Subtle techniques, subtext of horror

I've been reading a lot of the shorter novels/novellas of a group of women who wrote in the mid-century, mostly postwar, English and American. I'm sort of amazed at their subtlety and the grace of their prose and scene design. I suspect that they don't get a lot of critical recognition because 1) they were women, and 2) they wrote in the crime/horror area predominantly. But their stories repay study. Here is what I've been reading:
Shirley Jackson (The Lottery and other stories, We Have Always Lived in the Castle)
Patricia Highsmith (particularly The Talented Mr. Ripley)
Muriel Sparks (The Driver's Seat, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie)

Many of these have been made into films, btw. Why? I don't know, but I think partly because actresses can really show their stuff here-- the characters are deeply textured.

I would characterize all of the authors as being preoccupied with the danger in everyday life, the murderer next door. Might this be a result of living through the war, and seeing how neighbors turned on neighbors (and turned them in to be transferred and killed)?

Anyway, I was reading Sparks and came across what I think might be a technique that reflects the theme (Modern life alienates us from each other) but also the progress of the novel (a woman who wants to die searches subconsciously for the man who will kill her).

That is, in The Driver's Seat, Muriel Sparks has a worldview of alienation-- she presents a story in which people don't connect, where characters never understand each other. And this "disconnect" is represented in several ways, as in the symbol of the heroine's clothing, garishly colored and clashing. But this disconnect is developed most intriguingly in the dialogue. When the main character speaks to other characters, often the meaning just goes by unheeded. In fact, often they seem to both be talking, but not to each other. They're talking PAST each other rather than TO each other. Here is an example where she is talking to an old lady she has been sightseeing with. Notice there is none of that usual conversational interplay, where one answers the other's question, or responds to the other's unstated worry, or repeats an important word.

(Mrs. Feidke shows up after having "a spell" and fainting in the previous scene -- Lise left her in the restroom, unconscious.)

Lise says, turning to smile at her, "Look at this idiot girl. She can't stop dancing."

"I think I fell asleep for a moment," Mrs. Fiedke says. "It wasn't a bad turn. I think I just dropped off. Such kind people. They wanted to put me in a taxi."

"Look at her," Lise says in a murmur. "Just look at her. No, wait. She'll start again when the man puts on the next record." The record starts and the girl swings. "Do you believe in macrobiotics?"

"I'm a Jehovah's witness. But that was after Mr. Fiedka passed on."

But in the end, when Lise has finally found the one she has been seeking (the "boyfriend" she subconsciously wants to kill her), the dialogue suddenly meshes:

"Before you went to the clinic, how long did they keep you in prison?"

"Two years," he said.

"Did you strangle or stab?"

"I stabbed her. But she didn't die. I never killed a woman."

"No, but you'd like to. I knew it this morning."

"You never saw me before in your life!"

"That's not the point," Lisa says. "That's by the way. You're a sex maniac."

"No, no," he says. "That's all over and past. Not anymore!"

"Well, you won't have sex with me."

She's driving towards the park and turns right towards the pavilion. Nobody's in sight. The wandering groups are null and voice, the cars have gone away.

"Sex is normal," he says. "I'm cured. Sex is all right."

"It's all right at the time," Lise says. "And it's all right before. But the problem is afterwards. That is, if you aren't just an animal. Most of the time, afterwards is pretty sad."

"You're afraid of sex!" he says almost joyfully, as if sensing an opportunity to gain control.

"Only afterwards. But that doesn't matter anymore."

Notice how they re-use each other's words (all right, sex), and answer each other's stated and unstated questions. They are conversing in a way that Lise doesn't converse with anyone else: fully engaged.

The change from the earlier "disconnect" to the ending "connect"-- which connects with the ending, Lise getting killed, btw, the two of them acting in concert-- is an example of change as coherence. That is, the constant is the conversation-- Lise talking to people-- but the change in that constant is in sync with some plot change (from a disconnect with non-threatening characters to a "connect" with the killer).

Do we ever create a coherence like that consciously? Or is it an unconscious sense of how the story changes that leads us to create parallel scenes that develop differently? I don't know. I suspect some writers do this subconsciously. Can we do it consciously without being too heavyhanded?

Alicia

Subtext again

Frasier, as Robert McKee says, is the greatest British sitcom set in America. (I don't know what it means, but it sounds good.)

Anyway, I saw this "Bulldog proposes" episode and the ending is pretty amazing. One character tells the truth, and the other, to spare his feelings, misinterprets, and the first (Bulldog) graciously accedes to this interpretation, and while responding in the same vein, reveals even more what the truth is.

Great writing, and my point is, never assume that just telling the surface is sufficient. The important stuff is often subtextual, because humans are complicated creatures.

For that matter, so are cats. My cat's meows contain more subtext than an Ian McEwan novel.

Here's the Frasier episode, and it's all good (Frasier was the best written sitcom of its time, and best acted), but the scene I'm talking about starts at 15:10 or so).

Alicia

Worldview and subtext

Worldview is so integral to who we are and how we interact with reality that we can't always distinguish between what we believe and what might make sense to others. This is a good thing, because it gives us a place to stand, and a unique viewpoint.

However, I think worldview can also create unconscious subtext, and it's worth examining your own work for that.

Subtext can be conscious (like you want the reader to sense that this character is lying, or you want the reader to realize-- without your ever spelling it out-- that humans are afraid of death and that's maybe why they create religion), or unconscious (usually the subtle revelation of some issue you're dealing with personally, like death or feeling trapped in your life). Sometimes unconscious subtext can reflect a societal issue that might not even really affect you all that much personally but shows up in your writing just because this is pervasive in your culture.

What is pervasive in our culture, alas, is often hard to recognize from within. And what is a subconscious issue for us will also be hard to acknowledge (that's why it's still "sub"). When these two unconscious subtext coincide, whoa, Nelly! It might come out in our writing, and there we are, accidentally offending or alienating readers.

Worldview, as it's sort of our own personal subtext (the values or approach we don't consciously recognize), like cultural subtext, can be hard to notice from the inside. I grew up in the 60s, and what now is clearly the culture's attempt to put women down and make them feel like children was so pervasive, only the most discerning noticed it, like Betty Friedan. We actually accepted being told that we couldn't play "real basketball" in gym class because it would disrupt our ability to bear children. (I still remember we played something called "four corners," and the guards had to stay under the defensive basket, and the forwards under the offensive basket, and the center's role was to stay at half court and throw the ball from one to another-- because, you see, the uterus can manage repeated childbirth, but not running all the way down the court.)

Nowadays, tell that to Tamika Catchings and she'll laugh at you. But back then, we were surrounded by loud and subtle messages that told us we were put on earth for two related purposes, to please men sexually and to bear and raise children. It takes someone able to stand back and consider this reasonably to say, "Wait a minute." (And for that reason, I'd like to recognize Blacksburg High School's very own Jacqueline Robinson, Diane Frederick, who just wanted to play basketball, and kept bugging the school administration until they finally gave in and let her build and coach a team that could use the gym, only for a half hour at 7 am on a couple days a week, but at least it was something. And the next time someone fulminates against Title 9, remind them of that. Hey, Diane, wherever you are, hats off to you!)

Anyway, point is, we have to -- after we draft-- remind ourselves to look for subtext that we don't really mean but are perhaps the effect of our having a particular worldview. For example, that deeply person-focused worldview of some of the authors of the "collapse of 2008" books indicates that the most important element of anything is the people involved. Okay. But an aspect of that is blame. That is, there's a tendency (nothing wrong with this) to feature one person as "the villain," the one to blame. After all, if you subscribe to the Great Man theory of history, that major events are caused by important people, then bad major events will also be caused by someone-- the villain.

No problem there. Where the unconscious subtext might come in is if you have unwittingly absorbed your culture's prejudices and identify that culture's "outsider group" as the villain. (I'm not saying that the outsider isn't sometimes the villain-- but notice and determine consciously if that's so, or if you are just unconsciously reflecting your culture's prejudices.) Even if you think you can justify it, examine it as someone from the outside would. For example, I might have written a book about the 2008 crash, focusing on the investment bankers. Now if I profile 20 such managers, and single out three of them for scathing commentary on the bad things they did (trading short after they recommended long to their customers, using the corporate jet for personal purposes, engaged in risky trades with OPM -- other people's money, took big unearned bonuses), I might think, Hmm. Did all or most of the investment bankers do similar things? Yeah. So why did I focus on these three? I might even think that they're not all alike. After all, one is an African-American in New York, and this one is Pakistani and he's in London, and the third one is a Turkish Muslim and he's living in Singapore! See? They're all different!

Now imagine being someone from the outside, someone maybe from Mars who hasn't grown up in cultures permeated with human racism. (I say "human" because the Martians probably have their own form of racism. :) The Martian might say, "But they're all dark." Bingo. Somehow, unconsciously, I have profiled 20 investment bankers whose business practices are similar and "villainized" the three dark-skinned ones. (I am actually modeling this example on something in one of these books.)

But... but... I sputter. But I am not racist! I contribute to the United Negro College Fund! I send my kids to an integrated school! I love Kanye!

Well, if I'm not actually racist, I should be able to understand why others might wonder if I am. That is, I should move beyond the limitations of my own ego and my own worldview and regard this more objectively. And if I don't want readers -- just some readers; subtext is never picked up by all readers, but that doesn't mean it's not there-- I should realize that this might be an unfortunate effect of having a worldview (which is a GOOD thing overall), and consider what to do to mitigate it.

So what do I do? Clearly it's easier to do this in fiction, where with a stroke of my mighty pen, I can turn that Pakistani in London into the heir to an impoverished earldom, who grew up with all the luxuries and will do anything to keep them. There! Now I have three villains, and only 2/3rds are non-majority race.

Harder in non-fiction, where people don't transform so easily. But I can be objective and see that it wasn't just the minority bankers who used the corporate jets and insisted on private elevators. And these three weren't actually any more the villain (as in the ones that caused the bad stuff to happen) than the other 17. So whether or not I focused on these three because of their non-majority status, or for some other reason, I might consider if I could focus on one of the 17 as emblematic of the snobbery and rottenness. Or I might (if I pride myself on my depth of characterization) introduce some nuance, learning to love and not just scorn these characters.

Point is, we need to step outside ourselves sometimes. We are not our readers, after all. We might not realize how what seems perfectly plausible to us might be off-putting to reader who do not have our particular worldview. This doesn't mean you can't be unique and speak from your own perspective. I'm just saying that you might want to examine your own presentation for undesired and unconscious problems. We might need to use both the unconscious and the conscious parts of our brain. And we need to be both writer and reader-stand-in, making sure that we convey what we want to convey, and not what we don't.

Alicia

author intent

Jorge-Luis Borges:
Since I do not think often about what I have written, I had not realized (that his story "El Aleph" is about the acceptance of fate). Nevertheless, it is better that (theme) should be instinctive and not intellectual, don't you think? The instinctive is what counts in a story. What the writer wants to say is the least important thing;the most important is said through him or in spite of him."

Emphasis mine.

A

Context and subtext

I spent this last week scoring AP exams (seniors in high school take these exams) in literature. I was scoring essays in the poetry analysis section, which meant I read 1300 essays all about the same poem, which was (scroll down to the bottom-- it's 2010) "The Century Quilt" by Marilyn Nelson Waniek. The poem is in the point of view of a woman who sees a quilt that seems to capture the beauty and complexity of her family heritage.

To me, the context was obvious-- this was an African-American family, and she was looking back at the 20th century. She referred to her grandmother (few of the students understood "Meema," but if you're from the South, you know it means Grandma), and "channeled" her memory of dancing with her "beautiful yellow sisters" and meeting and passing "her grandfather's white family."

I was amazed at how few students understood that this was an African-American family. There was a reference to Meema's "Indian blanket," and a lot of students went off in that direction (not realizing, probably, that many African-Americans in the southeast had a Native American ancestor). Since the Native American experience in the 20th century was vastly different, that didn't really fit the poem's development, but at least they got the connection of "multi-cultural" and "patchwork quilt" (that is, that the quilt is a metaphor for a multi-cultural family").

Anyway, I was noticing that almost no one got what to me was a clear context-- that of the exploitation of young Black women by older white men (sometimes "slaveowners"), and how that has made so many African-American families mixed race. And the quilt metaphor (patching together disparate pieces to make a piece of folk art-- the quilt is a wonderful metaphor-- forgive me, my beloved grandmother was a quilter, so I'm partial!) is a great symbol for the tendency of the African-American community to make history, heritage, and art from the troubled experience of Blacks in America.

So... almost none of the students got this. Some understood that the speaker was African-American, but often they kind of romanticized, that the Grandpa and Grandma were kind of Romeo and Juliet, ostracized because of their mixed-race love, while the actual experience was more akin to rape. Almost none got the term "yellow," which I know (because I grew up in the south, and have read lots of Toni Morrison and Faulkner and Maya Angelou, means a Black person with at least one white ancestor. Nowadays, of course, "brown" means Hispanic, and "yellow" is a epithet referring to Asians.

I was kind of glad that so few of the students (among them African-Americans) "got" the complicated background, because it is great to think of that awful era so far behind us that kids today don't even know about it. However, there's a beauty in it too, in the transformation of that brutal history into love and art. And that's lost when no one recognizes it anymore. There is, we know, great art in adversity, and when we lose the memory of the troubles, do we lose the art too?

And almost no one noticed the title (ALWAYS notice the title!), "The Century Quilt." Apparently few had quilting grandmothers (a "century quilt" has 100 squares), and of course they didn't live through much of the 20th Century (which ended, really, in 2008, not 2001), from Jim Crow and lynching to the election of the African-American president-- an amazing century.

Finally, this made me think about the importance of context. Without the context (specifically, understanding what "yellow" means in the poem), the students, most of them, couldn't connect this poem with the wonderful and terrible history of American Blacks. The subtext (that great passion and art come from adversity, that you can "patch together" meaning and art) was lost on most of the students.

However, they did make their own subtext. And I think that's something that characterizes art, that every generation makes new subtext, that the work allows for multiple interpretations and new interpretations.

But still I think of this so-modern dilemma, that something so meaningful in the past isn't even recognized now. The world changes so rapidly these days, and so many conflicts that might be awful to experience but create opportunity for good story, are almost immediately superseded by new events. How much have we lost by just not noticing? I can point to the paucity of novels about the Vietnam war compared to the number about World War II, though both were bristling with interesting story potential. Will there be even that many stories about Iraq? No-- I can just about guarantee that, because no one's paying much attention to the war now, while it's actually happening.

But... oh, well, it inspired me sort of at least! My poetry-reading group just did "ballads" and we decided we couldn't understand ballads without experiencing them from the poet's perspective, so we decided to write ballads (because they're easier, natch, than sonnets!). And so I wrote a ballad about a quilt-- "The Ballad of the Wedding Ring Quilt". It's sort of wonderful how easy it is to slip into the ballad rhythm (da Dum da Dum...) and use the tradition to build a story, even with complex emotions.

Alicia

Don't Overthink It

My general impression from the comments in the various subtext posts makes me think there's something of a general confidence crisis on this subject. This is unwarranted. Every day, you interact with people and watch their body language and demeanor for clues to their internal states. You have a lifetime of practice in interpreting subtext in day to day life. It's really not that different in fiction.

Perhaps the difference is in familiarity. Perhaps as writers we have it drummed into us that we must make everything absolutely clear to the reader. We take this to mean everything must be spelled out in precise detail, leaving nothing to the imagination. But clarity is possible even when we rely on clues rather than direct statements.

Tears streamed down Jessica's face.
or
Jessica was sad.

The first gives a visual clue to an emotional state. The second tells the emotional state. Which is more vivid and engaging? The first. No contest.

So here's what we're going to do. We're going to practice. Practicing will give you familiarity with the technique, which will increase your confidence. I'm going to give you an action by a character. In the comments, I want you to give examples of how this action could be used to demonstrate TWO different emotional states. Do this twice because it will force you to think about different ways to interpret the same action. Context, remember, is crucially important in staging subtext.

Here's your action:
Henry skittered backwards in three quick, light steps.

Now link that to an emotion without naming the emotion. You can do it. It's not as hard as you think.

Theresa

Subtext and Context

Alicia posted a great article the other day on subtext. Let's take a look now at how to manipulate subtext on the page.

To begin, keep in mind the basic (and overly simplistic) definition of subtext: Subtext is anything implied by the text but not directly stated. So we're dealing with things that are suggested rather than defined. We can understand how subtext works by examining it at a micro level, specifically, with respect to character emotion. This is a very common form of subtext, and I might even go as far as saying it's necessary for good writing.

Here's how it works. You have a pov character who is interacting with another character -- we'll call him Henry. Seen through the prism of the pov character's viewpoint, Henry's actions provide clues to his internal state. The pov character can't see into his mind or heart. But she can see what his body is doing.

Let's say he does this:

Henry folded his arms across his chest and refused to meet her eyes.

There are emotions implied by these actions. Which ones? That's where context comes in. Context is the material surrounding a particular tidbit, and context controls the interpretation of that tidbit. We can assume that Henry's gestures imply an emotional state of some kind, but the context clarifies those emotions. Even small changes in the context can create a strong changes in meaning.

For example, it might be guilt:

"I saw you, Henry. You were touching her hair."
"I didn't mean it. It just happened." Henry folded his arms across his chest and refused to meet her eyes.

Or defensiveness:
"I saw you, Henry. You were touching her hair."
"You don't know what you saw." Henry folded his arms across his chest and refused to meet her eyes.

Or rebelliousness:
"I saw you, Henry. You were touching her hair."
"Did not! And she touched mine first, Mommy!" Henry folded his arms across his chest and refused to meet her eyes.


Never at any time in these examples do we name Henry's emotion in the text. We've taken two fairly generic gestures, routine bits of stage action, which are subject to interpretation. And then, in the context, we provided the reader with the tools to interpret them. Put it all together, and you have created subtext.

I've been known to say that naming an emotion on the page will dilute its impact. Look at this:

"I saw you, Henry. You were touching her hair."
"No, that was just--" Henry folded his arms across his chest and refused to meet her eyes, clearly feeling defensive.

By making the emotion textual rather than subtextual, we've stripped some of the power out of the gesture. We've diluted the reader's engagement in the moment by interpreting the text for them. It's telling when we should be showing. We even have an acronym for this, one that's been scrawled in the margins of countless manuscripts -- RUE, Resist the Urge to Explain.

Theresa

Subtext article

Someone asked for thoughts on subtext, so let me post this article I wrote about it. (See T quote on Atonement. :) What do you all think? What is subtext? Can you consciously create it? What are some examples in film and fiction of good subtext?

Subtext: The Fourth Dimension

Subtext is more than words can say.

Reading is a complex activity, requiring much more than just a passive acceptance of information. Experienced readers aren't confined to the text- what's printed on the page- they interact with the text, fully participating with the writer in the making of meaning in the story. For example, here are some ways readers add dimension to the text the writer has written:

• Bring their own knowledge into play ("So we're just a week or so before Waterloo, huh")
• Juxtapose character action with their own experience ("Even when I was seventeen, I wasn't that naive!")
• Interpret/translate dialogue ("The way she keeps saying she doesn't care, well, methinks she doth protest way too much")
• Scout ahead ("I bet that line is going to come back to haunt him")
• Flip back ("But I thought she said she went to Princeton... so she's lying now?").

Subtext is like a gift to the astute reader, an additional layer of meaning implied by the text but not accessible without a bit of thinking. And it gives a chance for the writer to deepen the theme and characters in a subversive way, inviting the reader to interact and thus become more involved in the story.

But... subtext is subtle. It is implication, nuance, juxtaposition, deception, suspense, symbolism. And it's not completely within the writer's control- remember when your critique group insisted that your hero's manly rugby team really had to be in love with each other? (Sexual subtexts are the hardest to control- just ask Freud.)

You can write a perfectly good book without subtext- where the storytelling is straightforward and the motivations are transparent, where the characters are upfront about what they want and why they want it. Plot-driven books are often just textual, and no one complains because the story's meaning doesn't require interpretation. (If The DaVinci Code has any subtext, for example, it escaped me entirely. But two million bookbuyers didn't mind.)

But character-driven books usually benefit from subtext- because it's more realistic. Humans are complex creatures who wrestle with inner demons, mixed motives, and clashing values. Subtext exists all the time in real life, and so to do justice to our characters, we can create the opportunity for the reader to find shadings of deeper meaning in our stories.

You're probably already doing this- I think subtext is nearly inevitable once you accept that characters have inner lives. But there are some ways you can exploit this advanced writing element to draw the reader in deeper and increase her engagement with the story.

Let's start with the big distinction. There are two different categories of subtext. One is macro, coming from the story as a whole, and the other is micro, found within scenes and passages. But they are both meanings which are implied but not spelled out in the text of the story.

Macro-subtext usually results from the interaction of the story and its culture. (This makes it harder for authors to control.) This usually relies on readers having a certain level of knowledge, and so whether you "get it" is going to depend on your background. For example, most everyone who saw the film Casablanca when it first came out understood the significance of the film's time period- the first few days of December 1941. The characters did not know it, but viewers knew that in less than a week, the neutral United States was going to join the world war. The words "Pearl Harbor" are never spoken, but that's there in the subtext. But the farther we get from 1941, the less resonance that date will have for viewers, and the more they'll see it as just a terrific love story set against a backdrop of war. They won't get that the cynical Rick is a symbol of his country, trying to stay out of the war as the world disintegrates around him.

Similarly, my father, a Korean War vet, saw the film MASH (filmed in 1970 but set during the earlier Korean War) and growled, "This isn't about Korea. It's about Vietnam." Only those acquainted with the two wars would be likely to notice the film's subtext: It was criticizing American policies in a very different war from the one it purported to describe.

Macro-subtext is not something most writers invent consciously. It relies too much on outside factors to be controlled solely by the writer. But it's important to know the audience and consider how their cultural background will lead them to interpret the story. Writers need to watch out for the subtexts they don't really want in there, such as a subtext of class resentment in a glitz novel. Critique groups are helpful in this, as they can usually see the subtext that is invisible to the author.

Micro-subtext, on the other hand, is contained within the story- in the scenes and passages. So it mostly requires not outside knowledge of culture and history, but inside knowledge of the characters and earlier plot events. The reader brings a more comprehensive perspective to reading the passage, and interprets a meaning that is more than what's contained in the text of the passage. Subtext is "a question of interaction between characters or between reader and writer... something that counters or challenges the text," as Harlequin Superromance writer Lynnette Kent observes.

MIRA author Judith Arnold adds, "Frequently the subtext enhances the text rather than contradicts it. Take, for example, the character of Jade in Barbara Samuel's The Goddesses of Kitchen Avenue. She's a smart, educated, attractive woman with a close-knit family who married a convict. Why did she marry such a loser? Her having fallen in love with him, married him and ultimately left him was the text. Throughout the book, we glimpse her subtext--bits and pieces of her past, her insecurities, her vulnerabilities--that help to explain the choices she made with her ex-husband. The subtext doesn't challenge the text. It just adds layers of meaning and understanding to who this woman is."

These are some of the purposes of this kind of subtext:

Plot purposes:

Giving a clue to some secret (say the identity of murderer)

Foreshadowing a coming event

Connecting a skein of events

Setting up a plot device ("I see dead people" in Sixth Sense)

Character purposes:

Hinting at an internal conflict

Juxtaposing perception and reality

Showing self-deception

Revealing a narrator as unreliable

Romantic Subtext

Do romances have subtext? In fact, Kensington author Nonnie St. George argues, "All good romance is subtext, especially in the conflict stage of the romance. When the hero and heroine argue about how she's impetuous and he's afraid of commitment, the argument really is about how they don't want to fall in love with someone who is going to hurt them."

The hero and the heroine start out in conflict, resistant to the idea of romance, especially with each other. Their attraction is still subliminal, too dangerous to acknowledge. So their early interactions should be fraught with subtext. This lets the reader participate in the tension, all the while knowing that (this being a romance) it will end happily.

Flirtation in and of itself isn't sufficient to create subtext in a scene. If they're standing in the produce section and he's talking about the lush firmness of the peaches and she's stroking the cucumbers and glancing at him longingly, their attraction is too obvious to be subtextual. Rather their conversations are going to be about anything else- whatever is going on in the plot, their external conflicts, their differing or similar attitudes and values. But something is going to tip off the astute reader that simmering underneath is a prospect they long for and fear- falling in love.

The subtext in romantic scenes should result from that paradox- the longing and the fear, the attraction and the conflict. If he's an undercover cop, he might find himself almost revealing himself to her, despite the risk. The usually careful heroine might behave impulsively with him, and not know why. The lover-to-be calls out the true self, the one usually kept safely barricaded. But especially early in the book, they'll still be trying to mount a defense against the danger of love. Too much self-awareness means too little subtext. The reader wants to sense their impending love before they do- through their conflict and their commonality.

Avon author Christie Ridgway observes, "Our characters usually are limited in their self-awareness, so the book's action is to lead them to do better with this and confront what's keeping them from committing to this love thing, so some subtext would be leading the reader to deduce the character's internal conflict before he does."

Creating Subtext

So how to do you do subtext? If it's subliminal and subtle and subversive and all those sub things... if it's not there in the text you type out... how do you create subtext?

1. First, you have to accept the reality of the inner life. That is, you have to create characters who, like real people, have mixed motives and internal conflicts, and who sometimes speak and act in ways contrary to their stated goals. In a romance, inner demons and inner needs might create alternating attraction-resistance, and this will manifest in the actions and dialogue of the hero and heroine.

2. Then consider that the text has to be plausible. We write popular fiction. That means it has to be accessible to casual readers too. The last thing you want is to end up with a book that requires a PhD and dictionaries in 14 languages to understand. So the scene has to make sense on the surface. If the reader can't skate over your text and understand the character motivation and action, then she'll spend all her time trying to puzzle that out, and not enough time on the subtext. Think of the film Sixth Sense, which most of us thought was an intriguing story about a psychologist helping a psychic child (the text), and only understood the subtext (the psychologist being dead) near the end. The plausible text made the discovery of the subtext even more entertaining.

3. At the same time, you will want to suggest to the astute reader that the surface isn't all there is, that is, put some clue in there to what isn't in there. On second viewing of Sixth Sense, it was suddenly blindingly obvious that only the child actually conversed with the psychologist. The early scenes were written in a way that made it seem as if he was interacting, but in fact, he talked to his wife and she, seemingly angry, didn't talk back. That he's dead is never stated out loud, but the clues are there.

4. In a romance, a clue might be in dialogue, when, say, a conversation that's supposed to be about business drifts into the personal- at which point they both back away and resume the business talk. It's the backing away as much as the drifting (resistance following attraction) that marks this conversation as worthy of further consideration. This lets the reader speculate about what the attraction is, and what the danger is, thereby becoming more invested in the romance.

Or romantic subtext can be implied by the action. Judith Arnold offers this scenario, "The hero and the heroine are colleagues at work, collaborating on a project. They talk only of the project and don't dare touch each other--they're in the office, and office romances are taboo. Yet their voices, their posture, the tilt of his head, the way she brushes her hair back from her

face--all these things convey the subtext. While working on the project, they're also engaged in a subtle mating dance." The less obviously sexual the actions, the more room there is for the reader to interpret.

5. Another technique is juxtaposition, for example, between dialogue and action. For instance, the hero is saying, "Yeah, well, everyone gets divorced. No big deal for me," while he's unconsciously twisting his wedding ring- any reader who understands body language will know that he's more ambivalent about the split than he's saying. And if, at the initial divorce court hearing, his wife is wearing the red dress that always gets him hot, the reader is going to sense she's not so certain either.

Actors learn to use the "business" of body language and action to play against the dialogue and let the audience find a deeper meaning. An actor friend remarks, "I was taught that 'subtext' is something not said directly in the lines, but a thought process or feeling that's informing the text, possibly directly contradicting it. It doesn't have to be sexual; there's more than a few plays where subtext is simply 'I'm telling a big fat lie'. The audience has to look at both the text he speaks and the way he acts to understand that the guy is a liar."

In fact, acting out a scene can provide insight into what actions convey the subtext you want. For example, if the heroine is lying when she identifies herself as Callie, what action can suggest "don't believe me?" Glancing away as she speaks? Jamming her hands into her pocket? The reader is trained to look for tiny signs that something is amiss- you just have to supply those tiny signs.

6. NAL author Lynn Kerstan suggests metaphors and images as another way to create subtext. "In my case, it's often masks (not literal masks, although those sometimes join the dance), mirrors and other means of reflection, light and dark . . . It's a matter of making subtle patterns that create an almost invisible framework of support for what is directly presented." Your heroine, for example, is unlikely to think or say that she is hiding her true self. But if she happens to see herself in the mirror and then turn away, the reader will sense some avoidance.

A metaphor- something that compares an abstraction to a tangible thing-- doesn't necessarily create subtext. It depends on how obvious the connection is meant to be. If the meaning isn't hidden, then it's textual, as when Robert Frost's New Englander uses the metaphor of a wall to describe his neighbors' tendency towards isolation:

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

But when the meaning is hidden, when the reader has to go beneath the surface, make connections and interpretation, then it becomes subtext. So when, in another poem, Frost's speaker says,

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep.

And miles to go before I sleep.

.... many readers will just assume this is about some country doctor stopping for a moment to contemplate the beauty of the woods, then resuming his late-night rounds. But some readers, perhaps because they have experienced despair, will think that the speaker has almost given into the allure of suicide- symbolized by those lovely, dark, and deep woods.

You can use metaphors, symbols, and images to provide a glimpse into the subconscious. Just remember, if it's obvious, it's not subtext. It's best to embed these into the text. Use metaphors that the characters would use. The props of daily life (like a mirror) can serve double-duty as symbols. And use the setting to generate images that are visible to the characters, such as real not figurative storm clouds gathering. Let the characters supply the material for the reader to interpret.

7. Use unreliable narration. Scenes now are frequently narrated from "deep POV", that is, from the perspective of one character's thoughts and feelings as the action unfolds. You might think that, deep inside the character's head, there's little room for subtext- after all, aren't we getting the straight dope straight from the source? But Pocket author Jill Barnett points out, "The character never knows what her thoughts tell us." For example, a character might think, She adored her little sister, so tiny, so precious, so pretty. In fact, everyone loved Sally. She was the family's little star, and Joan was grateful just to be allowed in her orbit. This is likely to tell the reader something Joan can't let herself think- she resents that Sally gets all the attention.

An "unreliable narrator" allows the reader to participate in one perspective while maintaining some objectivity. If you show a character's thoughts repeatedly returning to one subject, the reader might take note of the change in wording, say, from I didn't do that to I couldn't ever do anything like that to I'm sure I'd never do anything like that. (Subtext = I did it.) Conversely, a character's refusal to think about a topic is a clue to its importance. He wasn't going to bother to remember that year. Big deal. Graduation. Starting college. Nothing special. Nothing at all of note happened that year.

The trick to "subtexting" deep POV is to push it one step too far, using repetition or emphasis to create the sense of protesting too much. "Nothing special. Nothing at all of note..."

Lynn Kerstan suggests that subtext can be even more important when the perspective is tight. "Especially in deep POV, we live the story through the POV characters. We see as they do and feel as they feel. We don't much want author voice or author intrusion these days, but we hunger for the story behind the characters' perception of it. Subtext is just about anything that helps us discover it."

8. To conceal is to reveal. The reader is going to take particular notice of blank spots, gaps, and hidden elements. Allude to an event without showing it, and the reader is going to speculate about its importance. A character who won't talk about a topic might as well be carrying a sign, "Ask me about this!"

9. Subtext doesn't always remain sub. What is only hinted at early might surface later as a plot point. As Redlines editing columnist Theresa Stevens puts it, "Subtext shifts the reader's attention from the surface action to the deeper meaning of the passage. This deeper meaning can serve to foreshadow." This is particularly important in setting up later action. Stevens gives as an example the young narrator in Ian McEwan's Atonement, who is constantly writing stories in her head. So when she accuses a neighbor boy of assaulting her cousin, the reader wonders if she has made this up too. In the end, it's revealed that she has "in atonement" invented the last half of the book, which gave a happy ending to the unjustly accused neighbor- it is a novel within a novel. The accuser becomes the author, and subtext has become text.

The Reader's Dimension

Never underestimate your readers. Whether they have PhDs or just high school diplomas, all those who read for pleasure these days have advanced training in interpreting dialogue, body language, prose, and viewpoint. And they're not passive. They don't want to sit back and just let you explain it all. They want to interact with the story, speculate, question, assume. They will ignore an image from one scene, but then remember it when it pops up in a second scene, and figure out its significance when it appears a third time. They will subconsciously make note of some fact early on, and consciously notice when it's contradicted later. They are constantly creating their own play-by-play narration of what they suspect is going on underneath the action, revising and expanding as events unfold.

In a way, subtext allows the reader to become an author too, participating in the making of meaning in the story. And to create this sort of interactive experience, authors have to remember what it's like to be a reader.

The Words Not Spoken, The Steps Not Taken

I'm reading Stone's Fall by Iain Pears, an exquisitely talented mystery writer whose first book, An Instance of the Fingerpost, is a near-perfect clinic on first person narratives. This new book is gorgeously written in reverse chronological order similar to the movie Memento, but covering a much broader time span.

But I'm struck over and over again not by the structural pyrotechnics but by the simple way he incorporates missing details that lesser writers might just leave out. Instead, by referencing the words not spoken and the actions left undone, we get a richer, more complex narrative. This is not an author who merely watches scenes unfold in his head and then records where the characters are standing and what they are saying. This is an author who embraces the totality of events from every angle.

Here's the first place I noticed this technique, on the bottom of the opening page. We're at the funeral of a woman so old that the narrator, a friend from decades ago, didn't realize she was still alive until he read her obituary in the morning paper.

It was a fine enough service, I thought, although I was not an expert. The priests took their time, the choir sang prettily, the prayers were said, and it was all over. A short eulogy paid tribute to her tireless, selfless work for the unfortunate but said nothing about her character. The congregation was mainly freshly scrubbed and intense-looking children, who were clipped around the ear by teachers if they made any untoward noise. I looked around to see who would take charge of the next round, but no one seemed to know what to do. Eventually the undertaker took over.

The paragraph goes on to describe the plans to inter the body and the procession of pallbearers. But by that point, the main work of the paragraph has already been accomplished. Pears hasn't once referred to the deceased woman's family or close friends, but we all understand they are not present. It's probably the main point of the paragraph, and it's made so obliquely that an inattentive reader might fail to draw the conclusion.

So how does he do it?

That phrase, but said nothing about her character, jarred me right out of the otherwise mild and pleasantly correct catalog of details of a very old woman's funeral. Instantly I wondered why the eulogy of an old, rich woman known for her charitable works would not reference her character. Normally, we might expect such a eulogy to talk about her kindness, her warm heart, her empathy or her sympathy. That's the key signal: Hey! Wake up! Important things are missing here! Pay attention to what's being left out!

Then we get fidgety children and casually brutal schoolteachers. There's a sense of duty attached to their presence, but no real feelings of mourning. Then the service ends, and right at the point where a family member or other designated spokesperson would talk about the next steps in the process, no one steps forward. But Pears handles it so deftly that but for that earlier key signal, we might not reach the proper conclusion.

A lesser writer might have written something like,

While the choir sang, I looked for familiar faces but found none. Of course, she'd never had children of her own, but what about the rest of her family? I also couldn't find a single representative of her husband's family. Or her second husband's family. No friends. No one even close to her age. No one but the dutiful and the curious and a cluster of children from the charity school she founded.

To be candid, that's not an entirely ineffective technique, even if it lacks Pears's masterful sleight of hand. A narrator who notices what's missing is an engaged and thoughtful narrator, and he's more likely to be interesting than the narrator who merely watches the scene unfold and records,

It was a pretty church with a small altar and vaulted ceilings. The pews were filled with school children from the charity school she'd founded. They fidgeted while the choir sang prettily, and their teachers clipped their ears to make them stand still. The priest gave the eulogy and talked about her many charitable works. It was a fine service, I thought, and at the end of it, the undertaker invited us all to the interment that afternoon.

Do you see how that works? It's a technically smooth paragraph with many of the same physical details as the Pears paragraph. But without the active mind of the narrator noting what's missing, the writing feels flat.

This is a technique Pears uses over an over to great effect. Look at how he focuses on what's missing here:

Not all journalists are editors, not all artists are members of the Academy. John Praxiteles Brock, my fellow lodger, was not then a success; his torment at having to look out every morning at the proof of unattainable glory in the next street was balanced by his desire to rub shoulders with the famous, who might assist him in his career. He would come home occasionally bubbling with excitement and pride: "I said good morning to Sargent this morning!" or "Henry MacAlpine was buying a pint of milk in front of me today!" Alas, it was rare that either said good morning in return. Perhaps his desperation frightened them; perhaps the fact that his father was a sculptor (hence his unfortunate middle name) of retrograde opinions and unpleasant temper put them off; perhaps they felt that youth has to fight on its own. Now he is more successful, Brock gives little encouragement to others, either.

Gorgeous, isn't it? Look at all the ways he uses negative statements and awareness of what's missing to paint a clear picture of this character. Can you spot them all?

A writer's work is as good as her powers of observation, and this includes a sensitivity not just to what is recordable, but to what is missing. Pay attention both when you're reading and observing, and ask yourself, What is being left out? How is it relevant? Because there's more to good storytelling than recording where the characters are standing and the words they speak. Sometimes the most significant details are those the characters leave out.

Theresa

Emotional exposition

Film-going adventures... Saw Australia, which was created, conceived, cast, portrayed, written, etc., all by Aussies, and so why does it seem so utterly like a not-great but very expensive 60s-era Western? I mean, really, if it weren't for the accents and the Japanese bombers arriving at the end, I would have thought I was not in the Outback in 1941, but rather in the desert sets of outer Hollywood pretending to be 1890 Arizona. :) Every cliche we love in Westerns is right there, including a totally Eastwoodlike intro of the hero by narrowed eyes (though Hugh Jackman shows far more beefcake than Clint ever did, but then, whoa, seriously better beefcake—is that a body double, or has Wolverine been working out?) devolving into a barroom brawl that spills out into the unpaved street. (Now to be fair, some of these scenes are fun, and there's a beautiful child in a major role, and Bryan Brown! Back again! He was the most fun actor in Thorn Birds, pace all Richard Chamberlain fans. And so cool here! But it was in a Lee Marvin role—just can't get away from the Western influences. :)

Oh, yeah, the "noble savage" in this film is Aboriginal, not Native American, but he still imparts the nobly (not savage) wise Big Emotional Revelation to the clueless (but very buff) hero. What's the revelation? Oh, I forget. It was something about how Hugh was a coward, because he'd been hurt before and was now afraid to love. I think we've heard that before. In fact, we probably SAID that before. The Aboriginal friend pronounces this wisdom in a nobly pontifical way, and Hugh immediately accepts the wisdom and runs off back to his true love (abandoning, apparently, the wise best friend).

This "emotional exposition" scene shows a lack of confidence in the story! And this is something to watch out for in our own books. If we've done our job setting up and developing the character journey, and if we've created scenes that show the emotion, no one should ever have to state out loud the emotional revelation. The character should figure it out for himself because of the events of the story, and especially the event right before realization. (Realization... not revelation, see!) If you're near the end of the book, and you have so little confidence in your emotional arc and character journey and character that you think you need to bring in someone else to lecture out the big truth, then instead of writing that scene, you should be revising your macro-structure. Something's gone wrong in the big story elements, and it can't be fixed by a lecture, however wise. (Australia didn't need this, btw. All it needed was some catalytic event to make Hugh choose to go back to Nicole and the adorable child. That's why I said that it shows a lack of confidence.)

In fact, I tell romance writers—if in the last scene, the romantic couple have to SAY "I love you," you've failed. The reader should know this from how they've changed, how they've grown, and how they've sacrificed for each other. (The characters of course can speak their love – people do, after all—but I'd say first write the scene without those words, as if those words aren't in the language, as if love can only be shown and described without love words. THEN you'll have a great emotionally resonant resolution scene, and you can put in the Three Little Words afterwards. :)

So... no emotional exposition lectures, okay? Make your story do the work. And then if you want the words spoken out, well... try something more fun than a Noble Oppressed Minority wiseguy intoning the wisdom. For example:

1) Put the revelation in the mouth of a discredited character. Hey, if it's the truth, it's the truth, right? Play with that by using the least credible character as the transmitter of wisdom. (I'm envisioning Steve Buschemi or Rob Schneider here.) It will be unexpected, and also force the main character to evaluate the merits of the revelation rather than just to accept Received Wisdom from a beloved and all-knowing thus perfectly credible character.

2) Try a character who is saying this not from some benevolent motive but to further her own agenda. Again, this will add a layer of uncertainty and conflict, making the protagonist have to work at it. Think of Ilsa in Casablanca: "You're a coward, Rick!" She's trying to get the letters of transit from him, not further his emotional journey. Her own motive is suspect—and both of them know it.

3) Something else the World's Greatest Script (Casablanca, I mean) does right is that Ilsa says this but immediately takes it back. This accomplishes a lot—it gets the Revelation spoken, it shows that Ilsa is scared of her own insight, it shows that she's not so stupid that she continues alienating the guy with the letters of transit, and most importantly, it forces Rick to act not with anger but with compassion... where if what she said stood, he'd be defensive and unmoving. Oh, it also shows something about her character, that she really does still love him.

But see, all of the above are making the Revelation not a resolution but a conflict. Should I believe Rob Schneider? Is Ilsa just trying to shame me into giving her what she wants? Do I love her more than my pride? Can I risk loving her especially now I know how far she'll go to protect her husband? All these will lead not to a static scene where something is imparted from on high, but an active scene where the character has to do more than accept the obvious—he has to create his own realization, take his own next step on the journey.

You know, it always comes down to Show, Don't Tell, doesn't it?

That is, if you've got a message to impart, write a bumper sticker. If you're going to create a story, make something happen and cause something else to happen, and let your characters' changes play out in the scenes.

Alicia