PICTURE COMPOSITION: the three requirements and how to avoid the trap.
Topic: Composition — picture (approach)
Answer
THE THREE REQUIREMENTS
- ESTABLISH THE CONNECTION EARLY. Within the first paragraph a reader should be able to tell which picture you were given. If the photograph shows a flooded street, the water belongs in the opening lines — not arrived at in the final sentence.
- WRITE A COMPLETE COMPOSITION. The question allows a story, a description or an account. Decide which at the outset and write that form properly — a story needs situation, complication and resolution; a description needs sensory detail and an order; an account needs a sequence of events and a reflection.
- YOU MAY GO BEYOND THE PICTURE. The question expressly permits you to "take suggestions from it". A photograph of an old man on a bench may become a story about the letter in his pocket. What it may NOT become is a composition with no traceable link to the image.
THE TRAP Every year candidates write a rehearsed composition and bolt a token reference to the picture onto it. The question says there "must be a CLEAR CONNECTION", so the link has to be structural, not decorative.
TEST BEFORE YOU BEGIN: in one sentence, state how your composition arises from the picture. If you cannot, choose a different option.
A SAFE OPENING FORMULA, if the picture puzzles you: describe the image in two or three sentences of concrete detail, then move into your narrative from one element within it — a face, an object, the weather.
WHY THIS OPTION IS BOTH THE EASIEST AND THE RISKIEST
Easiest, because you may write in any form you choose and can play to your strength.
Riskiest, because of that one sentence about a clear connection. It is the only composition option where a well-written piece can lose heavy content marks for a reason that has nothing to do with the writing.
Do not announce your form. "I shall now describe the picture" wastes a sentence and reads as a schoolroom exercise. Let the writing show what it is.
For the shape of each form, see the narrative, descriptive and argumentative models in this chapter.