The BEST tip my ext teacher gave was to think of a central metaphor which can be used to explore anything and write a discursive on it. Then brainstrom how you would change it up to a given question.
For example you might have "mirrors" or something. And your base piece will look like this (don't judge I just made this up right now):
"I’ve never trusted mirrors. They lie too politely. They don’t show you what’s there; they show you what you already believe about what’s there. They’re like well-trained friends—always reflecting the version of you you’ve decided to see.
When I was younger, I used to stare into mirrors until the world around me dissolved. I’d look and look until my own face started to feel borrowed, like I was wearing someone else’s reflection. It wasn’t frightening, not exactly. More like disorienting—realising that I could recognise myself and still not know who I was.
Sometimes, when I walk past a shop window at night, I catch my reflection and don’t recognise it. The glass is dark, the city lights flicker behind me, and for a moment it’s like I’m watching a stranger pass through my life. I wonder how many times I’ve walked by myself without knowing it. How many versions of me are still wandering somewhere, trapped in those reflections, waiting for me to notice them.
We talk about “finding ourselves” as if we’re something lost—but what if the problem isn’t loss? What if it’s excess? What if we’ve reflected ourselves into so many fragments that there’s no single image left to return to?"
You can use this if you want lol or come up with your own central metaphor. It could even be something that you're really passionate about like cars or birds or something. And that way you won't waste a lot of time researching on it today and you won't even have to memorise it.
I used this technique to write a discursive and then adapted it into an imaginative using the same central metaphor but really focusing on setting and characterisation.