Read the excerpt from Heart of a Samurai. Goemon jumped up. "Agreed," he said, jamming his "knife" into his sash and slashing at Manjiro's "sword." Their imaginary swords clashed and clattered as they lunged or leaped aside to avoid being hit. How does the author make the excerpt exciting?

This question is missing the answer choices. I was able to find them online. They are as follows:

How does the author make the excerpt exciting?

A. She changes the pace from slow to fast.

B. She creates a conflict between two characters.

C. She uses strong and precise action words.

D. She changes the pace from fast to slow.

The author makes the excerpt exciting because:

C. She uses strong and precise action words.

Explanation:

"Heart of a Samurai" is a historical novel for young adults based on the real story of Manjiro Nakahama. It was written by awarded children's author Margi Preus and published in 2010.

In the passage we are analyzing here, the author makes the story exciting by using words that convey rapid and precise action. They are: "jamming", "slashing", "clashed", "clattered", "lunged", and "leaped". Those action verbs make the scene dynamic, animated. With that in mind, we can choose letter C as the best option:

C. She uses strong and precise action words.

- "a nonrestrictive clause functions as a modifier to a noun (that is an object, person or concept). these clauses can be described by the following three options: it is set off by comas, it contains a subject and a verbs and it adds nonessential information to the sentence.

for example, in "here is bill gates, who confounded microsoft software company" we can identify "who confounded microsoft software company" as a nonrestrictive clause modifying the noun bill gates. this clause can be describes as a nonrestrictive clause because it is separated by a comma, it adds nonessential information to identify who bill gates is and it must contain both a subject (who) and a verb (confounded)."