Building Great Sentences

I’ve been writing and reading fiction for many years, and I’m always learning, finding new modes of expression. As writers, we know we have to keep doing that. I’m now reading Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending for the third time, discovering more that I like about it each time. I’ve also recently listened to Prof. Brooks Landon’s (University of Iowa) course, Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft (The Great Courses) on CD. He makes a strong case for longer, more eloquent and complex sentences than some of us were taught to write–and argues that simplicity and conciseness often do not produce the most effective and elegant writing. Moreover, he teaches, step by step, with many examples in literature, how to write cumulative sentences that lead to great writing, whether fiction or nonfiction. Barnes, a literary author, is a good example of someone who writes complex, poetic, psychological fiction, perhaps intuitively, including layers of modification and insight throughout.

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