Cognitive design is defined as the crafted impact a piece of writing has on its audience. Central to this design are the subject and theme of the work. The subject is what the work is about. The theme is the attitude the author has taken toward the subject or the perspective on that subject. This attitude or perspective controls the way the writer develops his or her work. • Design elements are ways of underlining or emphasizing the subject and theme. They include [pic] o structure, o character, o location, o tropology, o rhetoric, o and perspective.
STRUCTURE
• Visual structure: the way the book looks on the page o Indentation of specific lines o Specific types of poetry (concrete; sonnets – Petrarchan and Shakespearean; limericks) o Stanza breaks and length o Use of specific typefaces: italics, bold, CAPITALS, any change in typeface o Line length o Length of paragraphs (short paragraphs tend to make the work choppy; long paragraphs tend to make the work feel “dignified” or “academic”) o Sections within chapters (denoted by white space, ******, or other visual dividers ☼) o Chapter breaks o “books” within books o Aural structure: the way in which the work strikes the ear (especially in poetry) • Rhythm o The repeated pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables o The ‘foot’ is the basic meter of poetry; types of feet include: iambic, trochaic, dactylic, anapestic, spondaic o Generally, the more feet per line, the more grave or somber the line becomes • Rhyme o Acts a mnemonic, a way for readers to remember the poem (e.g. nursery rhymes are simple examples of this) o A break in rhyme can signify some importance o Creates direction for the poem o Sets up an expectation o Creates an impression that the poem is an artistic construct o Developmental structure: the way in which the writer takes the reader through the work ▪ Order (chronological; argumentative; fragmented; starting somewhere other than the beginning and using techniques such as flashbacks to tell the narrative) ▪ Use of sub-plots
CHARACTER
• How the character acts in a specific situation • Reasons behind a character’s actions • The ‘morality’ connected to a character’s actions • How the character is developed (speed; depth; through stereotypes, caricatures, or a particular physical attribute; round or flat) • What the character tells us about him/ herself in actions words and thoughts • How the characters interact with others • How the characters react in situations • How the characters react to the setting • Purpose of a character (a means of moving along the plot; a foil for the main character) • Number of characters
LOCATION
• Features of the physical setting • Relationship of that setting to the actual world • Time of year, day, life • Era, century, decade • Duration of the narrative • Relationship between time and place • Movement from place to place • Details of the passage of time • Sequencing of time • Use of time in the narrative (e.g. flashbacks, flash forwards) • Creations of new societies (e.g. futuristic, fantastical) • The physical height of the action and the relationship of other objects around • The angle from which the action is viewed • Urban vs. rural settings • Presence of the elements (weather)
TROPOLOGY
• Denotation and connotation of figurative language • Image- triggers to the recall of visual, olfactory, tactile, auditory and gustatory memories the reader has of the physical object being described • Simile- explicit comparison between two things using the words like, as, or than •
