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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In working on set design for your book, what does Anne suggest you imagine yourself as?
(a) Set designer for a play or movie.
(b) An operating room nurse, getting utensils ready.
(c) A butterfly flitting around a room.
(d) An architect for a building.

2. According to Anne, what is the way to "nail" a character?
(a) Plot.
(b) Dialogue.
(c) Set design.
(d) Hammers.

3. How does Anne describe the Polaroid?
(a) You are not supposed to know what the picture looks like until it finishes developing.
(b) Quick and easy, just like writing.
(c) Anybody can take a Polariod picture, as long as there is film in the camera.
(d) You point and shoot at what you think you want, but it does not always turn out as expected.

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

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

6. What image does Anne use to help her gather dialog for characters?
(a) Dr. Suess.
(b) One-inch picture frame.
(c) Hammers.
(d) Broccoli.

7. In the beginning of Part 2, what does Anne say writing is about?
(a) Making up stories about fairies.
(b) A good plot treatment.
(c) "...learning to pay attention and communicate what is going on."
(d) Getting published!

8. How does Anne define clutter?
(a) Something to be swept under the rug.
(b) Makes her hold her breath.
(c) Easier to deal with if you put in specific piles.
(d) Wonderfully fertile ground.

9. How does a writer end up with a good second draft or a terrific third draft?
(a) By writing a bad first draft.
(b) By getting a good agent.
(c) By drinking lots of wine.
(d) By hiring an excellent editor.

10. What is a recurring problem that Anne sees in her students?
(a) They are bad spellers.
(b) They really want to be published, and kind of want to write.
(c) They do not have good agents.
(d) They are too busy writing to listen to her class.

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

12. What is the way to hold a reader's attention?
(a) Pictures.
(b) Good plots.
(c) Dialogue.
(d) Drama.

13. Anne's editor loved the characters in her book, but what was the problem with the book?
(a) The garden was not believable.
(b) The dialect was all wrong.
(c) She had false starts all over the place.
(d) She had not brought them all together.

14. What do readers want to know about characters besides their superficial values?
(a) Their hair color.
(b) How they smell.
(c) Their essence.
(d) What they eat.

15. What is Anne's third suggestion about putting together good dialogue?
(a) Insert clever dialogue whenever possible.
(b) Dialogue emerges entirely from the plot. Listen to the plot.
(c) Put two people, who would never want to be together, in a close situation. They will have lots to say.
(d) Put two people who have lots in common together for teatime.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is Ethan Canin's idea of the most valuable thing about writing?

2. What does the one-inch picture frame remind her of?

3. The school lunches writing assignment combines which two pieces of writing advice from Anne?

4. In Part 1, Section 6, Polaroids, who was the self-proclaimed "cool man?"

5. What is the question Anne's students always ask?

(see the answer keys)

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