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Think about TV ads. Analyze. Ask questions. |
Consider these ideas for your own compositions. |
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| WHAT
ARE THE MAIN PARTS?
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WHAT
ARE YOUR MAIN PARTS?
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Compositions are complex. They have parts or sub-systems put together to do various functions. We can learn these main parts through experience, but it's faster to use the principles, guidelines, and models developed by past composers. Literature classes, for example, usually teach structural analysis of narrative fiction (novels or short stories) or of lyric poetry with its great variety of intricate structures (quatrains, sonnets, sestinas, terza rima, etc.). Media courses often analyze the structures and patterns of TV news programs, sit-coms, mystery and adventure programs (e.g."fight scenes" and "chase scenes"). Rhetoricians often analyze the format of political speeches and the structure of religious sermons (e.g. scriptural text, explication, doctrine). To analyze the structure of 30-second spots, of common TV ads, this website offers the model of "the pitch": a 1-2-3-4-5 easy-to-remember framework to help you recognize the major structural parts. Qualifications are needed when using that model: for example, an Urgency appeal does not occur in soft-sell ads. Often, a single ad (within an overall ad campaign) may focus only on one aspect, such as Attention-Getting, or Confidence-Building. Or, some parts will function simultaneously as both. Observers can disagree when they analyze a whole into various chunks. Multiple categories can co-exist. For example, different observers will emphasize different sub-systems of a car, a city, or a college. When you analyze and discuss ads, or the various parts of a composition, you should seek not so much to "get the right answer"(single interpretation), but to develop sensitivity and skills. Sometimes structural analyses may seem not to be connected to daily life, but, by focusing your attention on the form of the ads you see everyday, it will help to increase your general sense of structure and to develop transferable skills. Make a conscious attempt to abstract, generalize, and group the constituent parts. In the past, you may not have given much attention to ad structure. However, your present task is as a composer of written essays. Your future job is likely to be in a complex organization. Now is the time to pay more attention to both overall structure and the major parts.
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As a composer, as you write, you should know your overall structure, the function of the major parts, and your "current location," that is, where you are in the process. When we see something, we usually notice either the whole or we focus on very small specific parts. However, with some deliberation, we can focus on the mid-range: the grouping or the clustering of the smaller elements into "chunks," or the major parts of the whole. You can do this better if you understand the concepts of an outline, a paragraph, and some of the commonly used patterns of organizing larger sections. Outlines organize and clarify your ideas. A working outline should be a flexible framework. As you revise and become more organized, you can change your outline to show your new structure. Then use the outline as a blueprint, a guide, and a checklist to make sure you are following your own plan. A paragraph is a cluster of related sentences. The most common pattern is that of a topic sentence (the key idea stated in abstract general way) followed by a specific concrete example illustrating it. Another common pattern opens with a generalization, followed by a qualification (on the other hand). Two-part sorting patterns are common in some situations: question and answer, problem and solution, cause and effect, comparison and contrast, new and old, before and after, near and far, foreign and domestic, good and bad. Larger sections of an essay can be composed of several adjacent paragraphs clustered together by some relating principle, such as a narrative sequence. Chronological sequence patterns are a common simple framework in story narratives and in instructions about a process ("first this ... then that"). When many actions happen simultaneously, then writers need to devise special ways (cue words and transitions) to keep control and clarity. Description uses either obvious spatial patterns (top to bottom, left to right) or more subtle organizing patterns, such as mood or atmosphere. Longer writings often have a great mix and variety of structural patterns which writers select to impose order, and to avoid randomness and chaos.
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| | Welcome | Purpose | Audience | Limits | Structure | Attention | Confidence | Explicit | Implicit | Response| Omission | |
