Chances are, in your day-to-day life, you more or less fall into one of two camps:
- You see subtext in everything, from casual exchanges with your coworkers to deep discussions with your partner. The danger is you might (and probably do) misread the subtext.
- You take everything at face value. Everyone says exactly what they mean and means exactly what they say. The danger here is that you may (and probably do) totally miss a whole layer of meaning.
Side note for novelists and memoirists, too: either extreme has delicious promise for sparking a cascade of conflict and misunderstanding, don't you think?
I've been thinking a lot about subtext in books and how it supercharges the reader's imagination and invites them to be a co-creator with the author. Through the magic of subtext, a reader isn't just visualizing a setting and the characters who populate it, they are imagining characters' hidden motivations and their secrets. Subtext lets us know how these characters really feel. Perhaps the subtext also invites the reader to hold up a mirror to their own lives in a way they hadn't before.
In The Art of Subtext, Charles Baxter points out that the airplane read of choice is often something like a spy thriller or a romance--books where all the action and tension is right there on the surface, clearly visible on the page. The reason according to Baxter? A lot of people when they fly don't want to engage the imagination or think about other possibilities. They want the easy comfort of a tried and true plot--something that will take them out of the stress and annoyance of air travel. Baxter goes on to write about what subtext is and how to build it in your writing, and I highly recommend reading the book if you haven't and revisiting it if you have. I'm on a second read myself.
Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" is so often trotted out as an example of subtext that you probably are not at all surprised that I've mentioned it. I believe this is because the story is made almost entirely of subtext. Even if you've heard the story mentioned a thousand times (and you've read it just as many--but no spoilers here in case you haven't!) it's worth scanning it to see how it is you know what the story is about even though it's never stated outright.
But there are plenty of other examples of subtext all across fiction. I'd love to know:
π What is one of your favorite examples of subtext from literature or film? I may share your response in the newsletter next week!
Recommended Reading
Wishing you an excellent writing week ahead β¨
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