PB2B: Moves Writers Make

This particular project builder is about how to read like a writer. By understanding “moves” and different techniques writers make in their own writing, readers will be able to write more effectively themselves. I chose the articles “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lammot and “So What? Who Cares?” by Birkenstein and Graff; I found this articles to be my favorite and most intriguing for me to read. The authors are both very different, yet they both use rhetorical features, conventions and moves effectively. It was important for them to use these techniques because it makes their writing simple to understand for the reader.

“Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lammot

The author of this article, Anne Lammot, uses a very conversational tone throughout her writing; something I found to be very enjoyable. By using an informal tone, it makes the paper less tedious to read. Many times scholarly articles can be a bore because they involve too many facts that, often times, do not relate to the reader. In particularly the fifth paragraph of her article, Lammot goes through the process she has of writing an article; she uses short and concise sentences to explain the process in detail as well. She contemplates, “I’m ruined. I’m through. I’m toast. Maybe, I’d think, I can get my old job back as a clerk-typist.” Through this process, I, personally, related to her a lot because I dread writing; it’s the bane of my existence. I felt that if a writer, like her, goes through the same process I do every-time I write, there is hope for my writing skills after all. Not only does Lammot incorporate her personality into her writing with tone, but she also does so with by using parentheses. Lammot also uses parentheses throughout her paper as an interrupter or to add bits of information here and there. I noticed that these parentheses add to her writing style. As I was going through her paper and started to receive a sense of her writing style, I began to observe that her sentences within the parentheses do not have anything to do with the actual topic of shitty drafts itself. These moves—the tone and parentheses—add dimension to her piece and makes it easier to follow well as more relatable for the audience. For Lammot, making her piece relatable also made it more understandable for the readers to understand. 

“So What? Who Cares?” by Birkenstein and Graff

In the article, Birkenstein and Graff use bullet points to break up the article. All of the bullet pints are templates that show who to effectively write a “so what” and “who cares?” for the article. I liked this because I will be able to implement this writing techniques in my own writing. It is a great way to show different examples without heaping them in one big paragraph. It makes the examples clear and easy to follow. The authors also continually ask questions throughout the essay in order to engage the reader more and get ideas flowing in their minds. For example, they say “How do authors who answer these questions do so? Do they use any strategies or techniques that you could borrow for your own writing?” These questions helped me interact with the readings more; it allowed me to think of books and articles I have read and think about the overall message they were trying to give the audience. The tone of the article was also formal. It involved more second-order thinking uses words that were more complex and evidently meant for critical thinkers and writers. The authors also used sub-headlines in order to further break up the article. This, in my opinion, makes things easier to read and understand and more comprehendible. 

Comparing Both Articles

I found both articles to be helpful in their own ways. The essay by Lammot was more helpful in the way of saying that drafts are useful and it reassured me that first drafts, more often than not, are terrible; the important thing is to have the ideas written down. It’s easier to have higher-order thinking first and then add in (or fix) the lower-order thinking. The “So What? Who Cares?” article talks about the importance of adding this sentence into your own essays when you are writing. Both of the articles were similar in the sense that they broke up the articles into paragraphs and added things such as dashes into the writing; however, they were more different than similar. For example, the tones in the two pieces were very different—one was informal while the other was formal. I think the "So What? Who Cares?" article was the stronger piece of the two. It had more examples and was more useful for the audience. Although the "Shitty First Drafts" article helped me come to terms with my own writing (that it was okay to have bad first drafts), I believe that the other article will help me more in the long run.