Bunn, “How to read like a writer”
Mike Bunn is a college graduate who lived and worked in London and worked at a palace theatre that was very beautiful. One can see that his job was not cared about where the workers didn’t really pay attention to their job’s. While the author was working, he always used to try to read books and it was then he realized how to read like writers.
Writing is a word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence process. Writing also consists of Series of Choices. When you read to have to figure out the choices the writer made and why and see how it reflects to your own writing. Think about the writer choices and their techniques used in their writing. Try to look for where the writer made the most important choices and then think how it would’ve been with other choices and the effects of it. You can make a list of the advantages and disadvantages of different choices.
If you don’t understand or don’t know what you are reading about, you have to read like a writer to understand the concept behind it.
Reading like a writer is considered to be the best way to read but the most difficult. When we read like writers, we are basically entering the lives of the writers and understanding why they did certain things and made certain choices. Two key things you must consider doing is understanding the context of both the text and what you are doing like your assignment as well as the historical context. Try to understand the context before you start reading.
It is also important to understand the genre of what you are reading. Genre is the type of writing a writer uses in the text. Not all Genres work for everything that you are going to write about so it is key to figure out how are you going to write and why.
Reading like a writer for well written texts from like well published authors can be really helpful on improving your writing. Asking questions as you read can also be helpful. Two keys questions to remember when reading is what is the writer’s purpose and their intended audition. Factors like who the intended audience is will help determine the way to write and present the text. Asks question like is the writing appropriate and effective.
TAKE NOTES AND ANNOTATE! The more you practice reading like a writer the better.
I love the way Dunn broke down the very first paragraph of the article with reading like a Writer. Him doing that help shows how important and impactful reading like a writer can be.
Toni Morrison, “The Reader as Artist”
The opening paragraph allows the reader to use their imagination, picturing all the events that are happening in the description and events that are not. The author’s style of writing was so descriptive where the author described everything that was happening with the use of metaphors.
Reading as a skill and reading as an art are both good as in reading as a skill is like more for understanding things and reading as an art is like going along with the reading and going along with it feeling and seeing certain things about what you are reading.
The way Toni Morrison writes, to me it is very imagery where I can picture all the events she to trying to convey.
One can see that Morrison uses third person to describe events that are actually happening in first person. Even though it is in third person, it is still relatable and connectable to first person experiences.
Favorite note
I found that reading word-by-word. Sentence-by-sentence and understanding writer’s choices is really interesting because I don’t think I ever got that deep in a reading to understand the authors word choice and me reading more about this really helped me see how important an author’s word may be and how it had an impact in the text.
3 important notes
How to read like a writer
- Understand the author’s choices of the reasons they chose to write in that specific way
- Try to understand the context of whatever you are reading as it will help you understand it more
- Ask questions frequently
The reader as Artist
- Reading doesn’t only have to be a skill, it can be a form of art
- Reading can be as creative and fun as possible
- Reading as an art can provide so many new forms of reading and writing, just like how reading as a skill can, that can be so important in a person reading and writing skills
Quote
“Skill is enough, but I prefer the art.” I found this to be the most interesting because it shows that you don’t have to read as a skill, but as an art. Reading as an art can have as much of an impact as reading as a skill or maybe more. I haven’t really thought of reading as an art but this really opened my eyes on the different ways reading and writing can be both viewed and formed.
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