An Alternative DBQ Technique
What if instead of writing our DBQs in the standard format, we wrote historical person fanfiction using the documents given. Imagine being able to write John Locke X Thomas Jefferson. What a masterpiece.
And the AP Readers would have to read it
But also, you could potentially get a few points if you did it right:
Contextualization, if you set the context for how your historical figure got to where he/she is
Thesis, if you somehow respond to the prompt in the first paragraph (ie “Thomas gazed into the eyes of Locke and said, “wow there certainly has been a lot of change over time since we declared independence from England. Now there’s more liberty, freedom, and happiness. I truly have followed your ideals””)
Sourcing documents if you provide the context around them. Because this is fanfiction, you could probably do this fairly easily, because you’d just have to describe their perspective as they wrote it.
Using documents and/or outside evidence would be difficult, particularly because they must address the prompt. Still, potentially being able to get 3 points when writing such wackiness would be pretty cool.
(I will probably legitimately do this over the summer when I both have the time and they publish the DBQ documents)
