The Assignment for the Creative Reading section is to complete a close reading on a text of my choice. It has to be between 100-200 words and should allow me to talk about the theme of time and/or place. I thought about what sort of text I’d like to do for a while, the most obvious choices were a novel or poem of some kind, however, as I like a challenge I wanted to go down a different route. A arrived at the possibility of taking an extract from song lyrics and knew it would probably be best to choose one I was familiar with so that there is enough for me to discuss.

One of my favourite bands are Bastille and they are known for their colourful and often political lyrics. I opted to use lyrics from ‘Doom Days’ as it is full of controversial topics and also has some links to time and place.

I completed various pieces of research, starting with annotating the extract and listening to it a few times over. This helped me to begin my close reading and to start approaching it from a different perspective, also as the purpose of a song is to be listened to, it’s important not to only use the written lyrics. I then made some initial notes – including things about themes, mood, narration, plot, character, point of view and poetic devices. When planning essays I like to highlight key information so that my research and thoughts are more organised.

As I believe the discussion of the themes is what provides the most content, I also created a mind map so that I could see these more visually. In turn, this allowed me to make links between various themes and helped me to decide the main points I wanted to make in my final assignment.

Once I had established the themes I wanted to write about in my close reading (as well as ensuring I contemplated the significance of place and time), I decided to make a rough plan. This allowed me to make sure I included all the points main mentioned in the course materials but also things I’d learnt from the previous close reading exercises. For example, I wanted to think about the choices that Bastille made and how this could change the overall impact of the song if changed. In addition to this, I also made notes on structure, language and my own opinion of the song as I believe they are also important features of close reading.

I am someone who likes to research and write down notes in order to plan the final piece of writing and I think the images I’ve provided above convey my style of working. Something I also find useful is colour as this helps me to feel more organised about the points I want to convey. Overall I am pleased with my choice to use Bastille’s Doom Days for my assignment because it utilised the skills I’d learnt in this part of the course well.

The final part of the assignment is a reflective commentary piece in regards to what I’ve learnt in this part of the course and how I’ve demonstrated this in my close reading assignment. Reflecting on the knowledge and skills you’ve developed allows you to see progress and therefore I think it is an important step of studying.

Below you can see my notes from my reflection piece.

After receiving feedback from my tutor I did extra research in order to re-draft my assignment. Below are the notes I collected in order to hopefully improve my essay.