PB2A: Examining Moves

 I’ll be examining moves in “How to Read Like a Writer” by Mike Bunn, assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh. The first move from “They Say, I Say” that I spotted in Bunn’s writing was “Capturing Authorial Action”. Bunn states, “In 1940, famous poet and critic named Allen Tate discussed two different ways of reading……..”. He uses this move to back up or set up his point/ argument with a well-known writer to give his paper a level of ethos. I feel as a reader that the move is very effective because it gives me the sense that Bunn knows what he is talking about. The second move from “They Say, I Say” spotted in “How to Read Like a Writer” was “Introducing  Quotes.” An example of this would be, “Author David Jauss makes a similar comparison when he writes that. Bunn made this move to avoid having “free-floating” quotes in his writing. Free- floating quotes can cause confusion to the reader as they don’t know where the quote is coming from. As a reader, that move is very effective to me because I know who said the quote so I could refer to it if necessary. A third and final move from the reading would be “Explaining Quotations.” An example of this move is, “As Walker suggests…….” That followed a quote from Nancy Walker in Bunn’s article. The writer would make this move to follow up on the previous quote to try to make it easier for the reader to understand the whole point of the quote. This move can be effective, but not as much as the other moves because the quote could be self-explanatory, and the extra analysis could be unnecessary. One move I’ve come up with in Bunn’s writing, is the “Relatable Hook In.” This move is the entire first page of Bunn’s article as he describes his time of working in a London Theatre and how it related to the main argument of his article. He makes this move to make himself seem like a normal person, finding a part-time job after recently graduating college, in hopes to relate to his audience. This is very effective, as it sets a casual tone for the entire paper and allows me, the reader to relate to Bunn. Another move I’ve examined was the “Sub-Title Questioning” move. In this move, Bunn starts every paragraph with a question. This move allows for him to tell the reader what the point of the paragraph is through a question. As a reader I appreciate this move and find it very effective because I know what the point of the paragraph is and I won’t have to ask myself so many questions as to what is the argument he is trying to make. And the final move I evaluated was the “Bullet Point Analysis” where Bunn follows each of his paragraphs with bulleted questions. He does this in hopes that his audience would be able to dissect and decipher his argument and summarize his words. This could go either way as effective or ineffective because his questions can help the reader summarize his writing through their answers, but the reader may already know what he is trying to explain and the questions could be unnecessary.