Often the core of a story is that elusive unsaid meaning that is revealed behind the words and actions we see but how as writer’s can we best reveal it? Filmmaker, consultant and trainer David Pope ran a session at the festival this year to help us define what subtext is and use it to give greater depth and insight to our writing.
David began by pointing out the differing voices with which we speak to different people, we make speak to our bank manager differently than we speak to our mothers, and differently again to a friend or a lover. We adjust our voices for the situation and person we’re interacting with in order to facilitate communication. So too there is an underlying voice of what is unsaid. Not just voice either, there are inner images that flow through our mind behind the outer conversations we have. Characters will talk about their internal and external conflict with different voices and where that voice changes is an opportunity for subtext. A set up and pay off approach works well. When we watch film or TV and know what a character thinks in a moment it’s usually because of something we’ve seen take place earlier.
Subtext is to do with the interior world of the character. It’s something that’s mysterious but also we don’t want to dispel too much of the mystery, the magic from subtext by signalling it too distinctly. But how do we signal it at all? Action, David tells us, including words are the tools we have to work with to reveal nuance and undertone. One of the ways we can access how these types of nuance are made manifest is in the way we understand them from the stories we consume. To become familiar with how great novelists and actors express subtext in their work helps us to understand how we too can express subtext in our work in a way that is tangible without being overt.
As example to take a look at the work of Harold Pinter is to acknowledge the ‘Pinter Pause’ but it is not just the long silences in his work that speak so boldly but the words in which the silence is framed. Of course, instead of a pause we can include and action or evasion in our work to highlight something a character has said and allow our audience to decide if the action, evasion or silence reveal a greater meaning to the scene than the words alone.
Subtext is one of the actions that reveals character and as such it is character driven. We need to think about our character’s flaw or problem when defining the subtleties they will reveal. As screenplays have objectives and super objectives so too we need to think about both the story and scenic level of subtext. The tactics a character uses to get what they want reveal subtext, as is how the environment affects those undertones of story. The audience need to be able to read the subtext in order for it to have meaning.
Subtext adds much to the narrative we write and makes our work more accessible to an audience. It can reflect the foibles of a character or the themes of our overall narrative. Including it adds more feeling and meaning for our audience and it’s worth defining and practising how we shape what is unspoken. It’s worth noting also that in collaborative work actors find and reveal things about their characters too so subtext in screenplays can ofttimes be just a suggestion and mastering the subtleties of it and being able to include meaning in our screenplays may merely be us planting a seed that creative teams on a project to grow.
Leilani is an actor, screenwriter and filmmaker and has been blogging for the London Screenwriters’ Festival since it’s inception in 2010.
