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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Who are the two authors that Anne says have written well about plot?
(a) Flannery O'Conner and Faulkner.
(b) John Gardner and Faulkner.
(c) Rosemary Wells and Doreen Cornin.
(d) E. M. Forester and John Gardner.

2. 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) A butterfly flitting around a room.
(c) An operating room nurse, getting utensils ready.
(d) An architect for a building.

3. How did Anne feel after the basketball game?
(a) Depressed and hungry.
(b) Joyful.
(c) Like she could write all day.
(d) Thankful for what she and her son had.

4. In Part 1, Section 6, Polaroids, who was the self-proclaimed "cool man?"
(a) Sam.
(b) A boy against a fence.
(c) A tall African American man.
(d) The referee of the basketball game.

5. What is Anne's comment on messes?
(a) Messes should be kept to a minimum.
(b) Messes do not say anything about who we are.
(c) They are an artist's true friend.
(d) Hire a housekeeper to clean up your messes.

6. What was the image from a medieval monk, Brother Lawerence, that helped Anne come to terms with the residents in the nursing home?
(a) Do not worry about tomorrow, today has enough worry for all.
(b) That we, like trees in the winter, have nothing to give, but are there to be loved unconditionally.
(c) Treat others as you would want to be treated.
(d) We are all dust in the wind.

7. What does Anne warn about doing with your characters?
(a) Giving them only one page of description.
(b) Letting them speak in dialect.
(c) Getting them to do something because it is convenient to the plot.
(d) Placing them in an improper set.

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

9. What does Anne say perfectionism will block?
(a) Radio station KFKD and the distracting voices.
(b) Inventiveness, playfulness, and life force.
(c) Flow, form, and set design.
(d) The heart, mind, and spirit.

10. What are great language tools that explain the unknown in terms of the known to the reader?
(a) Metaphors.
(b) Plots.
(c) Similes.
(d) A garden and river.

11. What does Anne say can reveal a character better than pages of description?
(a) Pages of dialog with descriptive wording.
(b) The antagonist.
(c) One line of dialog that rings true.
(d) Really off the wall dialect.

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

13. Anne tells her students they can use paranoia as wonderful material, and then recites a poem. Who is the author of the poem?
(a) Phillip Lopate.
(b) Buster Brown.
(c) She is.
(d) C. S. Lewis.

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

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

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What do most of Anne's students assume about why well-respected writers's books turn out beautifully?

3. When a character takes on a characteristic that you have no good experience in, what should you do?

4. What does Anne say you have to get over, or you will not go far in your writing?

5. What do readers want to know about characters besides their superficial values?

(see the answer keys)

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