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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. When a character takes on a characteristic that you have no good experience in, what should you do?
(a) Contact someone who has this life experience.
(b) Google the characteristic, everything online is true.
(c) Look at your plot, it will tell you what to write.
(d) Wing it, the readers will not know.

3. What can yield strange characters lurking in the shadows, according to Anne?
(a) Working on a good plot line.
(b) Eating school lunches.
(c) Meditating.
(d) Taking a short assignment and writing a bad first draft.

4. How else does Anne say you might you know you are done?
(a) The plot has come together beautifully.
(b) Your check arrives in the mail.
(c) You have done the best you can do, and have no more to give.
(d) Your editor tells you that you are done.

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

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

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

8. What is Anne's father's occupation?
(a) Librarian.
(b) Writer.
(c) Hippie.
(d) Real Estate Agent.

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

10. From where did Anne's Special Olympics article start to emerge?
(a) The cool man.
(b) A Polaroid of three of the athletes.
(c) The girl on crutches.
(d) Her lunch.

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

12. Ten days before Pammy died, she went shopping with Anne. On this excursion Anne figured out what Pammy's essence was. What was it?
(a) It was about who she was, not her clothes.
(b) It was about who she was, not what she could do with her hands.
(c) It was about how well she wrote checks.
(d) It was about her checks and her clothes.

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

14. What did Anne's father tell his students to read?
(a) Only Thurber.
(b) All the great books and plays they could get their hands on.
(c) Shakespeare.
(d) A few poems and hardback books.

15. When will you know your characters, according to Anne?
(a) After teatime.
(b) Weeks or months after you started working with them.
(c) When you first sit down and start to write about them.
(d) When your editor tells you who they are.

Short Answer Questions

1. What are great language tools that explain the unknown in terms of the known to the reader?

2. What do we want out of important characters, such as a narrator?

3. In working on set design for your book, what does Anne suggest you imagine yourself as?

4. What does Anne's friend tell her that we and our characters have to work within?

5. Where does Anne tell her students to start with their writing?

(see the answer keys)

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