Taking an Approach

Harris defines his 4^th step of Rewriting as ‘taking an approach’ in which a writer is working in the mode of another writer. One example he gives of one artist taking an approach of another artist is a cover song. The song isn’t meant to simply repeat it but reinterpret it with a new and different meaning. Harris gives 3 separate steps to describe ‘taking an approach’.

The first step is to acknowledge influences. Take the time to explain to your audience where your ideas or motive to write this piece came from. The focus should be on the way a writer is thinking and writing rather than the writer herself.

The second step is to turn an approach on itself. Kind of confusing but the gist is to ask the same questions of a writer that she asked of others.

The third and last step of ‘taking an approach’ is called reflexivity. In this step, the writer is expected to note the key choices she made in constructing her text.

I believe Harris’ rewriting step ‘taking an approach’ is much more common in academic and leisure writing than in news writing. News stories, or blog posts for that matter, may change their tone for audience but it’s uncommon for a news site to introduce their story with a different story that stated their train of thought. News is just usually too relevant for someone to cite where they ‘got their influences’. For instance, talking about the Chris Dorner story, hardly anyone is beginning their stories by citing or giving credit to the story that made them want to write their own. I just don’t believe taking an approach is very applicable to news stories.

I also don’t think it is very common for a news writer to use reflexivity. News writing isn’t very structured. The most important and interesting information is presented first, on purpose, and very rarely to writers comment on themselves and their decisions in the writing process. Again, very common in academic writing but not much elsewhere.

On the other hand, it may be easier to find in a blog considering that the ideas in blogs are much less likely (than news) to be headline stories. I could come up with COUNTLESS examples of taking an approach in academic writing.

✌out