This semester, we have a few readings that specifically address reading. These readings help us learn about ourselves as readers and writers. This week, we’re reading Mike Bunn’s “How To Read Like a Writer.”
In a comment below, include a piece of advice or a technique Bunn recommends. Copy his words into your comment (that is, quote him), and note the page number from the article. Then paraphrase what he’s saying. Extra bonus points if you write about a piece of advice that no one else in class writes about. Read everyone else’s comments, too, since this will be a great list of advice!
Please add your comment by Wednesday (8/30) morning, so we can use this as a starting point for our class discussion on Wednesday.
A piece of advice/technique bunn recommends in “How to Read Like a Writer” is to “train yourself to formulate questions as you read based on whatever you notice in the text”(pg.84). This is quote is signifying that while we read we should be thinking about the different possibilities and outcomes that might’ve occurred if the writer chose a different path for there character/situation.
Drawing from Bunn’s article “How to Read Like a Writer” a piece of advise I’ll like to take is to look at techniques in a written work and opt them in our own piece of writing. It says, “The idea is to carefully examine the things you read looking at the writerly techniques in the text in order to decide if you might want to adopt similar( or the same) techniques in your writing.” (Page72 paragraph 2) Another interesting advise is directed forward by how was a text “constructed” and how we can “ build” one ourselves.(page 74 paragraph 4) One last piece of advise is to question ourselves why the author chose or did this in a certain way and why. “Why did I explain that I was living in London right after finishing college? Does it matter that it was after college? ( page 83 paragraph 3)
“ Instead of reading for content or to better understand the ideas in the writing, you are trying to understand how the piece of writing was put together…” (Page 72 paragraph 2)) The author explains that we should read a writing by understating the author’s purposes of writing their pieces instead of just reading it for the content.
One piece of advice Mike bunn stated is to consider the gene of the text. On page 77 in how to read like a writer, it says “Gene means a few different things in college English classes, but it’s most often used to indicate the type of writing: a poem, a newspaper article, an essay, a short story, a novel, a legal brief, an introduction manuel, etc.” It is important for the writer to write in a way in which their targeted audience would understand.
One piece of advice that Bunn’s article provides is the importance of annotation. (Pg 81) “You can mark— right on the text—all those spots where you identify an interesting choice the author has made or a writerly technique you might want to use.” Sometimes when you read a sentence you might not catch the importance of it at first but then when you go back and you reread it you can see that the previous evidence that you read over turned out to be something useful for your writing.
One piece of advice that Bunn recommends is the significance of examining what you’re reading.(Pg 72 paragraph 3) “The idea is to carefully examine the things you read, looking at the writerly techniques in the text in order to decide if you might want to adopt similar (or the same techniques in your writing”. The author is explaining the importance of annualizing what you read because it will eventually help you develop important techniques that will benefit you.
Mike Bunn’s best advice to me is “When reading like a writer you are trying to figure out how the text you are reading was constructed so that you can “build” one for yourself” (page 74), this is valuable to me because it’s a good reminder that I can always learn new techniques and improve my writing, just by looking deeper through every text I read. Understanding what I’m reading is essential and understanding technique is a valuable skill that reading like a writer helps you develop.
What I gather from reading “How to Read Like a Writer” is that the author makes a pretty exciting point on page 72 when she asks, “What does it mean to read like a writer?” based on what I gather in paragraph 1 is that the goal is to carefully consider what you read, paying attention to the authorial devices used in the text to determine whether you might want to use like (or identical) devices in your own writing.
A price of advice that Bunn’s article provides is the importance of questioning everything that your reading. To Understand what the author is trying to explain to you in the text, question the choices the author may be discussing in the text, The “How?” and the “Why?” to a Story. On (Page 73) Paragraph 3 it states “The goal is to carefully consider the choices the author made and the techniques that he or she used, and then decide whether you want to make those same choices or use those same techniques in your own writing.” My Interpretation of this text is to always understand what’s given to you, reread and question what the author is explaining.
A piece of advice I took from “how to read like a reader” was “ the goal as your read like a writer is to locate what you believe are the most important writerly choices represented in the text, then you can go one step further and imagine what different choices the author might have made instead and what effect those different choices would have on the reader”. I think this means that we should pay attention to detail and how the reader may interpret or understand the text.
Bunn offers helpful advice to think about some questions as we read. He offers these as suggestions:
Do you know the author’s purpose for this piece of writing? (76)
Do you know who the intended audience is for this piece of writing? (76)
How effective is the language the author uses? Is it too formal? Too informal? Perfectly appropriate? (80)
What kinds of evidence does the author use to support his/her claims? Does he/she use statistics? Quotes from famous people? Personal anecdotes or personal stories? Does he/she cite books or articles? (80)
How appropriate or effective is this evidence? Would a different type of evidence, or some combination of evidence, be more effective? (80)
How does the author move from one idea to another in the writing? Are the transitions between the ideas effective? How else might he/she have transitioned between ideas instead? (81)
What is the technique the author is using here? (81)
Is this technique effective? (81)
What would be the advantages and disadvantages if I tried this same technique in my writing? (81)
What about the genre? Is this an essay? An article? What would you call it? (82)