How to Write a Splendid Sentence
Five Main Sections of the Course
Four Pillars of Sentence Writing
Learn the 2/3/1 rule, how to use leaning and standalone clauses, and how to speed up and slow down a sentence.
6 Powerful Sentence Types
Gain confidence in your writing by learning the six most common sentence types that accomplished writers employ.
The Building Blocks of Sentences
Juicy verbs, playful adverbs, clever adjectives, and preposition pileups: learn advanced techniques to ignite your sentences.
Breaking the Rules
Ignore all the rules you've ever heard -- I'll teach you how to use passive verbs, fragments, mix high/low diction, use repetition, and make up words.
Writing Challenges
Are you up to the challenge? See if you can jump through the verbal hoops and pull off virtuoso sentences.
FAQ
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Is this for beginners or experts?
Whether you're just starting to write or have several books out, this course will improve your sentences. I start with basics but escalate to sophisticated techniques.
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Is this for fiction or nonfiction writers?
All my lessons are applicable for any writer, no matter the genre, but most of my examples come from fiction.
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I live in X country. Can I take the course?
This course is available worldwide.
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How long will the course take?
You can go at your own pace. But if you do one video/quiz/writing challenge per day, the course would take just over 3 weeks. If you take it full time, it would take about a week.
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What if my question isn't answered here?
Email me and ask: [email protected]
What makes this course different?
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No Cliche Advice
Think of all the rules you've heard about sentences. I throw them all out the window and push beyond toward practical, advanced instruction.
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Not Pretentious
Look, I love a complex, poetic sentence as much as anybody. But sometimes a swift, direct, acidic sentence fits the bill. Beauty comes in many forms.
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Not Boring
So many sentence books and courses put me to sleep. Sentences are joyous, beautiful, jitterbugging works of art, and we should have fun with them.
Bookfox has appeared in:
John Matthew Fox
Instructor Bio:
John Matthew Fox
[email protected]
Course curriculum
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01
Welcome to the Course!
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1. Introduction
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2. Finding Your Sentence Style
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2. PDF
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02
4 Pillars of Sentence Writing
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3. Order Your Sentences
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3. Quiz
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3. PDF
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4. Focus Your Sentences
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4. Quiz
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4. PDF
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5. Pace Your Sentences
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5. Quiz
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5. PDF
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6. Vary Your Sentences
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6. Quiz
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6. PDF
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03
6 Powerful Sentence Types
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7. Narrative Sentence
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7. PDF
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8. Strong Sentence
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8. PDF
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9. List Sentence
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9. PDF
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10. Long Sentence
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10. PDF
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11. Short Sentences
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11. PDF
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12. Analogy Sentence
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12. PDF
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04
Building Blocks of Sentences
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13. Sexy Verbs
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13. Quiz
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13. PDF
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14. To Adverb or Not to Adverb
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14. PDF
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15. Harness Your Adjectives
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15. PDF
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16. Preposition Pileups
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16. Quiz
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05
Breaking the Rules
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17. The Pleasures of Passive Verbs
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17. PDF
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17. Quiz
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18. Glorious Fragments
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18. PDF
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18. Quiz
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19. Everybody Gets High, Everybody Gets Low
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19. PDF
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19. Quiz
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20. Set It On Repeat: Sentence Repetition
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20. PDF
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20. Quiz
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21. The Playground of Wordplay
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21. PDF
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21. Quiz
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06
Sentence Challenges
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22. Controlling Your Sentences
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22 & 23. PDF
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23. Evolve Your Sentence
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24. Beautiful Sentences
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24. PDF
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25. Wise Sentences
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25. PDF
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26. Lop Off the Sentence Caboose
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26. Quiz
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07
The End
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27. Four Book Recommendations
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28. Four Final Sentence Missions
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Reviews of the Course
“I LOVED IT. Seriously.. this sentence course made me feel alive again. I was going through a rough time, wanting to write but not being able to. And then I found Bookfox online and decided to take it during this awful pandemic. And HOLY COW? It ga...”
→Read More“I LOVED IT. Seriously.. this sentence course made me feel alive again. I was going through a rough time, wanting to write but not being able to. And then I found Bookfox online and decided to take it during this awful pandemic. And HOLY COW? It gave me inspiration again. I am halfway through writing a work now. I am super happy! THANK YOU SO MUCH!”
→Read Less“I loved this course. I gained a lot of confidence while going through the sentence challenges, especially with writing long sentences. I am able to look at my writing and see what I have to do in order to give it more variety. I loved seeing so ma...”
→Read More“I loved this course. I gained a lot of confidence while going through the sentence challenges, especially with writing long sentences. I am able to look at my writing and see what I have to do in order to give it more variety. I loved seeing so many great sentences; it allowed me to see just how wonderful they can truly become. ”
→Read Less“This course provides you with knowledge you might slowly and subconsciously learn over a long period of time, but having these things pointed out and explained will definitely save you decades. I haven’t even finished the course yet and I’ve alrea...”
→Read More“This course provides you with knowledge you might slowly and subconsciously learn over a long period of time, but having these things pointed out and explained will definitely save you decades. I haven’t even finished the course yet and I’ve already learned things that have drastically improved my writing, simple things that without this course might’ve taken me years of frustration to become aware of. Highly recommended. ”
→Read Less“Not only is this course jam packed with juicy, pacy prose ideas, a dazzling array of T-shirts, and equally dazzling array of sentences, it is also an amplification , yet nutshell version of the building blocks of reaching down your reader's throat...”
→Read More“Not only is this course jam packed with juicy, pacy prose ideas, a dazzling array of T-shirts, and equally dazzling array of sentences, it is also an amplification , yet nutshell version of the building blocks of reaching down your reader's throats and knocking out their tonsils.”
→Read Less“This course rejuvenated my love of writing and will have a dramatic and positive effect on your sentence style. Take it!”
“This course rejuvenated my love of writing and will have a dramatic and positive effect on your sentence style. Take it!”
→Read Less“I love this course. There are videos, quizzes, and pdfs that can be downloaded and printed out. Being a word enthusiast, and while creating my own very first online course for teaching the nuts and bolts of English, I feel like I have found a diam...”
→Read More“I love this course. There are videos, quizzes, and pdfs that can be downloaded and printed out. Being a word enthusiast, and while creating my own very first online course for teaching the nuts and bolts of English, I feel like I have found a diamond in the internet of crushed gravel. Ha ha! That was fun to write.”
→Read Less“I took a lot of writing courses and read a lot of books on writing (which tend to overlap a lot and repeat the same things), yet so much of the advice and lessons in this course were completely new and valuable to me. The instructor is a natural t...”
→Read More“I took a lot of writing courses and read a lot of books on writing (which tend to overlap a lot and repeat the same things), yet so much of the advice and lessons in this course were completely new and valuable to me. The instructor is a natural teacher, explains concepts wonderfully, not just the writing lesson but also the effect it will have on the story, which makes it much more interesting and easier to understand. More courses like this, please!”
→Read Less“The best part is the presenter. He is the bomb because he parts the Red Sea and walks on water, or at the very least teaches you how to write better sentences. I can't think of one thing that is critical. Other things that I enjoyed, his fashion s...”
→Read More“The best part is the presenter. He is the bomb because he parts the Red Sea and walks on water, or at the very least teaches you how to write better sentences. I can't think of one thing that is critical. Other things that I enjoyed, his fashion sense. Loved the change in T-shirts with writing themes. His presentation of the material was fun and easy to understand, dramatically improved my writing. The lectures are short, he reads examples from authors and provides PDF handouts. The course is worth every penny you spend, and you will not be sorry if you take it. I wish he had another course in plotting. I learned more in this course than reading numerous books and paying three times the money for another course I spent eight weeks on that I will not mention. Thank you John Fox!”
→Read Less“Smart sexy in a tight tee John Matthew Fox captured my attention to keep me nourished with emboldening information in a most intriguing and riveting way with his lively dialogue and varied POV’s of camera angles that delivered, in entertaining wa...”
→Read More“Smart sexy in a tight tee John Matthew Fox captured my attention to keep me nourished with emboldening information in a most intriguing and riveting way with his lively dialogue and varied POV’s of camera angles that delivered, in entertaining ways, invaluable ideas and insights—an inspiration for me to become a better writer. ”
→Read Less“This course was fun, and I thought the teacher had a lot of good insights which I plan to use in my writing going forward. Much appreciated. I will be watching for more courses from this instructor.”
“This course was fun, and I thought the teacher had a lot of good insights which I plan to use in my writing going forward. Much appreciated. I will be watching for more courses from this instructor.”
→Read Less“Made me realize that great sentences don't just emerge whole and flow out from the author's mind -- huge revelation for a beginner! Highly informative and definitely worth the money. Thanks!”
“Made me realize that great sentences don't just emerge whole and flow out from the author's mind -- huge revelation for a beginner! Highly informative and definitely worth the money. Thanks!”
→Read Less“The text of the course showing writing examples of how to write great sentences, as well as how John Matthew Fox presented it, was the most well laid out, easy to understand online course I have ever taken. Thank you.”
“The text of the course showing writing examples of how to write great sentences, as well as how John Matthew Fox presented it, was the most well laid out, easy to understand online course I have ever taken. Thank you.”
→Read LessYou will love "Splendid Sentences"
I'm confident this course will help you learn how to write and revise your sentences. I'm so confident I offer a money-back 30-day guarantee.
MORE Reviews!
“I absolutely loved this course. I've been writing for ten years, relying exclusively on my intuition when it came to sentences, and I'm so glad I finally got some outside help because I learned so much. I highly recommend!”
“I absolutely loved this course. I've been writing for ten years, relying exclusively on my intuition when it came to sentences, and I'm so glad I finally got some outside help because I learned so much. I highly recommend!”
→Read Less“This is the course I've been waiting for; the one with the magic formulas for becoming a better writer and engaging readers. I'm only a few videos in and it's already worth every penny. ”
“This is the course I've been waiting for; the one with the magic formulas for becoming a better writer and engaging readers. I'm only a few videos in and it's already worth every penny. ”
→Read Less“This course is fun, challenging and revitalising; be ready to be perpetually catapulted into a world of wordplay, with wisdom on offer and tasks to tax and tune your expending frontal cortex. This is your call to take action. Sign up now. And ...”
→Read More“This course is fun, challenging and revitalising; be ready to be perpetually catapulted into a world of wordplay, with wisdom on offer and tasks to tax and tune your expending frontal cortex. This is your call to take action. Sign up now. And if you didn’t note the use of triple adjectives, surprising adverb, preposition pileup, sentence contrast, pacing and focus etc. you definitely need to take this course. And even if you did, there’s so much more to learn!”
→Read Less“An informative and enjoyable course, and, surprise, surprise, I didn’t want to kill John. He has a relaxed, friendly way of sharing information, and his breadth of knowledge is impressive. Following his suggestions, I, 1) rewrote a couple of ...”
→Read More“An informative and enjoyable course, and, surprise, surprise, I didn’t want to kill John. He has a relaxed, friendly way of sharing information, and his breadth of knowledge is impressive. Following his suggestions, I, 1) rewrote a couple of unfinished shorts (for the better); and, 2) was happy to find some of his bits of info were already in my bag of tricks. It's a lotta learnin’ at a great price. I'm looking forward to what's next (I already purchased two more of his courses). ”
→Read Less“This course has drastically altered the way I think about and write sentences. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for ways to improve their craft. It's so useful I expect to go through it a few more times.”
“This course has drastically altered the way I think about and write sentences. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for ways to improve their craft. It's so useful I expect to go through it a few more times.”
→Read Less“Very much enjoying the course. Expertly produced by an expert educator with top class sound and vision. ”
“Very much enjoying the course. Expertly produced by an expert educator with top class sound and vision. ”
→Read Less“The videos are fast-paced and very informative. John is easy to listen to and clearly passionate about his work. Critique for improvement: The powerpt slides were randomly bold print on the second lines and sometimes in "all caps" for no apparen...”
→Read More“The videos are fast-paced and very informative. John is easy to listen to and clearly passionate about his work. Critique for improvement: The powerpt slides were randomly bold print on the second lines and sometimes in "all caps" for no apparent reason.”
→Read Less“By far the best technical craft information I've gleaned from any other course or book! My mind is blown and my sentences have never been better!”
“By far the best technical craft information I've gleaned from any other course or book! My mind is blown and my sentences have never been better!”
→Read Less“Imagine a ship without a rudder. You don't want to miss this class. Unlike other aspirational classes on writing, John provides excellent tactical points. He's got engaging energy, lots of colored shirts and a slew of memorable lessons you won't...”
→Read More“Imagine a ship without a rudder. You don't want to miss this class. Unlike other aspirational classes on writing, John provides excellent tactical points. He's got engaging energy, lots of colored shirts and a slew of memorable lessons you won't forget. One a scale of 1 out 5 stars I give him 10 stars!”
→Read Less“I learned so much from this course and would highly recommend it to anyone looking to improve. I also appreciated the PDFs.”
“I learned so much from this course and would highly recommend it to anyone looking to improve. I also appreciated the PDFs.”
→Read Less“The course is well structured, practical, and witty. Working on the course was pure delight. I thoroughly enjoyed both the course material (insightful and actionable advice) and John's unique delivery (inspiring, funny, nonpreachy).”
“The course is well structured, practical, and witty. Working on the course was pure delight. I thoroughly enjoyed both the course material (insightful and actionable advice) and John's unique delivery (inspiring, funny, nonpreachy).”
→Read LessGet an Annual Pass
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