Subtext: There’s Something Else in There Under the Words
After you’ve got your fast draft down, it’s time to start thinking of adding subtext to your story.
So what exactly is it?
Subtext is craft under-the-craft. It’s what you, the author, consciously does to manipulate your story to keep your reader excited about your story. It’s tension above and beyond what you are creating with your plot.
Subtext is a little complicated, but also a lot of fun. It’s the little things we do with our words to keep our reader in a constant state of questioning, of wanting more of our story and our characters.
It’s kind of what keeps our reader in suspense, a little off kilter…
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| (freefoto.com, image #14-19-53,) |
Here goes…
I’m not really sure when I learned what subtext is. Like most things, you might read about something but not really “get” it until much later.
I’m still not sure I’ve “got it,” but I think I’m starting to understand it better.
It takes a lot of experience to master subtext, because it requires a lot of conscious manipulating of the text to keep the reader asking questions, wondering what’s going to happen next, etc.
Elizabeth Lyon, in her book Writing Subtext, says “Teachers, agents, and editors often tell writers that every story should be about ‘the thing and the other thing.’ Two sources of tension and suspense: from plot and from subtext. What is overt and what is covert. If there are multiple things happening between the lines, then you have that many more sources of tension, subterranean focus, thematic possibilities, and character motivations.”
So subtext is another level of meaning the operates under the plot. It’s multiple layers of meaning under the words. According to Wikipedia, it’s (and this is paraphrased) “content that’s not announced explicitly.”
Subtext takes thought, planning, and revision on the part of the author to consciously place it there, under the events that are going on in the story. Lyon likens it to being an illusionist, who does things with one hand while surprising you with something happening in the other.
Subtext plays a big part in foreshadowing what might happen next in the story. It takes the form of subtle hints keep your readers on their toes and keep them turning pages.
Here are some examples:
–Using subtext to develop character by creating hidden agendas and motives. A man may bring coffee every morning to his grandmother. Neighbors think he’s the best grandson ever. But maybe he’s not. Maybe what he’s really doing is trying to catch the attention of Gran’s hot next door neighbor. Or casing out her house so he can rob it when she’s on vacation. The subtle clues you drop through this character’s point of view that hint to one reason or the other–that’s subtext.
–Nature–e.g., a downpour erupts at the black moment. Okay, that is pretty cliche. Let’s try another: hero is driving through the hot, dry, dead-looking desert, desert reflects the barrenness in his life. You’ve used nature to reflect a feeling going on inside the character.
–Discordant details. When a detail is introduced that is discordant to all the others, it can signal something. One tiny green sprout in the middle of that cracked dry landscape might signal hope.
–Sexual attraction: Two characters may “hate” each other but they may do subtle things that give away their attraction for one another. For example, one makes an embarrassing Freudian slip. Blurts out something unexpected. Your heroine may get caught checking out the hero’s backside. These things create an undercurrent of sexual tension beneath their protests that they hate one another. Your reader knows they don’t really hate one another–and bigger things are coming.
–Subtext foreshadowing danger. Creepy things a villain might say can foreshadow menace to your character. An unease your character might feel might lead you to believe something bad is going to happen to him/her. A change in the weather for the worse can reflect the dangerous story mood.
–When the reader knows something the character doesn’t. This leads us to keep reading to find out when the character is going to find out, will he or she be okay, etc.
–Symbols can be used in all kinds of ways to reinforce theme. I’ve mentioned weather above. Cutting a rope can symbolize freedom. An old Victorian house that my heroine loves and is associated with strong memories of her youth can symbolize her dreams and wishes for happiness and a real home. An old necklace a heroine wears intentionally to remind herself of an awful past can remind her she is never, ever going back there. (There are many ways to use symbols throughout your story to support theme, this is just a tiny taste.)
–Subtext in dialogue. Two characters are talking about one thing, when they are really talking about something else. In a romance novel, this undercurrent can be sexual.
This dialogue example is from my current manuscript. Hero and heroine were hight school sweethearts. It’s now ten years later and they have lots of reasons not to get along. The hero has come to the heroine’s place to make amends and has just run into her father leaving. This is dialogue between the hero and heroine right after her dad leaves:
In this example, I imply but never explicitly state what happened on that long-ago field trip, but you get a good idea from what is not said.
–The most important use of subtext is to reinforce the theme of your story. The objects, colors, weather and seasons, repeated words or phrases, many of these special details you specifically choose, should all contribute to the underlying meaning you wish to convey. If your theme is about forgiveness, the hero jumping into a clear, cold stream and feeling revived and alive can support this theme. Or in reverse, the heroine’s hair getting caught on an unforgiving branch can be a subtle hint about theme in reverse.
Told you that was a little complex, but worth it trying to understand that there is so much more to writing a story than what’s going on in the plot.
Off the top of your head, can you think of any examples of subtext from something you’ve just read?
(If you know of any books that address subtext, please feel free to suggest! The one below is a booklet.)
Source: Writing Subtext: How to craft subtext that develops characters, boosts suspense, and reinforces theme, by Elizabeth Lyon, 2013.
Does Routine Unleash Creativity?
I ‘ve been wondering if there is some way to enhance creativity. To free your mind so that it can imagine endless scenarios and ideas that would make plotting easier.
Easier? That’s funny. I’m old enough to know nothing, absolutely nothing, in life is easy.
(Well, maybe for some people but I’m just talking about most of us under the bell curve here.)
I’ve been given the suggestions of mind-altering drugs, alcohol, caffeine, chocolate, yoga, journaling, or meditation, but I’m not sure there is an easy answer.
Twyla Tharp, in her classic book The Creative Habit, gives us some clues to the dilemma of creative work when she says, “If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and why the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.”
And skill is learnable. But it’s hard work.
We have a saying in my family. “Hard work trumps talent unless talent works hard.”
This is optimistic. It means that if you are not born with Supertalents, you can still succeed.
So none of us knows how good we can be, how far we can go. All we can do is give it our all every day and stick to our routines and keep working.
Tharp expounds the benefits of routine, hard work, determination, commitment, and constant hard work in any artistic profession where you first must find out what problem you are going to solve and then set about figuring out how you are going to solve it.
She feels that routine is as much of the creative process or even more than the lightning bolt of inspiration that may or may not come, or comes as it may. But it’s a lot more likely to come if we sit in our chairs and keep struggling.
The uncertainty of the creative process often leads to living in a state of constant anxiety which many famous writers have used mind-altering substances to relieve.
So we don’t want to go there. But I love Tharp’s optimism, that with hard work and passion we can go forward, bold and fearless, to accomplish despite the presence of fear.
So does this mean that creativity get released, paradoxically, when we build the strictest of routines to house it?
It reminds me of something my mom and dad used to say a lot. “Just do your best.” And I’ll add something that was circulating on Facebook a while ago, “and try not to suck.”
Twyla Tharp. The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life. Simon and Shuster, 2003.
Don’t Forget Your Second Banana: Secondary Characters in Your Novel
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| “Sunshine on My Bananas.” |
Goals are Good
I was thinking about organizing myself for 2014.
The past few years, I’ve looked forward to YA writer Katy Upperman‘s yearly blog post on goals. You can read it and while you’re at it, also check out her link to a great post goal setting here.
Katy taught me the importance of setting monthly goals, which I write down and keep in front of me on my desk. I also write yearly writing goals and tuck them into the back of my Bible. Because can you really forget anything you tuck into the back of your Bible?
I am a closet hoarder. From the outside, my house looks pretty clean and neat. But look in any closet and dear Lord! Here are some organizational problems I have and how I vow to resolve them and become a better, more organized person in 2014:
–I will keep no more than fifty emails in my inbox at one time. Chuckle. That’s all I’m saying about that one.
–I will stop compulsively saving decorating magazines which are in two giant piles taking up room in my closet. I don’t know why I do this, other than looking at beautiful things makes me…happy. But the piles are out! And they will take some time to reaccumulate.
–I will stop shoving things in my front hall closet so guests can actually put their coats there instead of on the back of the living room couch. Stash nothing, toss everything, right?
–I will stop buying books and hiding them under the bed. My friends know I almost kicked this habit a year ago, but the pile is ba–ack, bigger and better than ever, even though I am using my kindle more and more. If I was stranded in my room for years, let’s just say lack of reading material would not be a problem.
–I will stop allowing the mail pile to take over my kitchen. I know, I know. Handle it once, sort it right away, pitch everything possible. Sounds so simple, right?
–I will call the 800 numbers to stop delivery of half my catalogs, most of which I hoard in a pile and then end up recycling before I even look at them.
–I have to clean my attic. It is loaded with fake flower arrangements, another compulsion.
–I will stop buying fake flower arrangements. Even though I love them because they are colorful and bright and make me happy in a city where it is cloudy a lot of the year.
–Also, are those not-yet-born grandchildren ever going to play with their parents’ toys cluttering my attic? What about those precious dog-eared children’s books I just can’t seem to part with, remembering all those wonderful hours of reading stories to my kids?
–I will take my recycle bags to the grocery story every time. Every time, that is, that my kids don’t toss them out of the car at random to make more from for themselves and their stuff.
–And even take recycle bags to other shopping, like at the mall, which I never do. Why not?
–If I get under contract this year, I will pay someone to deep clean my house once a month because it will no longer be worth my time. Actually, I almost never deep clean anyway! My daughters and son were helping me do this long-neglected work over break. The oldest asked, what’s a baseboard? Very scary.
–I will try yoga for stress relief. Just…because.
–I will eat more foods that I can’t pronounce like quinoa and jicama and make sure half my plate is veggies at every meal. (Another chuckle.)
–I will be more balanced. I will read more of those amazing books waiting in my kindle or under my bed. I will stop obsessing over whether I am good enough, fast enough, talented enough and simply do what author Robin Covington posted on Facebook one day (and this might be a paraphrase): Do Your Best and Try Not to Suck.
–That is the best advice I read all year. As I prepared to turn in edits to my agent for the first time this past fall, I was terrified. Every morning I would sit at my computer and think, dear God, someone is going to read this and freeze. So I wrote that little saying down and put it in front of me. Because that’s all any of us can do. And there is some kind of great relief in that. Just do your best and try not to suck. Simply saying that takes some cosmic burden off my shoulders and allows me to forge on.
Happy new year, everyone. I wish you health, happiness and peace in the year ahead.
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| Speaking of fake flower arrangements…one of my faves. |
Grit is the Quality Most Correlated with Success: TED Talk with Angela Lee Duckworth
Dr. Duckworth discussed how you How you build grit in kids but this is important for us every day as well. Kids did best on a task, (i.e., persevered), when they had growth mindset, i.e., the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed but can change with effort. These kids were more likely to persevere when they fail because they don’t believe failure is a permanent condition.
I used to play tennis in high school. I was basically a kid off the street, no lessons, nothing, when my coach discovered my best friend and I hitting balls against a brick wall. (This would never happen these days when kids basically have to be groomed from the womb to play sports. The coach simply told us, show up for practice tomorrow at 9 am and bring your racket.)
That one invitation opened up a whole world for me and I will be forever grateful for it. What I learned from tennis was that it’s not only a physical game that requires skills and practice. When you’re up against an opponent, the game becomes mental. Your own mind becomes the dragon on the court.
Writing to me is a lot like that. We slave for months over our work, mostly alone. Every day when turn on the power button we must slay doubts, face rejections, face fears that we aren’t good enough, that we suck. Often there is no one over our shoulder telling us otherwise–we have to reach deep inside ourselves to come up with the dogged inner strength–the grit–to say–yes, we are.
I wish everyone who struggles with self doubt to watch this video and realize you are not alone. That achieving any kind of goal in life is never easy and with writers, what goes on inside our heads is just as important–no, far more important–as the events that occur outside it.