Thursday, December 01, 2011

Building Great Sentences



Brooks Landon appears to be a talented writer. Unfortunately, he is not a great lecturer. He sounds as if he is reading a lecture test verbatim - thus it becomes difficult to tell when he is lecturing originally or simply quoting another source. Take away the delivery problems and you are left with a long, but good lecture.

In Building Great Sentences, Brooks Landon focuses on the importance of "length". He even quotes from a multipage essay that consists of a single sentence. Cumulative syntax is one of his favorites. (And we hear him mention this over and over again.) He also stresses the importance of independent style. The author's feelings should come through in the writing. There is no way to prescribe the perfect writing style (though it is often easy to identify "bad" writing. There are many good points in here, though it may have been improved by cutting its length in half.

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