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QLDEnglishQuick questions
Unit 4: Close study of literary texts
Quick questions on Stylistic craft in creative writing: QCE English Unit 4 (IA3)
15short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is the seven craft features the IA3 markers attend to?Show answer
1. Voice. The narrator's or speaker's idiom, register, sentence patterns, hesitations, omissions. Voice is established in the first 50 to 100 words and sustained through the response.
What is deploying craft features in service of the controlling idea?Show answer
Each craft feature should serve the controlling idea. The diagnostic test: take a specific craft choice (a particular sentence shape, a specific image) and ask, "Why this choice rather than another? Does it serve the controlling idea?"
What is common craft errors?Show answer
Excess of features. A response that uses every craft tool in equal measure becomes ornate without focus. Restraint is a craft choice.
What is 1. Voice?Show answer
The narrator's or speaker's idiom, register, sentence patterns, hesitations, omissions. Voice is established in the first 50 to 100 words and sustained through the response.
What is 2. Sentence shape?Show answer
Sentence length, rhythm, complexity.
What is 3. Imagery?Show answer
Specific, sensory images. The image should be specific enough to feel concrete and resonant enough to serve the controlling idea.
What is 4. Motif?Show answer
A recurring image, phrase, object or scene whose repetition gives it accumulated meaning. The motif is rarely explained; the reader perceives the pattern.
What is 5. Rhythm?Show answer
The cadence of sentences and paragraphs across the response.
What is 6. Focalisation?Show answer
Whose perception filters the events. Focalisation can shift within a response, or stay with a single character.
What is 7. Dialogue?Show answer
Direct speech, internal monologue, free indirect speech.
What is excess of features?Show answer
A response that uses every craft tool in equal measure becomes ornate without focus. Restraint is a craft choice.
What is mimicked style?Show answer
Imitating the source text's style without inflection reads as pastiche. Carry across what serves your controlling idea; let the rest go.
What is show-don't-tell taken too literally?Show answer
"Show don't tell" is a heuristic, not a rule. Sometimes telling is the right craft choice. The question is whether the choice serves the controlling idea.
What is adjective stacking?Show answer
Three adjectives in a row almost always weaken the noun. "The cold, damp, grey morning" is weaker than "the wet morning, all greys".
What is cliche detection failures?Show answer
Phrases like "heart of gold", "tip of the iceberg", "in the blink of an eye" carry no meaning. Each cliche is a paragraph signal to revise.