Levels of Writing: Phrases

Generally speaking, the next step above words in writing is sentences. But before we go there, I want to take a pit stop at phrases. Phrases are often ignored and writing suffers every time that happens.

On the technical level, a phrase is a word or group of words that act as a unit. 'Dog' is a phrase, as is 'that hostile dog from down the lane'. If words are ideas, then phrases are thoughts. In visual terms, a word is an individual item (like a tree or a car), but a phrase is a whole picture.

In terms of writing, phrases have a beauty to them that few people seem to see. Phrases can be moved anywhere you want without being harmed. To use a truly crude example, consider the phrase 'the fucking pope'. There is no difference between the sentences "I am the fucking pope", "The fucking pope am I", and "I, the fucking pope, am." Words do not have this luxury. There is a colossal difference between "I'm the fucking pope" and "I'm fucking the pope."

While some people say that writing is the art of creating sentences, I believe that it is phrases where the most interesting stuff happens. Every time you add a phrase, you add an idea. You put those ideas in order of importance. "I saw him" is a simple sentence. To add the information of time, you add a time phrase. This phrase can go anywhere, so what do we want to say? When you say "I saw him yesterday," the time is rather insignificant. It only reinforces the assumption that it happened recently and focuses it to yesterday specifically. "Yesterday, I saw him" makes the date an important frame of reference. We know immediately when something happened, so we can put ourselves in that time. "I, yesterday, saw him" stresses the time, in this case, showing that the action took place very recently. "I saw, yesterday, him" is the least likely variation of the four. It comes off as an afterthought, like the speaker realized it was relevant information in the middle of speaking. Its awkwardness can serve a purpose in storytelling, but for giving information, it is the weakest.

The most common phrases, though, are prepositional phrases. Much like time phrases, prepositional phrases are most commonly put in the beginning or at the end of sentences, but they can also be placed between any two words. Using the previous example, "I saw him", every place I put "yesterday" I could also put "in my car". And like with "yesterday", each variation has its own emphasis and slightly different connotation.

On the level of phrases, you must learn how to create a whole idea (something that can be moved anywhere without losing meaning) and and then place them in a manner that conveys the intended importance. My favorite part of writing is the fluidity of words and sentences. But really, it is the ability to move phrases anywhere that makes me smile.