Ready or Not? Literature and General Questions Quiz

Answer: Marlene ran away from...

If you read your questions aloud before submitting them, it will become clear which ones are ready and read well. If your entire quiz has incomplete questions, then it will take a long time to get your quiz online and make the editing process drawn out. Always avoid the dangling question type if you possibly can.

Answer: George and Rita escaped from the witch's castle by tying sheets together.

Now, though true and false items (as well as yes/no questions) should be limited, when you form them, please make sure you read them out loud and they are correctly punctuated.
Remember that a true/false sentence is a statement. A yes/no answer is a question. Yes, this might seem obvious but as editors we receive many of these per day and remind people constantly. The words true/false do NOT need to be written out as the software takes care of that.

Answer: Who was the first person to be found murdered?

"An easy one: who wrote this book?": this one is wrong for several reasons. First, you really shouldn't need to mention it being easy or difficult as it will all depend on who is taking the quiz. Then, as literature as well as other sections of quizzyland lists quizzes by author or artist, your question will be perfectly obvious. If it's under the Hemingway subcategory, you won't need to ask who wrote it. If you want to ask who said what in a quiz, then you'll need to put the quote within quotation marks.

Another thing that really doesn't make a good quiz is putting just a character's name and having the player match up the name with something else. You'll need to phrase it differently. Don't just leave the poor character's name floating in void space, put something around it. If your quiz question is chosen automatically on the daily quiz, it's helpful for it to stand alone and be clear what you're looking for.

Answer: Who(m) did Loralee marry?

The editors at Quizzyland will often send your quiz back for incorrect or incomplete question forms. We aren't just nitpicking. Even if you find the meaning clear, we expect quizzes to use an easy-to-read question form that looks more "pro". Please avoid the dangling dots form too or mystery blanks. One word questions really don't work either.

Answer: In Voltaire's "Candide", what is the name of the city Candide discovers?

"How many books in a series?" is never a good idea as this may vary and a large series might come out in a different volume type. Asking how many times a character appears isn't a good idea either. The most successful questions don't require people to do extensive research nor count up on their fingers. Anything that looks like a trick question is not appreciated either. If you ask where an author or artist lives it's obviously subject to change.

The only way you might use this is "Where did the author live when she wrote "Galaxies on Parade"?" if it has a bearing on the topic or book. If "Galaxies on Parade" is set in Maine and the author lived in Maine then perhaps you can mention it.

Answer: Was Arthur afraid of dogs? (y/n)

Whenever you make a t/f or y/n question, make sure you've got the right type of question to match it. Requesting players to type in the correct word into an FITB from a choice you provide them from gets a little tedious and even boring, so you might as well go ahead and give them four choices.

As a rule of thumb, never use more than one or two t/f or y/n questions per quiz as they aren't perceived as challenging by players and reflect negatively on your work. You may use your creativity IF it isn't too far-fetched and please don't use close variations in spelling such as McGyver, Macgyver, McGuyver Macgivver. People really dislike them.

Answer: Why was Julia nervous when Detective Sam Spade neared the closet door?

Two of these have obvious grammatical errors that most spellcheckers would pick up, though the 'who's' isn't getting picked up on mine as I write this quiz so be very careful on the possessive vs. contraction. The question "Julia left the party with?" is not clear enough.

Answer: What did Inspector Redherring discover about the garbage chute?

Hopefully these were obvious. One thing our newer quiz writers will want to avoid is too many repetitive questions about characters' names and middle names. They don't make for terribly exciting questions. 'What was Inspector Redherring's middle name?' might be good if he or she had a very distinctive name and it was used in a story or the series, otherwise, it gets repetitive after a while.

Answer: High Fidelity

Now though "High Fidelity" must be spelled correctly, the title is the clearest and doesn't include a "The" which would complicate matters. "She spoke Spanish to him" is the type of thing we occasionally see in which the player must basically read the author's mind. Catch 22 might seem straightforward to request from a player yet, it is pretty ambiguous in the long run as someone might spell it out, include a hyphen or leave it out. Spelling it several ways isn't an option. We know that people will get these wrong and it won't be because they don't know the answer, but because they haven't typed it exactly as the computer wants. "All the king's men" is asking for major trouble as it can be typed several ways. One note is that our site isn't case sensitive, so there isn't any need to capitalize answers. FITBS are perhaps the thing that causes the most problems for us as when a person takes your test, they might put in an answer that you'd accept if it were in person, yet the computer won't have that flexibility. We advise you to use them very sparingly. Even if you feel that a person should spell the correct answer or they're wrong, this won't help your player friendliness in the long run. If you spoke the answer out loud, there would be leeway, but this is a place where the multiple choice is king.

Answer: Gone with the wind

Those should be pretty obvious to you by now. Even "Gone With the Wind" is risky though, as whenever someone types in a few words into a blank, their computer may do two spaces instead of one and yet it won't show up to the person typing. This means he or she will be marked as incorrect, yet they won't see why.

Another problem is that your ratings will suffer after someone gets a few of these but you won't realize why.

Answer: Which character always said he was on his way home?

I hope you got these. If not, it's never too late to nip these grammar things in the bud. Please try our Quizzyland tune-ups for an enjoyable way to review these.

Answer: Dupin based the character of Uncle Thomas on his own Uncle Charles who raised him.

Information should be factual, based on your own words with an occasional opinion on your favorite if you really want.

Answer: According to Andrea, why does she decide to leave for Ohio?

Hopefully the reasons will be obvious to you. However, remember not to time date your quiz with things that will change over time. Also, the books might be released in a different format and page numbers won't work. If you've ever taken a class and had a different version of a book, you'll know why this isn't popular. Hope this has been helpful, good luck creating quizzes.

Answer: Where did Emily Dickinson die?

Hopefully these were all obvious to you. Emily Dickinson passed away a long time ago therefore it's an historical fact that may be used for the information section or a question. The other questions are subject to change.

Answer: What did Detective Spillane discover in the closet?

I hope you managed these well. Most of the examples you shouldn't choose are linked questions.