Getting into the Author’s Mind

A number of questions become much easier when you place yourself into the mind of the author of the passage. Ask yourself a few different questions:

“Why did the author write this passage?”

“What was the author trying to say?”

What angle is the author taking?”

“What is the single most important point the author is trying to make?”

Put yourself in the shoes of the author and imagine that you wrote the passage and try to identify what you were trying to describe and how you were trying to describe it. If you take on the opinions and ideas expressed by the author as your own, then it becomes easier to answer questions that would be easy for the author to answer.