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Craft and StructureEasyText structure and purpose (function of a specific detail)

Craft and Structure practice question

Novelist Inés Marchetti drafts her fiction by hand before typing anything. She keeps stacks of spiral notebooks, some filled years before a book begins to take shape, and she returns to them whenever a story stalls. The notebooks, Marchetti has said, remind her that a novel is not produced in a single burst of inspiration but assembled slowly, piece by piece, over many years.

In the text, the author mentions Marchetti's spiral notebooks primarily to

  1. A. illustrate her view that a novel is put together gradually rather than all at once.Correct
  2. B. explain why she considers handwriting more enjoyable than typing.
  3. C. suggest that she has difficulty completing the novels she begins.
  4. D. describe the method she uses to choose titles for her books.

Answer: A. illustrate her view that a novel is put together gradually rather than all at once.

The final sentence states directly what the notebooks signify to Marchetti: that a novel is "assembled slowly, piece by piece," not created in one burst. The detail exists to illustrate that idea. (B) latches onto the mention of handwriting but supplies a preference and a reason (enjoyment) that the text never gives. (C) misreads "whenever a story stalls": the notebooks are described as a resource she uses to keep going, not as evidence that she fails to finish books. (D) invents a topic—titles—that appears nowhere in the text.

Why the other answers are wrong

B. explain why she considers handwriting more enjoyable than typing.
The text mentions handwriting, but it never says Marchetti enjoys it more than typing — the notebooks are brought up to show how a novel accumulates over time, not to express a preference.
C. suggest that she has difficulty completing the novels she begins.
You read "whenever a story stalls" as evidence of failure, but the notebooks are described as the resource that gets her moving again, not a sign she leaves books unfinished.
D. describe the method she uses to choose titles for her books.
Titles are never mentioned anywhere in the passage; the notebooks are tied specifically to how a novel is "assembled slowly, piece by piece."

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