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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What magazine did Anne write food reviews for, before it folded?
(a) Food News Review.
(b) Pots and Pans.
(c) Sacramento.
(d) California.

2. What is a plot treatment?
(a) A treatment of the dialog in the book.
(b) A road map of the beginning and end of a chapter, and how the end grows into the following chapter.
(c) It is something done by a big plotting machine.
(d) It treats the false starts in a book.

3. Aside from talking to people, what are other ways to gather ideas for set design?
(a) Going to visit and reading books about the set your are trying to design.
(b) You need only to look to the plot for your set design.
(c) Take a nap and dream about it, or watch a movie.
(d) Reading a book on the subject and then meditating.

4. In Anne's experience, and the experience of other writer's she knows, how easily does plot structure come?
(a) Easy as pie.
(b) Not easily at all.
(c) It tends to come like the development of a Polaroid.
(d) It is like a Gulf stream going through a straw.

5. How does Anne tell her students to train the unconscious to kick in?
(a) Phone an off-putting friend, that will get your creative juices going.
(b) Listen to classical music.
(c) Drink wine and eat chocolate, then write.
(d) Sit down to write at approximately the same time every day.

6. What does the title, False Starts, mean?
(a) When you have to scrap your bad first draft.
(b) When you start writing too soon, without doing your research.
(c) Set design never turns out like you think it will.
(d) You think you know about the character, but as you start writing, you can find out you were wrong.

7. What was Anne's first poem about that got any attention?
(a) Her father.
(b) Tiny bubbles.
(c) Sam.
(d) John Glenn.

8. What movie line does Anne suggest as a good one to tape to the wall of your office?
(a) "Hey - lighten up, Francis."
(b) "Climb every mountain."
(c) "Jeremiah was a bullfrog."
(d) "From sun up to sun down I am the best writer in town."

9. What does Anne's friend tell her that we and our characters have to work within?
(a) An emotional acre.
(b) A one-inch picture frame.
(c) A mason jar.
(d) The stories of our life.

10. In Anne's opinion, who writes bad first drafts?
(a) All good writers.
(b) The birds.
(c) She does.
(d) Reporters.

11. Where does the image of putting an octopus to bed come from?
(a) Pammy's memorial garden.
(b) Recovery.
(c) The octopus' mother.
(d) The nursing home.

12. According to Anne, what is one thing that can make a book very tiring to read?
(a) Dr. Suess.
(b) Dialogue written in dialect.
(c) Serif font.
(d) Dialogue written without any dialect.

13. How does knowledge of your characters emerge, according to Anne?
(a) Like a Polaroid, it takes time to know them.
(b) Like a sunrise, full of beauty and splendor.
(c) Quickly and easily.
(d) Characters come after you finish a good outline.

14. When writing towards a scene, why may you find it is all wrong when you finish it?
(a) Because the wind is blowing from the west now.
(b) Because of what you have learned about your characters along the way.
(c) Because your subject matter expert finally called you back to talk about set design.
(d) Because your editor said it was wrong.

15. What was Vonnegut's comment on writing?
(a) Writing is an extension of the soul onto a blank canvas in sheer poetic movements.
(b) When I write, I shoot for the stars and end up somewhere on the moon.
(c) When I write, I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in his mouth.
(d) I write with crayons, it is prettier.

Short Answer Questions

1. What two qualities are needed to communicate effectively according to Anne?

2. What advice does Anne's hypnotist give her about the negative voices?

3. What advice did Anne's father give her brother when he was overwhelmed at writing a report on birds?

4. What is Anne's comment on messes?

5. When talking with a subject expert about kitchens, what are good questions to ask about the kitchen?

(see the answer keys)

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