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

I really got into this course

This book opened me to a whole new world of sentence building. I recommend it.

Excellent

This is the best, most intelligent, discourse on sentences in western thought. Highly recommended for writers and scholars and anyone fascinated bt language.

Ignore Any Negative Review

I've read all the negative reviews and found them all either untrue or petty. This course dispells a lot of false gospel about writing "rules" that you might have been taught in school/college. It is informative, well structured, and comfortably paced. The instructor does sound like a Baptist preacher, but I found that charming. I would, however, strongly recommend that you brush up on English grammar/syntax before starting (for example, you should know what a gerund phrase or a subordinate clause is). Other than that, every writer and/or student can benefit from this class as I have.

Greatly Enjoyed

These lectures really enlightened me and inspired me to explore new ways to improve my writing especially how I craft sentences. Thank you.

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.

Liberating - A Must "Read" for Writers

What made the experience of listening to Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft the most enjoyable?

I'm shocked by all the whining in other reviews about the lecturer's accent. It's disappointing to see such linguistic intolerance and elitism among students of a course on writing. Of all people, writers and aspiring writers should have an appreciation for the malleability of language. Secondly, the value that this course delivers -- the liberation from the tyranny of uptight, macho concision -- absolutely outweighs any annoyance from the speaker having a different accent than the listener.

Packed with eye-opening insights, clear analysis, and helpful examples. If you're a writer/aspiring writer, this is required "reading."

Not beginner-friendly; strong writers may benefit

Despite the trivial-sounding subject, this course is not for beginners, not for those who struggle with writing, and not for English learners. If you enjoy writing and already know how to write clearly and effectively, this course might give you ideas for developing your style and incorporating creative flourishes into your prose. Most of the writing advice here is subjective and amounts to the professor's personal preferences -- there's absolutely no grounding in psycholinguistics -- but the advice is definitely still worth considering.

On the other hand, if you are someone who struggles with writing, this course will be more bewildering than helpful. The professor's thesis is ultimately that "conventional writing advice stifles creative expression and should be ignored." But conventional writing advice exists for a reason. Most people who write are not literary artists. Most people who write are not trying to creatively express themselves -- just trying to finish a school assignment or put together a report or explain something important to someone else. Conventional writing advice is there to help these regular non-creative-writing people write something that makes sense and fulfills its purpose. If that's what you're trying to learn, all this talk of artistic flourishes and rule-breaking will just confuse you. To know when to break rules, you first need to know what the rules are. Do yourself a favour and get your writing advice from someone who doesn't have their head so high in the clouds.

To conclude, this rather long-winded course is about adding a certain kind of artistic embellishment to already-solid writing. It will not teach you any basics and will not help you build the foundation on which to put the embellishments.