1. How does John feel about Amy’s poetry?
| A．It is very classic. | B．It is very romantic. | C．It is very unique. |
| A．On Monday. | B．On Tuesday. | C．On Thursday. |
| A．Love. | B．Nature. | C．Friendship. |
| A．John Keats’. | B．Emily Dickinson’s. | C．William Wordsworth’s. |
2 .
| |
| Q What’s the best way to keep track of your characters in a novel? Amanda Rose, via email A I’m not sure what the best way is, but here are some of the methods I use. Most of my records are on paper. I have a huge folder, and in it are the following:* Character sheets – one A4 sheet for each character with all their details: name; age; address; physical description; personality type… * Dialogue records – an extra page where I note their favorite words and dialogues. * Photographs – I use photos cut from magazines for inspirations as to what they look like. I’m also a big fan of spreadsheets. I create one that has the name, date of birth and age of my characters at any given time in the novel – or novels if it’s a series. This is particularly helpful for controlling timelines, as I only need to change one date and the rest are set up to update automatically. I also use a spreadsheet for keeping track of the plot so I know what happens to each character in each chapter. I create the spreadsheet before I start and fill it in as I go. It’s for tracking not plotting, but it could be used for that if you plotted what happens in each chapter. Hope this helps, Amanda. | Q Should I use single quotes or double quotes for dialogue? Tania Yeatman, Wimborne A It doesn’t matter! Usually it’s a matter of house style, so if you are aiming at a specific publication, check to see what their style is for publication and copy that. If you don’t know the house style then the important thing is to be consistent. The same applies to quotes from interviewees and experts in your articles.“I saw Anne at writing group,” Milly said. “And she came rushing up to me and told me she’d done it at last. She’s got an agent!”
Q ______________________________ Grace Louise |
1. ________ are most useful for controlling timelines of the story.
| A．Character sheets | B．Dialogue records |
| C．Photographs | D．Spreadsheets |
| A．‘I saw Anne at writing group,’ Milly said. ‘And she came rushing up to me and cried, “I’ve done it at last. I’ve got an agent!”’ |
| B．“I saw Anne at writing group,” Milly said. “And she came rushing up to me and cried, ‘I’ve done it at last. I’ve got an agent!” |
| C．‘I saw Anne at writing group,’ Milly said. “And she came rushing up to me and cried, ‘I’ve done it at last. I’ve got an agent!’” |
| D．“I saw Anne at writing group,” Milly said. ‘And she came rushing up to me and cried, ‘I’ve done it at last. I’ve got an agent!’ |
| A．When and where will your next novel be published? |
| B．What should I write about to win the writing competition? |
| C．Do you have any tips for overcoming the writer’s block? |
| D．Can you give us a lecture on choosing the right topics? |
3 . One of the most famous literary challenges in history was when Dr. Seuss received a challenge from his publisher that he could only use 50 words to write an entire book. That’s all well and good, but it’s a tough challenge, to be sure. However, Ernest Vincent Wright would no doubt turn up his nose, as he challenged himself to pen an entire 50,000-word novel without once using the letter “e”.
Wright managed to pull it off. The final product was Gadsby, which is about a man named, well, Gadsby, who tries to save his city with the help of a youth group. It took Wright nearly six months to complete the work, and in his introduction pages he mentioned the challenges along the way.
One of the biggest challenges was replacing pronouns, since it’s tough to write a sentence, let alone a novel, without words like “he” or “she” or “her” and so forth. Additionally, he was forced to find ways to work around using past tense words that typically end in “-ed”, which, as you might imagine, is more than a little tricky.
Still, Wright did manage to come up with 50,110 words and a full story without any cheats, making it one of the most successful lipograms (避讳某字之文) in the history of writing. Wright self-published the book in 1939 and it was read primarily by people who tried to find any cheats, so convinced were they that Wright simply must have used the letter.
The entire novel is available online to read for free, as it entered the public domain in 1968. It’s a good thing, too, as the storehouse that contained the majority of the copies burned down, destroying enough of the books that it has since become a rare book collector’s prize, with copies being valued at thousands of dollars.
At the end of the day, of course, it remains a truly great achievement. After all, “e” is the most commonly used letter in English, with more than 11 percent of all words in the Oxford dictionary containing at least one “e”.
1. What did Wright challenge himself to write?| A．An entire book with 50 words. |
| B．A 50,000-word book in six months. |
| C．A 50,000-word book without the letter “e”. |
| D．An entire book including “e” 50,000 times. |
| A．The difficulties Wright faced. |
| B．The plot of Wright’s final product. |
| C．The popularity of Wright’s final product. |
| D．The smart ways Wright used to replace pronouns. |
| A．They considered the book a great success. |
| B．They expected the book to be available online. |
| C．They wondered what lipograms mean. |
| D．They doubted if Wright really made it. |
| A．Due to their rarity. |
| B．Because Wright won a big prize. |
| C．Because they had a really long history. |
| D．Due to book collectors’ recommendation. |
1. What percentage poems will go to the semi-final round?
| A．20%. | B．30%. | C．65%. |
| A．They read every poem twice. |
| B．They have a heavy workload. |
| C．They post their own poems online. |
| A．To provide proof of identity. |
| B．To give their mail address. |
| C．To discuss the posting of their poem. |
| A．Harry Potter is not as good as people think. |
| B．There are many good books for children. |
| C．The stories in Harry Potter attract people a lot. |
1. Which animal was always sitting on the mat in Alex’s story?
| A．A rat. | B．A cat. | C．A dog. |
| A．Terrible. | B．Serious. | C．Impressive. |
| A．Alex. | B．Bob. | C．The woman. |
| A．Use rhymes as many as possible. |
| B．Rewrite his former stories. |
| C．Have a talk with Alex. |
7 . The scent of hot bread drifting from the shops along the Street of Flour was sweeter than any perfume Arya had ever smelled. She took a deep breath and stepped closer to the pigeon. It was a plump one, speckled brown, busily pecking at a crust that had fallen between two cobblestones, but when Arya’s shadow touched it, it took to the air.
Her stick sword whistled out and caught it two feet off the ground, and it went down in a flurry of brown feathers. She was on it in the blink of an eye, grabbing a wing as the pigeon flapped and fluttered. It pecked at her hand. She grabbed its neck and twisted until she felt the bone snap.
Compared with catching cats, pigeons were easy.
She tied the pigeon to her belt and started down the street. A man was pushing a load of tarts by on a two-wheeled cart; the smells sang of blueberries and lemons and apricots. Her stomach made a hollow rumbly noise. “Could I have one?” she heard herself say. “A lemon, or…or any kind.”
The pushcart man looked her up and down. Plainly he did not like what he saw. “Three coppers.”
Arya tapped her wooden sword against the side of her boot. “I’ll trade you a fat pigeon,” she said.
“The Others take your pigeon,” the pushcart man said.
The tarts were still warm from the oven. The smells were making her mouth water, but she did not have three coppers... or one. She gave the pushcart man a look, remembering what Syrio had told her about seeing. He was short, with a little round belly, and when he moved he seemed favor his left leg a little. She was just thinking that if she snatched a tart and ran he would never be able to catch her when he said, “You be keeping your filthy hands off. The gold cloaks know how to deal with thieving little gutter rats, that they do.”
Arya glanced warily behind her. Two of the City Watch were standing at the mouth of an alley. Their cloaks hung almost to the ground, the heavy wool dyed a rich gold; their mail and boots and gloves were black. One wore a long sword at his hip, the other an iron cudgel. With a last wistful glance at the tarts, Arya edged back from the cart and hurried off. The gold cloaks had not been paying her any special attention, but the sight of them tied her stomach in knots. Arya had been staying as far from the castle as she could get, yet even from a distance she could see the heads rotting atop the high red walls. Flocks of crows squabbled noisily over each head, thick as flies. The talk in Flea Bottom was that the gold cloaks had associated themselves with the Lannisters, their commander raised to a lord, with lands on the Trident and a seat on the king’s council.
1. The story is set in a place where ______.| A．people raised pigeons | B．only privileged people lived |
| C．people sold and bought food | D．the watchmen received training |
| A．metaphor | B．overstatement |
| C．personification (拟人) | D．rhetoric rhyme |
| A．Remembering people’s appearance so that you can recognize them. |
| B．Perceiving people’s intention so that you can properly talk to them. |
| C．Understanding people’s living conditions so that you can help them. |
| D．Knowing people’ strengths and weaknesses so that you can beat them |
| A．Arya was more hunger than terrified in the story. |
| B．The Lannisters was a big enemy of the gold cloaks. |
| C．The atmosphere of the castle was agreeable and welcome. |
| D．The authority treated the executed people’s dead bodies in a cruel way. |
8 . Flash fiction is a name for short stories that are kept within a specific word or character limit, usually up to 1,500 words.
●
When planning a flash fiction story you first need to decide what are the important parts of the story that the reader just cannot miss. This might be a few moments from the beginning, middle and end. Once you have these, then any extra detail can either be cutaway or added in—if it makes the story better and the word limit allows.
●Develop characters using adverbs
Good flash fiction has well-developed characters who have personalities and faults. You can takeout long descriptions of your characters and replace them with the occasional adverb to help the reader understand the characters’ movements and behaviour. Adverbs are words that describe verbs.
●Use clauses to add colour and detail
Clauses add detail to sentences without adding too many words.
●Combine your sentences
| A．Practice to make it perfect |
| B．Plan carefully before writing |
| C．Writing flash fiction takes skill |
| D．You could use a relative clause |
| E．Verbs are words that describe physical or mental actions and states of being |
| F．Try doing this by picking a few things and putting them into a shorter sentence |
| G．They have different functions from other words used in flash fiction in English |
Four Great Classic Novels are usually thought to be the
10 . How long should my novel be?
This is a question I’m often asked, and it’s certainly not the same answer as how long a piece of string is! So, how long should your book actually be?
If we work backwards, from a production department point of view, a book of approximately 100,000 words will come in somewhere between 300 to 400 pages.
Shorter texts are less daunting (使人气馁的) for an agent to submit rather than a block of manuscript so aim to make your publication path easier. There’s an implication that a standard book length should have a tighter handle on pacing, with the reader more readily drawn in. In turn, an overlong novel often indicates to a publisher that there’s potentially extensive editing work to be done by them.
More commonly, issues over length tend to highlight that pacing is an issue, be it too long or too short. Overwriting, in particular, can be an issue for many authors, who might struggle to express their ideas clearly, using complex language that play down the flow of the book. Successful writing contains a clarity of thought that enables the writer to connect with the reader for maximum impact, allowing the story, characters and setting to shine through.
In terms of content, it’s important for an author to prioritise the key themes in the book.
Work intuitively, from the heart, keeping secrets for as long as possible so the reader is forced to read on. In this way, a reader will readily connect with your words.
| A．Books do have different thresholds (门槛) according to genre. |
| B．This is plenty for a typical author’s book, particularly the first one. |
| C．Yes, there are exceptions to every genre but these are generally rare. |
| D．Is everything of equal importance and does everything need to be included? |
| E．Longer books are more expensive to produce and harder to sell in, so it increases their risk. |
| F．With a firm handle on length, your novel will have increased its chances of commercial publication. |
