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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is Anne's second suggestion about writing dialogue?
(a) Your characters should never speak in dialect.
(b) Your characters should always speak in dialect.
(c) Dialogue is not a needed break from all the writing.
(d) Your characters should be identifiable by what they say.

2. After a half hour of writing, how much material was generated from the school lunch assignment?
(a) The perfect amount for a short story.
(b) Enough to write two or three books.
(c) None, her students did not eat lunch.
(d) Too much for Anne and some of the people in class, it threatened to immoblize them.

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

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

5. What does the image of putting an octopus to bed describe?
(a) Making all the voices quiet.
(b) Putting the nursing home residents to bed.
(c) Exactly what it says, putting an octopus to bed.
(d) Solving problems in a final draft.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What was the image from a medieval monk, Brother Lawerence, that helped Anne come to terms with the residents in the nursing home?

3. What does Anne believe allows us to see the individual person?

4. When writing towards a scene, why may you find it is all wrong when you finish it?

5. According to Anne, what is one thing that can make a book very tiring to read?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Anne suggest doing with the feeling of paranoia?

2. How does Anne compare writing a first draft to watching a Polaroid develop?

3. Plot is the main part of your story. How does the plot best grow organically, according to Anne?

4. According to Anne, how does knowledge of a character develop?

5. What was Natalie Goldberg's response when asked for the best possible writing advice she had to offer? How true is this advice?

6. How does Anne suggest writing about school lunches be beneficial for a writer?

7. How does Anne state dialogue affects a reader?

8. When Anne was writing food reviews, how did allowing herself to write bad first drafts help her?

9. When Anne's students tell her they do not know where to start, she tells them to start with their childhood. How is this helpful?

10. In Part 1, Section 12, Plot Treatment, Anne had been working on a book for over two years that still was not acceptable to her editor. How does she describe the plot treatment she wrote, which was accepted by her editor, and gained her the last of her advance?

(see the answer keys)

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