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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What book was Gardner writing when he remembered the altered sense coming over him while in the last chapter?

2. What author of Over the Edge does Gardner cite in Chapter 1?

3. Of whose writing does Gardner say that no reader can doubt the impulse to capture real life, "the special quality of country-Welsh craziness"?

4. What author does Gardner remark has a bad habit of breaking the vivid and continuous dream by pouring on the rhetoric in Chapter 1?

5. Gardner compares Melville's Moby Dick with what in Chapter 1?

Short Essay Questions

1. Where did Gardner learn his method of writing?

2. What does Gardner write of expressing characters' emotions in Chapter 1?

3. What is the "moronic setup" that Gardner relates in Chapter 1?

4. What does Gardner remark about theme in Chapter 1?

5. What does Gardner say in Chapter 1 regarding "verbal sensitivity?" What does this term mean?

6. What does Gardner assert of the author learning character through television in Chapter 1?

7. What does Gardner say of writers with "bad taste" in language in Chapter 1?

8. How does the young author learn technique through reading others?

9. What state does good fiction elicit in the reader, according to Gardner?

10. What essential things must an aspiring author understand in order to pursue writing?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Describe the author's keen sense of observation. Why is this necessary? How does it affect the author?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss what Gardner refers to as "faith" in the final chapter. Where does the author find faith? How should the author go about escaping writer's block?

Essay Topic 3

What subjects are worthwhile or important for the author in gaining a well-rounded education? Why?

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