Faculty Name | Section | Semester

How to Read Like a Writer, Question #1

In “How to Read Like a Writer,” Bunn says all writing consists “of a series of choices. What does he mean by this?

Think about your favorite book, or piece of writing. What choices did the writer make? How did those choices impact, or influence, your experience as a reader?

22 Comments

  1. hilary

    What Bunn means by all writing consists of a series of choices is, the way an author puts the writing together is how it’s going to be portrayed and read. it also means there are many ways to write pieces of writing and how the certain techniques you used in the writing affects the response and the thought of the reader. The way you write also depends on the type of audience you’re trying to target and the point you’re trying to get across. This isn’t necessarily a piece of writing or a book, but the script of the notebook really showed the different sides between the man and the women, the director showed the man’s point of view first which made us side with him because he would send the women letters and she wouldn’t respond but then when they showed her point of view the things she did was understandable because her parents hid the letters from her.

  2. abdou guidi

    one of my favorite books as a kid was Dairy’s Wimpy Kid Greg Goes To High School, While reading the book the author used an exaggerated & first person Perspective. The choice to tell the story from Greg’s point of view allows readers to get inside the mind of a middle schooler. The author also uses illustrations further enhanced by the drawings that are spread throughout the book. Particularly for younger readers who might not have a completely formed mental image of the characters, the illustrations assist readers in better visualizing the characters and events, increasing the reading experience.

  3. abdou guidi

    one of my favorite books as a kid was Dairy’s Wimpy Kid Greg Goes To High School, While reading the book the author used an exaggerated & first person Perspective. The choice to tell the story from Greg’s point of view allows readers to get inside the mind of a middle schooler. The author also uses illustrations further enhanced by the drawings that are spread throughout the book. Particularly for younger readers who might not have a completely formed mental image of the characters, the illustrations assist readers in better visualizing the characters and events, increasing the reading experience.

  4. Amber Pena

    He means that as a writer you choose what techniques you’re going to use and what details and messages you want to incorporate. My favorites books are by Colleen Hover and in one she chose to write in two perspectives and for me that made it more interesting and intense to see both sides of the story.

  5. Chrystian Castro

    When Bunn says that all writing consists “of a series of choices” he means that there are a multitude of choices that the author would need to take in order to show growth within a character. The reason for the author needs to make these choices is to show the audience what the message of the story is the author trying to give to its viewers. This can be found on multiples stories where the main character would go through many struggles throughout the things that they are trying to accomplish, and the character would overcome these challenges, showing the audience to be resilient when it comes to facing your own challenges. The author needs these multiple decisions to make sure that he is delivering his message to the audience.

  6. Yaquelin Morales

    Bunn means that it depends on what direction a writer decides to take the writing. Since you’re the one writing you are deciding the message you want your writing to give. Also, the point you’re trying to prove throughout the discussion includes you to support your opinion.

  7. Madison

    In my favorite book “THE HATE YOU GIVE” the author Angie Thomas depicts the events through Stars narration as a flashback. Star was the best friend of Khalil and was with him as he got wrongfully shot by the police. I believe her way of writing impacted me more than it would have impacted me if it came from Khalils perspective because it showed the aftermath of someone’s death. Normally, in books like this authors use the victim’s perspective but using Star gave a different perspective. I feel like it emphasized the central meaning more .

  8. Darryl

    Every word, Seneten, paragraph, and element in a piece of writing is purposefully chosen by the author, according to Prose, who claims that all writing is a series of choices.

  9. yousefa05

    What Bunn means by all writing consists of choices is the all writers have to make a choice for every word sentence and paragraph in their writing. This is because word choice has a big impact on writing and the message it sends

    I don’t really like reading or have a favorite but there is a story called, “The Road” and it’s about this father and son who are dealing with an apocalypse. The choices he made in the story were very dark and violent to help develop the kids character. The kid in the beginning of the story was a little kid who was scared of everything. The Dad who was handling it a lot better was also having some internal conflict. I feel like the dads perspective helps the reader connect to the situation in the book by giving his thought process.

  10. Jordon

    When Bunn mentions that all writing consists of a series of choices, he means that all writing is filled with words, phrases, and sentences that the author chose to convey a specific thought in the reader.

    One of my favorite books is a manga called One Piece and the author, Eiichiro Oda chooses the continuously make is to bring light during serious situations. One Piece itself isn’t always serious for very long, a lot of times a character will make a joke or some event will happen which ends up breaking the tension of the scene.

    This choice to make jokes during serious events makes me surprised or more attentive when the characters who are usually joking around become more serious.

  11. abdou guidi

    In “How to Read Like a Writer” I think when the author says “ writing consists of a series of choices.” Meaning All writing is prose if it is made up of the author’s conscious decisions throughout. In this, decisions concerning language, style, tone, structure, and other factors are discussed.

    One of my favorite books as a kid was Dairy’s Wimpy Kid Greg Goes To High School, While reading the book the author used an exaggerated & first person Perspective. The choice to tell the story from Greg’s point of view allows readers to get inside the mind of a middle schooler. The author also uses illustrations further enhanced by the drawings that are spread throughout the book. Particularly for younger readers who might not have a completely formed mental image of the characters, the illustrations assist readers in better visualizing the characters and events, increasing the reading experience.

  12. Akash Jungney

    In writing, a series of choices is the decisions and styles of writing you choose to go with, whether you’re writing about someone, an event, a story, or your daily life like a diary/journal, you must make the choices to spice up the story, add the action, what you saw, something you did in your life and how it affected you mentally as a whole. Nobody would ever read something that sounds or uses word play that makes the overall sense dull or unamusing. You want to sense action, the emotions, the urgency in the characters or the person. When I read the Harry Potter series, there was always a sense of action, urgency and quickness which made the books completely more entertaining and consistent as the series continued. The series overall made me understand that most stories written, need to have a bit of a kick in not just wordplay, but how each word is used in a way.

  13. hilary

    sorry it is a novel 🙂 I was going based off the movie

  14. Fernanda

    In my perspective Bunny is trying to tell us the readers, depending on the subjects that the writer decides to speak or write about can cause a big impact on those reading it. Creating certain emotions, tones that affects the reader.

    My favorite book it’s called SOLITO, the writer in this book gather his experience as he explained every single detail that he faced at such a young age trying to accomplish his American dream. His choices impacted me as a reader as I was able to understand on a deeper level all the pain and struggles he faced.

  15. Mia Donawa

    When Bunn says “all writing consists of a series of choices” it means that the author picks and chooses what to say next to surprise the readers with the intention of grabbing the reader’s attention that we don’t stop reading.The author chooses exactly what tone & words to speak to a specific audience that they are targeting . In my favorite book the author knew exactly what she was doing when she structured the reading the way that she did and it caused me a little confusion at first because I had no idea which way the story was going . I went a roller coaster of emotions and my curiosity caused me to finish the rest of the book because it was so good!!!

  16. Jason P

    It has been a very long time since I’ve read an actual book, so I can’t say I know much. From what I remember, the writer needs to have the appropriate word choice and tone to successfully communicate to the target audience. Their choices are affected by what they’re writing and how they want the reader to read their work.

  17. Trever Persaud

    One of my favorite books is “A Lesson Before Dying”. A man named Jefferson was falsely accused of robbing a liquor store and that caused him to get sentenced to the death penalty. A choice the author made was to write the book from the perspective of Grant Wiggins who was the person who had to teach Jefferson how to become a man before he died. This choice impacted my experience as a reader because it gave me an inside look at what Jefferson was like and what he was going through while he was in prison. This also showed me the character development Jefferson went through before he died.

  18. Julia Solomonik

    When Bunn said all writing consists “a series of choices” he meant that when writing a story or a piece, authors tend to make decisions on how they want to write their piece. Such as including how they want the tone of their writing to be, what’s their overall message or theme of their piece, and how they want to go about writing their piece figuring out the layout of things as their story goes on and unfolds.

  19. Justin Rodriguez

    My favorite book was Hatchet. It consisted of a man stranded in the woods who had to think and react to survive. Choices the author made was to write the book as a survival on how to survive if you was stranded in the woods. He also made the choice of showing us how the mental state can effect you from being alone for so long. It Impacted me as a reader because it helped me understand and put myself in the situation the character is in.

  20. Sydney burford

    What Bunn means by writing is a series of choices means that everything that someone puts in a book, story or article has a purpose and is meant to convey a certain message or idea weather it is to intrigue the reader, provoke a question or to change the tone of the story.

  21. kadija

    In “how to read like a writer” Bunn says all writing consists of a series of choices. The author points this out because he wants the readers to understand that writers are very particular as to how to tell the story and what kind of diction is used to capture the reader in.The genre of romance is an all time classic yet very anticipated. when watching a romance film we have a hetero couple and story line of boy meet girls and is in a constant pursuit to get the girl.In any romance movie we will always have an element of love at first sight young and mature love, unrequited love, obsession, sentimental love, spiritual love, forbidden love, platonic love, sexual and passionate love, sacrificial love, explosive and destructive love, and tragic love.One of my favorite books five meet apart captures this idea of forbidden love we have two pain characters both teenagers dying from a disease. 

  22. Jestine

    In “How to Read Like a Writer,” the assumption that all writing is a sequence of choices indicates that every word, sentence structure, narrative method, character development, plot advancement, and stylistic feature in a piece of writing is purposefully chosen by the author. These decisions are chosen with a specific aim and effect on the reader in mind. Every decision made by the author has an impact on the reader’s experience, as I notice in literature. It can produce emotions, generate suspense, deepen knowledge, or inspire thinking. Finally, these decisions collectively determine the overall impact and impression the piece of writing leaves on the reader. The way an author handles these options typically distinguishes a favorite book or piece of writing and makes it memorable for its readers.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

© 2024 ENG 1101 – E396

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑