How to Read Like a Writer

1. "Reading Like a Writer” is quite different than from reading in other classes. Reading you might do in other classes usually is performed in order for you to absorb information from the writing. It is meant to be a way to merely read the writing in order to get a better understanding of the content or ideas in the writing. However, when you do Read Like a Writer, you are involving a method of trying to figure out how the piece of writing was actually put together by the author by analyzing his or her techniques that they may use in their writing. Then you need to question why the author used those techniques in the writing. From questioning why the author used a particular structure in the writing, to why the author used certain words in the writing. Finally you need to look at the most important choices the author may make in their writing, and look to see what different ways the author could have gone with the writing and how it could affect the readers.

2. Readers might identify to the choices that I make as a writer. I might use the choices in my writing that would be based on the audience to whom I am writing to. This would affect the tone, sentence structure, and style that I would use in my writing.

3. I did like the technique that Bunn used when he wanted to ask the two questions about knowing the purpose of the piece of writing as well as knowing who the intended audience is for this piece of writing while reading. Asking these questions while reading my articles, did help me when we had to decipher the author’s rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos in my readings in order to make a persuasive argument in their favor last quarter. This is a technique I also hope to use in our upcoming papers when we do have to research and find appropriate articles for our topic.

4. If you want to better understand a piece of writing, it is essential in order to learn about the specific context of the text. At first before even reading the actual writing itself, you can learn a lot about the text from the title. The title can help you define the tone of the piece as well as the author’s intended audience. It would be also quite helpful to look up the author and research his personal history and preferred genre in order to get a sense of the context of the piece of writing.