Thlog #5

This week in writing we began to look at the different moves and the way that authors use them to make their writing more effective. We looked at some pretty cool sports videos in class to come up with the moves that athletes used in their games. For example, we looked at some basketball replays that showed how Michael Jordan used certain moves, such as the juke, to fool his opponents and make more point for his team. We then got into groups and discussed the moves used by Mike Bunn in his article How to Read Like a Writer. It was interesting to see the names that my classmates came up with to describe their moves. This idea of moves and the way in which they are either effective or ineffective have helped me improve as a writer. There was lots of moves that I did not even notice I was making, such as using conversational word choice, that have changed the way I use them in certain genres of writing. For example, it is most efficient to use a conversational tone whenever I want to appeal to a college audience because in doing so, I am more easily able to grab their attention. Doing the PB2B was a little tricky because I did not understand all the moves that were listed in the Template of Moves article. Making my own moves, on the other hand, was lots of fun because I was felt more free to describe whatever I wished. As I looked back on the readings from the class, I realized how important it is to annotate the texts because going back and reading an entire article is very time consuming and unnecessary. I will begin to take better notes and summarize main ideas of these articles to save myself some trouble in the future.