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Building Great Sentences: Exploring The Writer's Craft (2008)

by Brooks Landon(Favorite Author)

3.9 of 5 Votes: 3

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

The Teaching Company

review 1: I am very satisfied with the course. I can happily say that I have obtained a deeper and fuller understanding and grasp of sentential-level writing.It was also nice to revisit, strengthen, and refine what I had previously learned from my initial, first-time encounter of these kinds of stuff through The Stewart English Program—Book 3 Writing Plus… by Donald Stewart back in December of 2009. I think initially having been introduced to those stuff through that Stewart book seems to have made it easier for me to transition into or approach and better digest this course, which I think beautifully complemented the Stewart book by reinforcing the same concepts, techniques and ideas, as well as addressing issues and questions that I had back when I was using that book (eg. the... more subjective notion of what a paragraph exactly is has not even been broached in the Stewart book).On the downside, this TTC course was a bit tedious at times, but it really was worth it!!! I am grateful that I have finished it.
review 2: This course challenges some widely accepted advice (e.g., Strunk and White) that short sentences stripped of chaff are the key to good writing. Landon says that approach removes richness and personality from prose. Rather, Landon advocates the enrichment of writing by adding modifiers and strings of modifiers to the base clause and kernal sentence. Landon states that very, very long master sentences even have a place. Along the way, he adds other suggestions to help the writer, e.g., rythmic writing that imitates the Morse Code, balanced and parallel sentences written in "twos" (black and white, etc.) and "threes" ("Veni, vidi, vici," etc). Landon talks about the need for good writers to depart from the "received wisdom" provided by writing texts and guidebooks and, instead, to engage in "rule breaking." Landon's presentation would have benefited by collapsing his lectures by half. Despite its length, he does not discuss the role of emotions and evocation (creating pictures) in writing. Also, while he clearly implies that there is no single objective standard for good writing, he does not develop the implied thesis that, style wise, there are different strokes for different folks. At times, his renditions of prose he found lacking suffered from his obviously editorial (monotone) voice. The course at times gets bogged down in writing jargon (e.g.,in Lecture 20: anaphora, anadiplosis, assonance, chiasmus, epanalepsis, epistrophe, isocolon, polyptoton, symploce, etc.), making it difficult to follow, and reminding us again why "learning English" is such a struggle. Toward the end, Landon makes passing and positive references to the next evolution of writing in the computer age and the techniques increasingly available to writers, but says nothing about the "junk in/junk out" phenomena or computer default systems that standardize and imprison language use. Landon's value is to challenge some of the religiosity when it comes to writing and encourages writers to develop their own marverick spirit and to trust more in their own instincts. This is his central message. less

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