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  1. That's what your fantasy was

  2. This was your fantasy

  3. This all was your fantasy

What is the difference between these three sentences? To me, being a non-native speaker, they sound alike. But I know there have to be some differences between them.

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    The first sentence looks incomplete, "That is what your fantasy was about". The third sounds odd to my ear. I know, "All this was just a fantasy" or "This was all just a fantasy".
    – SovereignSun
    Commented Jun 29, 2017 at 6:54
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    @SovereignSun IMO, all are fine. By adding 'about' in the first sentence, the meaning would be slightly different. But this nuance is unaccountable.
    – Mohd Zulkanien Sarbini
    Commented Jun 29, 2017 at 11:36

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Some differences for me:

  • The third one is more revelatory and dramatic than the first two, which are in comparison more calm
  • The first one is referring to "that" instead of "this", so the context it would be used in would be correspondingly different

(Note: the third one should be 'this was all your fantasy')

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They are basically the same, but have slight differences in emphasis.

The first one emphasizes 'that'. You could use it when you want to focus attention on what the fantasy was. E.g., if the fantasy was surprising in some way, or to sum up at the end of a paragraph.

The second one is a plain statement. 'That' has been changed to 'this', but the sentence is also fine with 'that'. Changing it to 'this' adds immediacy.

The third one sounds more natural as 'This was all your fantasy'. By adding 'all' you are emphasizing that it was entirely fantasy, with no basis in reality.

But they all mean pretty much the same thing.

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