Preliminary

Syllabus
Summer 2017


Course Title: The Art of the Sentence
Course Code: EGL 81 W
Instructor: Joshua Mohr


Course Summary

This class is structured into thirds. The first few lectures will focus on poetic tropes,
techniques to make sentences shimmer and glide. Then we’ll segue into talking
about the collision between sentence-construction and characterization. Finally, we
will end our time together in a workshop phase, in which students will have the
opportunity to put all these new tactics directly on the page for a cross-section of
readers.

By the end of the quarter, students will have been immersed in a quarter chockful of
reading and writing, experimenting and growing.

Required Texts

Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style, by Virginia Tufte
ISBN: 0961392185

Grading

Students have three grade options for Continuing Studies courses:

• No Grade Requested (NGR) – No credit shall be received; No proof of
attendance can be provided. (Not suitable for those requiring proof of
attendance/completion.)
• Letter Grade (A, B, C, D, No Pass) - written work & evaluation is required
• Credit/No Credit (CR/NC) - participation as determined by the instructor is
required

Please note that you can change your grading status at any point before the final
class meeting by contacting the Stanford Continuing Studies department.

If you decide to take the course for Credit or a Letter Grade, your grade will
be equally based on participation, writing assignments, workshop critiques, and
your final workshop piece.

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 Preliminary Syllabus
Summer 2017
Tentative Weekly Outline

Week 1: Our first ambassador for this class will be the great Gary Lutz. We will read
his essay “The Sentence is a Lonely Place.” This will help frame the discussion we
will be having all quarter on the notion of writing artful sentences that are never
detracting from the power and propulsion of a story’s plot.

Week 2: The first poetic tropes we will focus on are consonance, assonance, and
alliteration. These three tools help us to ponder the way various syllables in our
sentences are interacting with one another to find the right “sound” for our lines.

Week 3: Imagery, simile, and metaphor are fantastic tools in our literary toolbox,
but how can we use these seemingly visual elements to aid the aims of our
sentences? This is the week for us to capitalize on the sonic tropes from last week,
and now begin practicing using them to render images for a reader to picture the
action in her mind’s eye.

Week 4: Irony can be divided into three subdivisions, and we’ll spend this week
talking about the strengths of each. When and where is it possible for our audience
to know things that our characters do not? And how can this tactic up the dramatic
stakes for both our main characters as well as the reader? Irony is often reduced to
simply being about humor and we will deconstruct that notion.

Week 5: We start transitioning away from just poetic tropes and sentence
construction and begin contemplating how we can use all of these ideas to enhance
our characters’ psychologies. For a piece of fiction or nonfiction to succeed, it has to
offer the audience to inhabit a consciousness that’s not their own. Using all of these
poetic tropes can greatly aid the construction of this foreign set of perceptions.

During this week, we will also select our workshop slots for the quarter’s
culminating experience.

Week 6: We will spend one more week pondering the main character’s
consciousness, and to deepen our journey, the lecture materials will focus on
dissonance between the character’s set of perceptions and the reader’s. How can we
use these sorts of “disagreements” to up our reader’s activity level in a narrative?

Week 7: Now that we have spent the first two-thirds of the quarter learning about
tropes and character psychology—the symbiosis that must exist between these two
camps, we can now start talking about Grammar. This isn’t about following the rules
of grammar. This is about letting loose these reins and allowing ourselves as authors
to find the grammar logic of the narrative. Did Proust follow the rules of grammar?
Do we need to always adhere to them? And if we’re breaking the rules, why, and
what’s the effect we’re hoping to achieve?

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 Preliminary Syllabus
Summer 2017
Week 8: If the rules of grammar are going to be suggested by each piece’s
protagonist, if each story will have its own logic and sound, how can we use this
uniqueness as an asset instead of a liability? Remember: Style can be a crutch, too.
This week, we will attempt to figure out how to write ornately but always in service
to the cohesive whole of the project.

Week 9: One of the craft elements that often goes undiscussed in regards to
sentence construction is that of setting. For our penultimate week, we will talk
about settings from two different ways: The setting of an external rendered space-
time. But we will also kick around the idea of rendering the Mind as a setting, a
three-dimensional space for your readers to walk around in.

Week 10: Revision is always an important topic, but it may never be more cogent
than to a discussion on sentence architecture. When should we be doting on our
sentences? In every draft? How do we find that balance between worrying about
plot, character, and POV, and simultaneously worry about our lines? We will hear
from a variety of writers, casting a wide net for inspiration on this topic.