![]() ![]() ~ Subtext is strong because it reveals truth-true emotions and true thoughts and unfeigned motivations.Ĭharacters can lie-to others and to themselves-through their dialogue. ~ Subtext is the unspoken but revealed feelings and history and dreams of your characters. Have I given you a clear picture of what subtext is? You should be using subtext in many of your novels. It creates some of the most heartfelt moments of your stories. Subtext cuts deep, goes way beyond surface events and dialogue. Readers will actually feel the woman’s heaviness and the heartbreak when the fiance arrives to pick up his bride-to-be, when she sees the way he looks at the woman he loves.Ī subtle or even a sharp turn of the head so the woman doesn’t have to watch a love she doesn’t have can cause the reader’s heart to clench, to stutter, to ache.Īnd again, no words have to be mentioned. The reader may become teary-eyed herself when the bride is toasted by her friends, maybe even toasted by our lonely woman, a woman with tears in her eyes as she congratulates her friend on finding a perfect love. If the writer works the subtext and the scene well, the reader will feel the tug of wistfulness, will feel the ache when the woman hides her hands behind her back and rubs her empty ring finger. She doesn’t have to whisper her loneliness to another woman at the party. ![]() She doesn’t need to make a scene, complain about not being loved. The reader feels the first woman’s longing for someone to love, someone who’ll make her as happy as her friend is. The glances alone are stronger than words.Īctually, dialogue at this point just might ruin the power of the moment.įor another example, consider a woman smiling wistfully as she watches her best friend at her bridal shower, watches from across the room because she can’t bring herself to move closer. When the reader sees him smiling at her smile, at those silly things that make her smile, that reader understands, feels, what’s happening. The reader catches it, the man’s first awareness of this woman-her body, her laugh, her smile. When subtext is introduced, readers are touched.Ī man watching a woman, only to turn away when she lifts her gaze to his face, is revealing his attraction. Subtext is experienced by both reader and character. ![]() It’s often undefined but not unseen. And if it’s written well, it’s never unfelt. It’s the impulse that prods characters to action. It’s the feeling conveyed by a look, the emotion behind words unspoken. Subtext is what your characters are saying without words. It’s the veiled, the ever-so-lightly veiled, aspects of your story. It’s anything revealed by you and your characters without direct revelation. Subtext is exactly what it sounds like-something hidden beneath or behind the words. While a straight declaration from the mouth of one of your characters can be striking, can immediately switch the direction of your story or cause both characters and readers to catch their breaths, there is another writing tool, a subtle wisp of an element, that can prove just as dramatic.Īnd while subtext might not be as immediately striking, it can hit deep, can create a mood, can grab hold of readers in a way that no straightforward declaration can do. ![]() By Fiction Editor Beth Hill last modified May 17, 2011 ![]()
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