Building Great Sentences: How to Write the Kinds of Sentences You Love to Read - Paperback

Building Great Sentences: How to Write the Kinds of Sentences You Love to Read

Based on the bestselling series from The Great Courses, this comprehensive writing guide celebrates the craft of sentence construction and transforms how you approach both reading and writing. Award-winning Professor Brooks Landon, Herman J. and Eileen S. Schmidt Professor of English at The University of Iowa, provides practical instruction for writers at any level.

Master the Art of Sentence Construction

This guide focuses on the sentence as the fundamental building block of great writing. From the brevity of two-word sentences like "Jesus wept" to William Faulkner's remarkable 1,287-word sentence in Absalom, Absalom!, you'll discover how sentences captivate, entertain, motivate, and educate readers. The book challenges the trend toward bland economy in writing, instead teaching you to luxuriate in the pleasures of language.

Learn from Literary Masters

Professor Landon draws on examples from renowned authors known for their long, elegant sentences, including Don DeLillo, Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, and Samuel Johnson. Through these examples, you'll understand the mechanics of how language works on thoughts and emotions. The book reveals the techniques these masters use to create sentences that resonate with readers long after they've finished reading.

Practical Tools for Better Writing

This paperback from Plume Books provides actionable tools to write more powerful and effective sentences. Whether you're a student developing your writing skills, a teacher seeking resources for instruction, or a writer looking to refine your craft, this guide offers sentence-oriented approaches often overlooked in traditional writing instruction. The book serves as both a reference and a practical workbook for improving your command of English language rhetoric.