Write it well, and readers will be eager to decode it

Have you ever walked away from a relatively simple story moved beyond compare? Have you wondered why tales at all lengths can resonate for days, months, years, and decades? Why a book about a scholar in ancient Greece, a world away from the life you know, can transcend the shackles of time and become relevant to you, specifically?

The simple answer: Subtext.

Subtext is the tension between the literal text and its underlying themes. It may refer to the implicit meaning of a character’s actions or words, or the secret message of the overall story. It is what’s happening in a scene that’s not explicitly stated, but understood by the audience on an intuitive, subconscious level. It is the story beneath the story, all that is said without being said. It is what everything means, even if meaning can almost always be left up to individual interpretation.

No matter how society bends and changes with the waves of time, and how distant we grow from one another, subtext reveals that we are all connected. Intuition, authenticity, and sincerity rise above the physical realm. Whether a book’s characters are tapping away on digital tablets or carving runes into stone ones, those characters are still human. Subtext reveals the web of innate, instinctual undercurrents that run through the blood of our species as a whole.

It is what transforms a story about a young woman who must sell her family’s coffee shop into one about loss, grief, and growing up. It is what makes a tale of doomed romance in the 1800s into a tale of how petty conflict plagues the world. It is why a story about a mermaid leaving home appeals to anyone who yearns to chase the horizon and find themselves in a whirlwind of self-discovery.

Through subtext, writers explore ways to tether deep, meaningful, and often universal themes to an infinite array of circumstances.

Crafting Subtext: A Starting Point

According to Ernest Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory, the deeper meaning of a story should never be evident on the surface, because it should shine through implicitly. He believed that a writer should only include a small part of what’s truly going on, a tip of the iceberg, if you will, and allow the rest to be ruminated on by the reader. It should be implied or hinted at, never actually revealed. This makes the art of weaving subtext through a story more fun for the writer, and unraveling the threads more engaging for the reader.

Consider this prompt:

• What would you like your story to be about? Pick a theme. It doesn’t have to be profound, it just has to be something you can string through the background of a story. Let’s say you’ve selected, “the power of community and acceptance.”
• Now, you get to select a setting and characters that needn’t have any surface level connection to your theme. For example, the setting is a space-faring, iron warship modeled after traditional pirate vessels traversing the farthest reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy. Steampunk space pirates will serve as your cast.
• Your goal is to write a story that conceals your theme. All descriptions, plot developments, and dialogue must hide it like the biggest and most precious secret in the galaxy.

This has helped me launch into new narrative adventures, clawing through the trenches of writer’s block, on many occasions. I think this is because, in a way, it mimics real life. All of us enter the world with our own sense of personal subtext. It affects every action we take and every word we speak, yet because it typically spawns from a web of private matters, we’ll do anything to keep it under wraps.

Starting a new project from a point of subtext means starting a protagonist off like a real human being.

Technically speaking, subtext might be considered the house within which symbolism, metaphor, and every other literary device lives and thrives. In prose, it is found in things such as language, form, and narrative technique. In film, it is usually laced within spoken lines and cinematography. Regardless of form, the actual text — the text we read — carries the plot, action, conflict, and dialogue. The subtext is created by a combination of tone, mood, atmosphere, and emotion.

Want vs Need

The tension between text and subtext is usually connected to the tension between want and need. In all stories, the protagonist has something that they want. It may be quite literal or quite abstract. They may wish for exuberant wealth. They may yearn for safety and stability. They may want, simply, to be happy. A character’s actions throughout the plot, just like a real person’s actions throughout their life, are driven by want. Their goals circumnavigate around it, and this propels the narrative forward in a way that creates and maintains dramatic tension.

The only force more powerful than want in a story is need. A greater need almost always exists beyond a character’s conscious perception. By the end, come hell or high water, it is often revealed.

A character might want to be rich because they think it will make them happy. So, the story is about how they execute a plan to rob a bank. In truth, they needed love and acceptance to be happy, and money was something they thought would provide social merit. On their journey to rob the bank, they end up in a spontaneous and surprising relationship with a police officer assigned to the case. They fall in love, and the deeper need is thus revealed.

As a writer, you have a lot of room to play in this sandbox. Give your character a whole host of wants, some frivolous and some meaningful. Then, as their sovereign overlord, assign a need from which all these wants have spawned. Now, it is up to you to hold that need as far from them as possible as they strive for their wants on an unknown — and perhaps unwilling — quest for what lies beneath. Hide it from them until the climax has been crossed, just as you’ll hide the subtext from your readers.

Keep It Covert

Irish poet and playwright Seamus Heaney once said, “Whatever you say, say nothing.”

As you work with subtext, don’t be afraid to fancy yourself a bit of an evil mastermind. Talk around the truth, and trust that your readers are just as brilliant and dastardly as you, if not more so. They will be on a constant hunt for meaning, a constant quest to unearth the mysteries of your work.

Conversations between authors and readers transcend time. Bram Stoker died in 1912, yet hundreds of thousands of readers still speak to him through Dracula. We are still in communication, Stoker aware of subtext we may never truly know the depth of. As readers, we’ll certainly try, though. You’re the greatest secret-keeper in the story you’ve created, and your readers are hardened detectives hungry for answers. Keep it covert, and you’ll keep them coming back for more.

If that all sounds a little too super villain for your liking, don’t worry. Humans are as complex as they are simple, and as simple as they are complex. Well-executed subtext behaves the way it does because well-executed subtext mimics human behavior. If you understand human behavior, you’ll both craft and pick up on subtext with a lot more ease.

There is simply no such thing as an “ordinary person” in storytelling or in life. People are fractals. The deeper you delve into them, the more complex they become. The beautiful unraveling of a friend, family member, or partner happens only when a foundation of trust has been built. Why shouldn’t readers have to earn that same sort of trust from your characters?

Powerful dialogue abides by the mechanics of real human speech. People off the page rarely say what they mean, but no matter how evasive they may be, honest emotion exists behind even the most convincing lies. In tandem with literary studies, I like to dip my toes into psychology and sociology. They uncover the hidden world of humanity down to its most nuanced patterns. In those patterns, we see a real-life demonstration of Show, Don’t Tell.

We are often happy to tell each other many things, many harmless untruths that protect and obscure. You could be having the worst day of your life, yet when asked, “How are you feeling?” by a friend, you might say, “I’m doing great!” Externally, you instantly averted eye contact. Your lower lip fell into the subtlest of quivers. You didn’t tell them the truth, you showed them.

Speech and text are surface; they are social, acceptable, polite. Subtext is below the surface; it is intuitive, raw, untamed. In storytelling, as in life, people talk around the truth until they can no longer do so. In the event that a truth must finally, explicitly be told, it is typically a moment of climactic thrill. Whether it is the vulnerable reveal of a middle school crush, or a king professing he poisoned his kingdom’s water supply, an instance where the truth is no longer being refracted through mist and haze is profound.

The perception of subtext works similarly to how we perceive things in our real lives. It asks us — in audience mode — to read characters the same way we read those around us. So, in a way, books have body language. Craft it with purpose. Play with its subtleties. Believe in your readers’ ability to decode all that you’ve woven behind the words, and your work will manifest as an eternal conversation between what is on the page and what lies beyond.