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Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft cover art

Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft

By: Brooks Landon, The Great Courses
Narrated by: Brooks Landon
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Publisher's Summary

Why do some lengthy sentences flow effortlessly while others stumble along? Why are you captivated by the writing of particular authors? How can you craft sentences that reflect your unique outlook on the world?

This lively, 24-lecture course introduces you to the myriad ways in which we think about, talk about, and write sentences. Reviving the sentence-oriented approach to studying writing, Professor Landon provides a greater context for what makes sentences great - and how you can apply these methods to your own writing.

You'll look at the kernels from which sentences grow - minimal base clauses - and how adding words or phrases creates larger, cumulative sentences that lead toward great writing. You'll explore sentence constructions that make writing more complex and add exciting levels of suspense, and see tactics that create balance and rhythm.Recognizing and appreciating these and other eye-opening aspects of sentences helps you understand the work that goes into creating an effective, pleasurable sentence, which can make you more aware of why particular lines, passages, or phrases in the poems, novels, or articles you read so enchant you.

Professor Landon draws abundantly on examples from the work of brilliant writers, including Don DeLillo, Virginia Woolf, Samuel Johnson, and more. With its passionate approach to writing and reading and its indulgence in the sheer joy of language, this journey gives you unique insights into the nature of great writing-and also teaches you how you can achieve some of this greatness yourself.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2008 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2008 The Great Courses

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Wonderful Edition

It's a great addition to the entire series and goes in depth on forming all kinds of sentences for all kinds of writers

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Hard Work

Given the topic, I found it ironic that the book had many, long hard to follow sentences. It was also filled with lots of quotes from books as examples. For me at least, it failed to balance evaluation of sentence composition and structure, with actual examples.

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learnt a lot

as a primary school teacher it was very informative. it was quite high level, but I found some key takeaway points I can use to improve my teaching.

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