourself reading the piece or running a rough cut before you decide the concept fits.

A drafting sequence for short works

1. Concept and form decision. Write the one-sentence concept. Choose the form and note why.
2. Investigation. Read, listen to or watch several works in the same form, and note specific techniques you want to try. This is the independent investigation, which still feeds a strong work.
3. First full draft. Write quickly to the end. Do not polish yet.
4. Cutting draft. Remove anything that does not serve the concept. Aim to be under the limit with room to spare.
5. Sharpening draft. Work at the level of the sentence, line or cut. Check openings, endings and transitions.
6. Read-aloud or run-through. Read prose aloud, speak poems aloud, perform scripts, play audio and screen multimedia. Mark every place where your attention slips.
7. Final proofread. Check formatting, titles, any required statements and the limit.

Making the work make its own case

Without a Reflection Statement, the audience meets the work cold. Check that these are visible:

• A controlling idea in the opening and the ending.
• Deliberate language and structure. Words and sequence chosen, not defaulted.
• A reason for the form. For example, a poem sequence benefits from recurrences, a script from shared space, a podcast from sound and silence.
• Evidence of influence handled with originality. Learn from other works without imitating them.

Using the author study to improve your composition

The Author and authority focus area can also improve your Major Work. When you study an author across a body of work, you are learning how a composer builds authority through voice, structure and control of knowledge. Apply those questions to your own work: whose voice carries the story, what does the reader know, and when? See studying an author.

Working within each form

Short fiction

At 3,500 words you have room for a few scenes at most. Decide whose point of view carries the story, what changes for that person, and where the story stops. Let the ending leave the reader with a question or an image that the whole work has prepared.

Creative nonfiction

At 3,500 words you can shape one experience, investigation or recreated moment well. NESA's suggested territory is life writing, investigative journalism and an historical recreation or representation. Choose a narrow subject you can research or remember closely, decide what you are claiming about it, and use scene, structure and voice as craft, not as decoration.

Poetry

At 1,500 words, a sequence might hold a modest number of poems, depending on their length. Vary form, line length and voice so the sequence has movement, and make sure the poems speak to each other through image, repetition or a developing situation.

Critical response

Three thousand words supports one thesis argued with care. Build a clear line of argument, handle secondary sources as voices in conversation rather than as decoration, and write each paragraph so it moves the argument forward.

Script

Fifteen minutes is a short play or scene sequence. Put a conflict on stage quickly, keep the cast and settings small, and trust silence and action as much as speech.

Podcast

Ten minutes of audio is not very long. Decide what the listener should hear first, how voice and sound will signal shifts, and where silence will work. Write for the ear, with shorter sentences and clear signposts.

Multimedia

Five minutes of layered image, sound and text is a tight canvas. Plan the sequence frame by frame or section by section, and check that each layer adds meaning rather than repeating another.

A worked example of cutting

Imagine a draft story in which a girl leaves a small town, takes a bus, meets a stranger, arrives in a city, finds work and returns home. The concept is "how leaving a place makes you notice what you took for granted." Only the first and last scenes, plus one bus scene, serve that concept. The city arrival and the job can be summarised in a sentence or removed. After cutting, the story is shorter, the concept is clearer and the ending lands harder. Notice that the cut was made by the concept, not by trimming adjectives.

Keeping a decisions log

The syllabus requires you to keep a Major work journal that records every stage of the composition process: research and analysis, and critical, imaginative and speculative reflections. It is not submitted to NESA and is not marked, but your teacher can draw on it as evidence that the work is yours. Write in it as you go: what you changed, why, and what feedback prompted it. Your school may add its own requirements, such as a declaration.

Common traps

• A concept that is a topic, not an idea.
• Starting to polish before a full draft exists.
• Cutting at the last minute rather than in a dedicated cutting draft.
• A form chosen for novelty that does not suit the concept.
• A strong opening and a rushed ending.