Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft

By: Brooks Landon, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Brooks Landon

Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins

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

Worth Listening To

I loved this book. Dr. Landon brings things to mind about the construction of a sentence that I had never considered before. I am very interested in writing and have done a bit of amateur writing myself. It is something I would like to do more of in the future, and having read/listened to this book, I now believe I have a better chance at being good at it.

Dr. Landon is funny and serious, having a great way about him that holds the attention, which allows the learning to take place. This book is certainly not for everyone, but even if you do not ever intend to write an interesting sentence, being a bibliophile like I am, you may like this book because of the new, more enlightened way you are bound to read books. Hahaha, my sentences are still awkward, but now I have a pattern to follow that, with practice, will help me improve.

I certainly intend to listen to more of the "Great Courses" series. What a great way to educate oneself.

I Am Not As Bad A Writer As I Thought

Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft, a course by Brooks Landon. I suppose you can determine the effectiveness of the course in direct relationship to the quality, depth, and rhythm to the interesting nature of my written communication herein, or then again not.

The learning thread communicated in the course is antitypical. It makes the case that short sentences are not necessarily superior to involved, balanced, serial and other complex sentences. I do leave the study with a pronounced feeling that it has freed me from the inane strictures of The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White; the question is will that be a good thing.

I am one of those Americans who was detrimentally harmed by a total lack of any explanation of grammar in my elementary and middle school educations. Perhaps, as a result, I had a difficult time following Professor Brooks Landon. Yet, his clear speaking, enthusiastic dialogue and make sense explanations kept me involved, and as a result, I do believe I came away with value.

Secrets of the Iowa Writer's Workshop

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Crafting sentences, until I listened to this lecture series, narrated by the entertaining and engaging Professor Brooks Landon, no longer intimidates me; furthermore, I now actively read with a greater appreciation of the skills demonstrated by our best writers.

What did you like best about this story?

A partial list of goodies: coordinate, subordinate, cumulative sentences, base phrases, first modifiers, second modifiers, third modifiers, left side and right side cumulative sentences in relation to the base phrase (it just goes on and on).

What about Professor Brooks Landon’s performance did you like?

Professor Brooks makes difficult concepts comprehensible, not only because he actually knows what he is talking about, but because his passion energizes you.

What’s an idea from the book that you will remember?

The dot-dash Morse Code approach to reading prose.

Inspiration to think about details of writing

The lecturer departs from what I think of as the traditional to stress usefulness of writing complex sentences he refers to add Master sentences, as one moves from being an apprentice to a master by completing a masterpiece. As a listner I found his listing of many unfamiliar grammatical terms a little off-putting. Still it opens the door for further thought and learning. The PDF that accompanies the audio, as well as the host of other writers and teachers referenced promise to be a rich source for future learning.

Senneces

Great content, I have more patience than others with the long winded examples, but seriously can't listen for long periods and eventually gave up because of the mispronouncing of the word "sentence". At some point it's all I hear and it's awful. Was there no editor or anyone who could have stepped in and done something about this? Having a dialect or accent is one thing, he sounds like he's a Texan or from Tennessee, but if you glaringly mispronounce the word that is central to the content...and also insist on saying it more than necessary... You gotta find another reader. And to anyone who thinks this is an over exaggeration or someone finding something small to complain about - I promise you it's not. Purchase at your own risk.

this was such an eye opener for me

the enthusiasm in the writing and in the narration just made me love writing.. it also made me love humanity once again. this book helped me discover my assets. my greatest asset Was breaking rules. now I'll return to that habit, that asset with a new knoweldge of boundaries and HOW to actually respect them with castrating my writing. although i must say this should be treated as lectures and not as an audiobook for many reasons. PS: that "corps e in the trunk" line makes me smile like nothing else

Great Lessons If You are Ready for them

Would you consider the audio edition of Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft to be better than the print version?

Cannot say, since I don't have the print version.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Not applicable- non fiction book

What does Professor Brooks Landon bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I don't know

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

not applicable

Any additional comments?

I have listened to this book over and over throughout the years, having first downloaded the series from the Great Courses website, and as I gain in knowledge, about the writing craft, I find this series more and more valuable to my growth as a writer, picking up new details I'd previously missed, with each listen. For those who find the lectures too pedantic, I'd suggest checking out Writing123 dot com, which too is based upon the same concepts presented in this series, as laid out by Francis Christensen. You will get a simpler graded set of lessons to help you master the cumulative sentence structure. This is a college level course, and the professor has to present a complete background in order to make it academic, but the 123 website, on the other hand, offers a simpler road to the treasure,The brilliance of this book is in the details, and details are perfect for the writer-philosopher. Please do not rush through the lessons, but instead, take one at a time, then master the concepts, and then move on to the next lesson. That is my opinion on how to best gain from this audible book. Have paper and pen at hand.

good writers course

I've listened to many Great Courses before and now that they are on Audible it can only be good. this one was interesting for me as I like to study writing techniques and style etc as well and you gain insight not only into methods to try, but into what makes some of the great writers great. there are many excellent quotations from famous writers that make me want to read them more if i haven't already.

one good thing about these courses is that you can do the lessons/lectures one at a time and come back after something else and continue, or do them several together.

the only thing i would change is the little intro/exit announcement and applause needs to go. and i would like to see at least a pdf of materials referred to if not the actual sentences quoted.

will listen again to this and plan to get others.

Building better SENNENCES

Would you try another book from The Great Courses and/or Professor Brooks Landon?

Yes -- have bought several and will buy more.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

I think another reader of the professor's material -- one with a more subtly nuanced and inflected voice, without the Texan (or whatever it is) trouble with consonants and torturing of vowels, might be better. As it is, I am now using it to get me off to sleep at night (being a bit of an insomniac). I am hoping for subliminal learning! There was a VERY long-winded introduction that stated a lot of very obvious things. Examples are multiplied ad nauseam - so the good prof. reels off long strings of restatements and so on, and so on .... The words tend to merge into a mass of ... well, 'sennences'. There are no clear pauses and it becomes quite hard to listen to him to extract the meaning. These 'sennences' are often very long and convoluted -- better suited to the written word. For example he reads a sennence then says the proposition "might have been implied or acknowledged by writing this sennence in a number of different ways ... [he then reads off what seems like 20 variants of the same sentences, each with slightly different propositions] -- yeah, OK, OK, we get it."

The underlying work (Port Royal Grammar, Chomsky, historical snippets etc) is really interesting but don't get much air time.

What three words best describe Professor Brooks Landon’s performance?

tedious soporific sennences

Was Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft worth the listening time?

Not sure yet -- still getting through it. Better as a book to read, perhaps. Especially all the readings of sentence variant after sentence variant. When you are READING, you skip over these at faster speed, just getting the gist. Here you have to sit there while he reads every one out to you.

Any additional comments?

I suppose 'Dubbya' for W, 'sennences' for sentences, 'idennifying' for identifying, and the rest are just regional dialects in the US, and thus seen as OK, but to an outsider they sound illiterate, or irritating at best, because the diction is not precise. This is exacerbated by the fact that precision in WRITTEN language is the goal of the course. I am not calling fore British Received Pronunciation, you understand -- just that this imprecise-sounding dialect is a pity in a book about writing. If it doesn't bother you, fine. But if hearing the word "sennence" makes you want to slit your wrists after about the tenth time, be warned, there are about 63,000 of them. OMG! In Part 1 Chapter 3 at somewhere around 1:30.00 he says SENTENCE very clearly! With a T! There might be hope.

Speech Impediment

The man does not know how to pronounce
Sen-TEN-Ces. I wonder if he still says besgetti!
I was going to play this to my students, but cannot because the man repeatedly says senances......
It is so annoying I can't even get any information from the text because my mind keeps rooting for him to say sentences correctly, just one time. Ughhhh
PHD's apparently mean nothing.