SAT OwlLiterary scholars have noticed that novelist Harriet Lane revised her early novel Northward three times over two decades. In each revision, she cut passages in which the narrator directly explains the characters' motives, while leaving the characters' dialogue and actions nearly unchanged. Lane's letters from the same period praise writers who "trust the reader." Taken together, this evidence suggests that Lane ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
lost interest in her characters' motives as she grew older.
came to believe that her characters' dialogue was poorly written.
revised the novel mainly to shorten it for a new publisher.
increasingly preferred to let readers infer characters' motives from what the characters say and do.
Show answer and explanation
Answer: D
Lane removed the narrator's explanations of motives but kept the dialogue and actions, which are what readers would use to work out motives. Her praise for writers who "trust the reader" points the same way. Choice D draws this conclusion.
Choice A is tempting, but cutting explanations does not mean Lane stopped caring about motives; she kept the dialogue and actions that reveal them.
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