GED and HiSET language arts — short literary scenes

Most of what the reading section gives you is non-fiction. A quarter of it is not, and that quarter tends to be where people lose marks, because the questions stop asking what the text says and start asking what it shows.

These twelve are all fiction, and all short: a man in a hospital waiting room who opens his mouth and then looks at the floor; a woman at a bus depot whose bus is called twice while she stays on the bench; two mechanics standing over an engine at the end of a shift; a resignation letter that goes onto a desk and comes off it again. Every scene was written for this exercise — nothing here is borrowed from, imitated from, or summarized out of any published story.

The skills are the ones both tests actually examine. What a character wants and what is standing in the way, when neither is stated. What an action is evidence of — the white knuckles, the ticket pushed into a coat pocket — since fiction shows far more often than it tells. What a line of dialogue adds that the narration has withheld. Whose eyes the scene is told through, and what that point of view keeps from you: if the character does not see the thing in the shadows, neither do you, and that is a choice the writer made. Which words set the mood, as against which words merely fill the room. What a simile claims, which is one quality carried across and not the whole picture — the commonest error here is to take the comparison literally and start looking for a sleeper who was never there. Whether a conflict is between two people or inside one, which is decided by counting who in the scene actually acts. What one detail of setting is doing: a newspaper three days old in a place everyone else is passing through. What two people's behavior implies about what is between them. And what theme a scene supports, as against what subject it mentions.

Wrong answers are built from the readings a careful person might really defend, then made answerable: the scene always contains the detail that settles it. Answer positions are spread evenly across the bank, so guessing by habit gains nothing.

Zestly is an independent study tool. It is not affiliated with GED Testing Service, which owns the GED test, or with the HiSET program, and it is not a test centre. Nothing here reproduces any official test material.

• Say what a character wants and what is stopping them, when the scene states neither
• Read an action or a gesture as evidence about the person making it
• Tell what a line of dialogue adds that the narration has left out
• Identify whose perspective a scene is told through, and what that perspective withholds from the reader
• Name the words that set a passage's mood, and separate them from words that merely furnish the room
• Say what a simile or metaphor actually claims, without taking the comparison literally
• Decide whether a conflict is between people or inside one person by counting who acts
• Explain the job one detail of setting is doing, and state the theme a scene supports rather than the subject it mentions

Written for this exercise. From the bank: "The dispatcher's voice came over the speaker like a hand shaking a sleeper awake — flat, sudden, and impossible to argue with." The question asks what the simile claims about the voice; the trap is the answer that puts a real sleeping passenger in the depot, which the scene never does.