Unit 3 — Creating texts

Mentor texts

Use mentor texts to notice how writers handle voice, pacing, imagery, and structure — then borrow craft moves, not plots.

Keep a mentor-text log: for each piece, note two craft decisions (e.g. opening in medias res, cyclical ending, second-person address) and what effect they create. In commentary you can cite these models to explain why you tried something similar or deliberately diverged.

Purposes

Tasks may ask you to express, explain, reflect, or argue. Match genre, tone, and structure to the purpose and implied audience.

Draft with the reader’s expectations in mind: a reflective personal piece allows vulnerability and shifting time; an argumentative piece needs a clear line of reasons; an expressive piece still needs control — vividness without melodrama unless the brief invites it.

Voice and form

Choose a narrator or persona you can sustain. Shifts in register (e.g. from formal to slang) only work if purposeful. If you write dialogue, make it do work — reveal relationship, power, or subtext — not filler.

Frameworks of ideas

VCAA prescribes frameworks for the exam; in Unit 3 you explore the same conceptual territory. Open each framework page for prompts and connections to Section B.

• Writing about country
• Writing about protest
• Writing about personal journeys
• Writing about play

Commentary

Your commentary explains intentions, revisions, and how mentor texts or frameworks shaped decisions. See the Outcome 2 SAC guide for typical mark splits and length guidance.

Strong commentaries sound like a writer who can see their own draft: they quote themselves, compare early and later choices, and link those choices to purpose and audience. Weak commentaries summarise plot or repeat the teacher’s generic advice without reference to the actual piece.