1. High School
Faculty of English
Year 12 English Extension I: Assessment Task II
Task:Collaborative novella writing
Weightings: Reading/Writing – 10%
Speaking/Listening – 10%
Issued: Tuesday, 7th February, 2012
Due:Friday, 16th March, 2012 (final polished writing)
OUTCOMES:
H1: A student distinguishes and evaluates the values expressed through texts.
H3: A student composes extended texts.
THE OBJECTIVES OF THIS ASSESSMENT:
Develop your skills in:
 sustained composition.
Develop your ability tovalue and appreciate:
 their developing skills as users of English
 the pleasure and diversity of language and literature
 the role of language and literature in their lives
 appropriateness, subtlety and aesthetics in language
use.
CREATIVE WRITING:
Your second task requires you to work collaboratively and independently to sharpen
your skills as a creative writer. As a team we will be collaborating to write a novella.
A novella is a short novel of up to 40, 000 words. As a contributor to this piece, you
are expected to write a minimum of two ‘chapters’ totaling 1500 words and a
maximum of 2000 words. The direction of the narrative and the form of the novella
as well as the characters and the interaction between them will be decided upon as
a group. However, your writing will reflect your response to this term’s driving:
Should artists challenge the ways of thinking of their contemporaries?
It is essential that you consider the value of both an affirmative and a negative
response to this question and give thought to how your writing reflect will reflect
your answer.
AUDIENCE: Our novella will be entered into the The Somerset National Novella
Writing Competition using a pseudonym as well as being published on the The Last
Romantics webpage.
Bianca Hewes, Davidson High School

2. Tasks:
1. As a team, create a plan for the novella. This plan must include a consideration of
the six elements of creative writing: plot, setting, characterisation, theme, conflict
and writing style. Each individual must be allocated a character and a place within
the narrative. It is essential that this plan indicate what aspects of the scientific,
philosophic, religious and economic paradigms that informed Romanticism will be
explored in the novella. It should also indicate whether each character/plot element
will reflect or challenge the Romantic ways of thinking.
NOTE: This plan may take the form of a shared mind-map, a table or a series of dot
points.
2. Each writer must presentto the class a detailed character portrait and plot graph
for their contribution to the novella. (approx. 5 minutes)
DUE: Tuesday, 21st February
3. A first draft of each writer’s chapters is to be submitted for peer, self and teacher
feedback. This must be a complete draft of no less than 1200 words and no more
than 2500 words.
Tuesday 28th February
4. A revised draft of each writer’s chapters is to be submitted for peer, self and
teacher feedback. This draft must clearly demonstrate revision based on the
feedback given the previous week. Writers will also give a two-minute presentation
explaining how one aspect of their writing has changed as a result of feedback.
Tuesday, 6th March
5. A final and polished copy of the writing of no less than 1500 words
and no more than 2000 words is to be submitted for grading.
Tuesday 13th March
Possible resources to assist the collaborative writing process:
http://www.volpen.com/
https://docs.google.com/
http://www.protagonize.com/
In your writing you must:
demonstrate control in the use of language and form
appropriate to the task
create characters and events reflective of the attitudes and insights typical
of the Romantics, along with insight into the paradigm shifts from
Enlightenment to Romanticism
include personal reflection on the place that nature, the imagination,
individualism and idealism have in artistic expression generally, and
your character’s life specifically
frame the narrative in its broader context (the age of revolutions,
widespread national / international change, etc) and explain the
significance of this context to the degree to which Romantic thinkers
and writers (or your character) sought to dismantle or challenge
accepted practice
Bianca Hewes, Davidson High School