Step 1: Listen to 24 lectures entitled Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft taught by Dr. Brooks Landon.
Step 2: Contemplate writing a blog about it.
Don't think that's intimidating? Please! Think about it.
After spending twelve hours learning about building great sentences, when you might have thought there was no way a person could talk about sentences for more than, say, fifteen minutes, unless they were your 7th grade English teacher, after being impressed by dozens of mesmerizing sentences from great literature, after being given advice on constructing sentences from one of the best teachers of writing in the country, realizing that you had better have learned something from all of this, wouldn't you be just a bit intimidated by the idea that people might read your review of the course and ask themselves "How could he write like this after supposedly learning something about sentences?"
Well, I was.
Nevertheless, I will put virtual pen to paper and let you know that, if you are at all interested in how writers can work at their craft to make their ideas even more powerful, then you would be well served to listen to what Dr. Landon has to say.
The first part of Building Great Sentences deals with unlearning some of the "received wisdom" most of us were taught in English class about the value of brevity. It turns out that longer sentences can be far more powerful than our typical middle school and high school teachers told us. For that reason, Landon talks extensively about cumulative sentences - what they are, how to build them, what makes them helpful and how to avoid mistakes - additionally addressing another piece of false advice which has been passed along in writing courses - that periodic sentences are clearly better than anything else.
Oh, the course does talk about periodic sentences - though Landon redefines them as "suspensive" for very good reasons - but it also demonstrates that the true periodic template is limited, and that great writers throughout the years have used other forms with equal effectiveness.
I must remember to ask June Melby if she ever took a course from Professor Landon, as his bio tells us he works at the University of Iowa, and if I recall correctly, June received her MFA in writing from that school. Anyway, listening to this course definitely felt like being in a master class. I am confident my future writing projects will be influenced by what I heard in the lessons. And I am heartened by the idea that Dr. Landon also preaches -- that a good writer can hear when a sentence needs help, and when it has reached a truly effective state after receiving that help, without the need to go into tedious exercises such as sentence diagrams.
All in all, this course was a very good use of my time. And I am certain I will return to it for reference in the future.
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