On the Editor Roundtable Podcast, where we analyze movies for story structure, the question of subtext comes up a lot. Subtext seems easier to detect in a movie than in writing because film gives us actors’ expressions, background visuals and sounds, camera techniques, music.
In a novel all you’ve got is text. Words on the page.
What does subtext even mean for the novelist?
Think of it as negative space. There’s a Japanese aesthetic concept called ‘ma’ — the pure, essential, void between all things.
Subtext in your writing is what isn’t there: the void inside the pot, the room between the walls. But it is absolutely defined by what is there. And in writing, what is there comes in two forms: the text (your words on the page) and the context (the reader’s own thoughts and expectations).
What you leave unsaid is going to be shaped in the reader’s mind by:
- Your story’s genre
- What they’ve read so far
- Where they are in the story (beginning, middle, end)
- Cover blurbs, cover art, reviews
- Life experience
- The wider culture
Two examples
Let’s look at two examples of text laden with subtext. The first is from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
Blomkvist blanched.
Two words. The text doesn’t say, “In all his years on the force, Blomkvist had never seen anything so horrible.” It implies it. How?
We have personal context: we know what blanched means and we probably know how it feels when shock drains the blood from our face. And we have previous text: We know from what we’ve read so far that Blomqvist is an experienced, life-hardened man. That’s a piece of information that was text earlier and has now become subtext.
Note that everything the reader has read so far becomes subtext for the current point in your story.
The second example comes from my novel Restraint:
Though the chilly rain had reddened Waterfield’s nose, given him the sniffles, plastered his golden brown hair to his forehead in stringy, darkened waves, and ruined his neckcloth, it was remarkable how handsome he still looked.
The text doesn’t say, “Tristan rarely noticed details, but he felt so attracted to Waterfield that he was keenly focused on the minutiae of his appearance.” It doesn’t have to. We learned earlier that Tristan not a detail-oriented person, and that fact is now subtext.
Importantly, we know from the book cover that this is a love story; what’s more, the scene takes place early in the beginning hook, where attraction between the principal characters is expected and required.
Why is subtext so important?
Despite poems about clay jars and wheels and the void, it’s really not terribly mystical:
- Subtext saves words.
- Subtext replaces blatant exposition.
- Subtext proves that you trust your own text — that you have honed and clarified it so that it doesn’t need repeating.
- Subtext makes every line of dialogue, every description, every character action do double or triple duty.
- Subtext shows that you trust your reader’s intelligence.
- Subtext gives your reader the satisfaction of discovering your meaning for themselves.
- Subtext increases your reader’s reading pleasure and engagement.
That last point alone is reason enough to master the subject. Everything else will follow.