The authors investigated the effects of guided journal writing on students' understanding of themes and main characters in a complex novel. Three English 12 classes were randomly assigned to 1 no-writing condition and 2 writing conditions—character clues and general-response questions. The results from 2 posttests consistently indicated that students who wrote significantly surpassed students who did not write. Student self-ratings data indicated that the students believed that the writing activities helped them with story understanding. Student interview data indicated that students believed that the writing made them think more deeply about the story. The results support the contributions of writing to student literary learning and the research of J. Marshall (1987) and G. E. Newell (1994, 1996).
