Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft

Overview

Course No. 2368
Professor Brooks Landon teaches the art of sentence construction through:

• 24 lectures on crafting effective, rhythmic prose
• Analysis of cumulative, periodic and balanced sentence structures
• Techniques from master writers like Woolf and DeLillo
• Practical exercises to develop your unique writing style

Learn how sentence-level mastery transforms good writing into great literature.

Video Lessons

Foundations of Sentence Craft

1. What Makes a Sentence (34 min)
   Defining sentences and their importance
2. Grammar vs. Rhetoric (30 min)
   How sentences work vs. how they’re labeled
3. Propositions & Meaning (30 min)
   The ideas beneath surface words

Cumulative Sentence Techniques

4. Sentence Growth (30 min)
   Connective, subordinative and adjectival strategies
5. Adjectival Efficiency (29 min)
   Packing information into modifiers

6-10. Cumulative Patterns (155 min total)
Coordinate, subordinate and mixed structures

Creating Suspense & Rhythm

11-12. Prompt Words (62 min total)
“As if,” “because” and other thought triggers

13. Prose Rhythm (32 min)
    The musicality of sentence structure

14-17. Suspense Techniques (122 min total)
Delaying closure and periodic sentences

Balanced Writing

18-21. Rhythmic Patterns (120 min total)
The power of twos and threes in sentences

Advanced Techniques

22. Master Sentences (30 min)
    Controlled complexity in long sentences
23. Sentence Sequences (32 min)
    How sentences work together
24. Developing Style (32 min)
    Making sentence craft your own