Subtext . . .
What Characters Don't Tell Us

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'. . . there's nothing there except lines of dialogue. If they're sketched correctly and minimally, they will give the audience the illusion that these are 'real people,' especially if the lines are spoken by real people -- the actors are going to fill a lot in. So a large part of the technique of playwriting is to leave a lot out.'

-- David Mamet
And what you leave a lot out of in the dialogue is Subtext. Pushing this just beneath the surface of the dialogue is what makes plays exciting and helps keep audiences in their seats.

Subtext is the unspoken thoughts and motives of your characters -- what they really think and believe.

In well-written dialogue, Subtext seldom breaks through the surface of the dialogue except in moments of extreme Conflict. At other times, it colors the dialogue. Another way of looking at this . . .

Subtext is Content Underneath The Spoken Dialogue

And subtext gives the performers something to do. If you let your characters tell each other everything they think or feel, actors can't do what they're trained to do best: revealing through gesture, intonation, and expression, the real essence of a character.

Here's a bare-bones demonstration, with a debt to Woody Allen . . .

A Facetious But Effective Example of Subtext

And a breakdown of the real thing from the opening lines of Marsha Norman's Pulitzer Prize winning play . . .

Subtext in 'night, Mother

To be fair, it really is possible to write a successful play with almost no subtext. Fortunately, these come few and far between. But when they do, there's . . .

The No-Subtext Play

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