Introduction
The SAT Reading and Writing section devotes roughly 28% of its questions to Craft and Structure. One recurring task in that domain asks you to analyze how a literary passage is constructed — not just what it says, but why it's organized the way it is. This note focuses specifically on fiction and older prose (including pre-1900 texts), where structure often means something different than in an argumentative essay: instead of claim-evidence-conclusion, you'll encounter character establishment, scene-setting, shifting perspectives, and accumulating detail.
These questions appear in both adaptive modules and demand precision: you must track narrative focus (what or whom the passage centers on), description patterns (how details accumulate or contrast), and how the passage's parts work together to build a character or scene.
Core Concept
In a literary passage, structure is purposeful arrangement. Each part of the text does rhetorical work:
- Opening sentences often establish setting, tone, or introduce a character's defining quality.
- Middle sections typically develop tension, deepen characterization, or layer detail onto the initial image.
- Closing sentences frequently resolve, shift perspective, or leave a deliberate impression.
On the SAT, a structural question will ask something like: "Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?" or "What is the main purpose of the text?" For literary passages, the answer almost always describes what narrative or descriptive work each section performs, not the subject matter alone.
Narrative focus refers to who or what the passage's attention is directed at at any given moment. A passage might begin on a landscape and then narrow to a single figure — that shift in focus is itself structural. Description patterns include techniques like moving from exterior to interior (physical appearance → inner thought), general to specific, or calm to agitated. Recognizing these patterns lets you summarize structure accurately.
Key distinction: A structural description tells you what each part does; a topic summary tells you what the text is about. The SAT tests the former, not the latter.
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