How to Use Subtext and the Art of Dramatic Tension in Fiction
Before I became a writer, I studied acting. Outside of a few college productions, a foray into street theater, and a Carmel Carpet commercial where I sprang back and forth like a goat from one carpet to another, I didn’t get very far as an actor. I enjoyed studying acting more than the actual business of acting, and I loved the community and camaraderie of fellow actors and being part of an ensemble.
However, once I became a parent, I quickly realized that being away from my family for long hours of rehearsal, possibly for weeks and months (if I was ever lucky enough to land a role) felt untenable. My life in the theater had come to an end.
I began writing seriously. I wrote stories and poems as a teenager and when I returned to college as an adult, I took poetry and creative writing classes. But it was in an MFA fiction program that I realized I knew very little about writing fiction.
What I did know were Aristotle’s six elements of drama: character, plot, thought, diction, spectacle, and song. I approached crafting a story the only way I knew how, by using some of the techniques I’d learned as an actor. I created character through behavior, inner monologue, dialogue, and motivation.
In acting, the interior life and the character’s objective often remain unspoken, revealed as subtext in the undercurrent of what isn’t being said. In fiction, the interior life is often on the page. But as in any good play, fiction needs dramatic tension and conflict to keep the reader turning the page. It needs subtext, the unconscious implicit desire that motivates a character to behave explicitly. Subtext is the silent longing that adds depth and richness to a story.
Here are five storytelling elements that I learned to work with in my own writing to create dramatic tension through the use of subtext. I hope they inspire you to experiment with your own work.
Know What Motivates Your Characters
No matter if you’re a by-the-seat-of-your-pants writer or someone who methodically plans and outlines every chapter, you need to know your characters. Not only their background, where they come from, who their parents are, what schools they went to, their high school crush, who they love, or who they secretly envy—the writer must understand what motivates their character.
We need to know their psychological and emotional life. Motivation and objective are the important engines that propel a character (and story) forward. Ask yourself, what does my character want? What is her external conflict versus her internal conflict?
In my novel, The Anatomy of Exile, my main character, Tamar, leaves Israel with her family after the death of her sister-in-law in what appears to be a terror attack but is in fact a crime of passion. However, Tamar’s husband, Salim, doesn’t know it was a crime of passion. When he tells Tamar that he wants to leave home for five years, to have some distance from the tragedy of his sister’s death and to live out his American dream, she is forced to concede.
Her external conflict is that she doesn’t want to leave home; her inner conflict is that she knows who killed her sister-in-law, but to reveal this secret would reveal her culpability and betrayal. And yet the irony and dramatic tension is that if her husband knew the truth, he would not uproot the family. Everything Tamar says and does is colored by this knowledge. This is the subtext. This is what creates the dramatic tension for the reader because they are left wondering if Salim will ever find out the truth.
Embed Subtext in Your Dialogue
A great vehicle to introduce and heighten dramatic tension through subtext is in dialogue. Embedding the subtext in the dialogue comes down to what a character is hiding, or what they’re trying to find out. What motivates them is desire.
Every piece of dialogue in a story functions as a device to move the story forward, to reveal plot and character. Just as in creating subtext in the character (external conflict versus internal conflict), in dialogue it is what isn’t said, but remains lurking under the surface. A story will often have one character that wants something from the other—that desire creates tension and conflict, especially when the other character refuses to give character A what they want.
In my novel, Tamar wants her daughter to stop seeing a particular boy; she tries telling her daughter that the boy isn’t suitable, but her daughter rebels against this. Without her daughter’s knowledge, Tamar witnesses a kiss between the two. That night at dinner, the conversation is freighted with this knowledge. Neither Tamar nor her daughter mention the boy and the kiss. Her daughter can barely contain her happiness and Tamar’s sense of dread is infused in every word she utters and in every action she performs. All of this speaks to what she has witnessed and the fear that it elicits. The subtext is what she and her daughter hold back. What they do not say adds a layer of tension to an already fraught situation.
Reveal Emotion Through Behavior
Sometimes, as in life, a character might not know what they feel, or want. They may be in denial. Behavior can reveal unconscious thoughts and emotions.
Take a character who is anxious because they have to give a difficult speech. Instead of saying that they are nervous, they might drink a little more wine, or eat their feelings, or self-medicate. They might even pick a fight with their spouse. A character’s behavior is a window to their inner life.
I tried to convey Tamar’s anguish through behavior that she is unaware of. In that dinner table scene after she witnesses the kiss between her daughter and the boy upstairs, Tamar realizes that she’s prepared too many dishes for a weeknight. She has behaved in a way that is unusual for her. The behavior is the subtext, a reflection of her anxiety and fear for her daughter. Tamar, who normally has a good appetite, picks at her food. When her daughter and Salim, Tamar’s husband, talk about the family upstairs, Tamar tries to veer the conversation in a different direction. No one else knows why Tamar is behaving this way. This is the subtext in the scene.
I like to think of a scene as a layer cake. The top layer reveals the character through dialogue and behavior. The bottom layer is the unconscious and/or conscious desire. An example of the top layer might be a discussion a woman has with her husband who has come home late from work again. The bottom layer reflects her secret dread that he may be having an affair. Instead of confronting him about it, she pretends everything is business as usual and talks to him about her day with the kids. Sandwiched between the dialogue and her fear is the murky stuff that is never spelled out, except in the telling behavior she has no control over, the small gestures that reveal the character’s unconscious mind.
Use Setting to Stage Your Scenes
Another element in which a writer can embed subtext and create dramatic tension is in the setting. In The Art of Subtext, Charles Baxter’s excellent book on the subject, he states that there is an element of staging (12). When staging a scene, we position the characters just so, create the time of day, the place, and the mood.
Take the scene in Shirley Jackson’s harrowing short story, “The Lottery,”—the story opens with a description of a fine day in late June. All the townspeople are gathering in the square. There is an air of celebration. The only hint that something untoward is about to unfold is in the offhand description of the pile of rocks. Even the youngest citizens of this bucolic town are contributing rocks and pebbles to the pile. They’ve carried them in their pockets, they’ve held them in their sweaty palms.
The subtext in the opening of “The Lottery” is created in the way the “stage is set.” There is something almost too perfect about this town and its people. Jackson, being the skilled author that she is, raises our discomfort level, though we don’t yet know why. The tension between our fear that something terrible is about to happen, and the beauty and the “all Americanness” of this town is brought to the surface and yet the subtext is buried beneath it, unspoken. This is what creates the dramatic tension in the story.
Be Intentional With Your Prose
Here the writer relies on description, the deliberate way words are chosen to describe place, time, feeling, character, mood, tone, and style. Is the style of the prose punchy and fast-paced or is it slow and deliberate? If it is punchy and fast, what is the author saying about the story, about the characters and the narrative themes the author is trying to explore?
Think about the tension and conflict between how a thing is described and the action. For example, in The Great Gatsby, Gatsby has arranged to meet Daisy at Nick’s cottage. Gatsby is so tense he can barely breathe and we as readers feel the immense pressure he is under. We wonder what will happen between these two characters. Fitzgerald describes the rain outside and a clock ticking on the mantel. It ticks until Gatsby inadvertently knocks it to the ground. The subtext is clear in the metaphor—time stops. Gatsby is desperate for time to stop. He wants to return to the days when he was courting Daisy, before she married Tom. That afternoon, when Gatsby and Daisy fall in love all over again, the rain stops and the sun comes out.
Subtext makes use of all the sensory elements. It can add to the mood of a scene. It is the unspoken history between two characters that is then played out without being referred to. It is a couple in a long marriage who have lost a child. They eat breakfast, one looks out the window and sees a red tricycle, the same color tricycle as their child’s. Nothing is said and yet we see the loss, the unconscious way they punish themselves and each other. All of that history might be loaded into that scene on that particular day because of the red tricycle. The child, whose name is never uttered, haunts the scene, and the subtext is the painful loss, the accusation, and the guilt.
In all cases, subtext is what’s implied but not explicitly stated. When done well, creating subtext in a story adds layers of richness to the characters and narrative themes. It conveys deeper meanings and emotions hidden beneath the surface level of dialogue, action, and description, and ultimately fosters a more complex, profound and compelling narrative.
Check out Zeeva Bukai’s The Anatomy of Exile here:
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