July 30, 2018 • 39 mins
Great dialogue isn’t just about what’s said—it’s about what’s left unsaid. Writing subtext in dialogue helps create realistic, emotionally charged conversations that engage readers and reveal deeper character motivations. In this episode, we break down how to use the "third thing" technique to add layers of meaning to your dialogue without making it feel forced or unnatural.
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(00:00):
Welcome to the inside creative writing podcast.
The weekly discussion of craft and technique for
writers of fiction and creative nonfiction.
And now here's your host, writer and educator,
Brad Reed.
Episode 27,
subtext can be the difference between polished prose
and an amateur sounding story. Today, we look
(00:21):
at one surefire way to add subtext to
your dialogue. We're talking about the third thing.
And welcome back to the Inside Creative Writing
podcast. My name is Brad Reed and I've
got some great news for you before we
jump into today's topic.
As you know, if you've been listening to
the show for a while, I've been working
(00:42):
on building up a Patreon team to support
the show and allow us to offer the
kinds of resources,
that we've got in mind for the show
and the website. Now, we've been putting a
lot of time and effort into things like
our, weekly real time revision videos and other
exclusive resources.
And we've had a lot of fun creating
those for you. But here's the thing.
(01:04):
I kind of feel like Patreon works backwards,
at least for me here with the podcast.
The basic idea of Patreon is that you
support an artist or a resource that you
find valuable
with just a few bucks a month. In
return,
you get access to some rewards and special
content. But that means
that only a very few people get the
(01:26):
benefit of those resources that you're creating as
an artist
and that people have to basically buy in,
even if it's just a few bucks a
month,
before they ever really see what they're going
to be getting. So,
we are changing up how our Patreon team
works and I think this is something that
you're really going to like.
So, starting today,
(01:47):
absolutely everyone has access to all of the
rewards we're creating for our Patreon team for
free
all the
time. Then if you find the rewards valuable,
if they help you with your goals as
a writer, then we simply ask that you
consider supporting the show with a few bucks
a month.
So there's no strings, there's no guilt, just
(02:09):
hey, if you're using the resources and you
like them,
think about helping us keep them coming by,
helping us meet some of our expenses here
at the show. So as little as a
dollar a month,
helps.
And you can cancel that at any time.
So, I wanna invite you all to check
out the now
free to absolutely everyone Patreon rewards
(02:30):
by going to patreon.com/bradreedrights
or by clicking the Patreon link at bradreedwrites.com.
My favorite thing over there is the real
time revision videos
where you get to watch as I put
the techniques that we use on the show,
that we talk about on the show
into action
on my own work in progress, on my
(02:51):
own manuscript. It's a great companion piece to
the podcast.
And now, all of those are free for
you to check out. We've got a bunch
of those up there. So, if you like
the podcast and are interested
to see how I use those in my
actual writing,
free to everybody now are those Patreon resources.
So, I hope you'll check those out.
(03:12):
And, one thing I haven't really done a
great job of with this podcast so far
is
kind of, dropping the curtain a little bit
and letting you see behind the scenes,
of my own writing life. Now, this is
something I actually do quite a bit of
in those real time revision,
Patreon rewards I was talking about, but I
(03:33):
don't do it so much on the podcast.
After hearing back from some of you in
response to our recent listener questionnaire,
I realized that this is something that a
bunch of you would actually appreciate.
And I get that, you know, if you're
going to take
some of my advice on writing, you kinda
wanna know me not just as an educator
or a teacher of writing, but you also
(03:54):
wanna know me as a writer myself.
So, every once in a while, I plan
to just give you a little update on
my current work in progress and my own
kind of successes and struggles, as I'm writing
and revising that. So a bunch of you
told me you'd find that valuable. So now
we're gonna add that little piece in.
We'll go ahead and start today. I'm kind
(04:15):
of in a weird place
with my book right now. I finished the
rough draft
not quite a year ago and have been
plodding along
with a pretty extensive revision since then. It's
been slow going with my teaching schedule and
other commitments that I have, but I've been
generally happy with that progress. I was making
(04:35):
good
forward progress until about a month ago.
As writers, we're always thinking in analogies and
metaphors for our writing. So I often actually
think of my own writing life,
as a kind of metaphor or as a
kind of analogy.
And I think sports, using sports,
often provides an insightful
(04:56):
metaphor
for our writing lives.
And, what I realized is that I'd become
kind of like that football team that gets
so caught up in designing
complex plays or tricky offensive schemes
that I forgot to keep up on those
fundamentals. Right? I forgot to keep running those
tackling drills and I let some of those
(05:18):
fundamentals
slide. Now, here's what I mean by that.
If you follow sports at all,
you've seen that team. Right? And this is
applicable in almost every sport that I've ever
seen. You've seen that team that gets so
caught up in finding the,
ingenious
or clever ways to approach the game that
(05:39):
they stop running basic drills.
Before long, they're losing games and they're just
scratching their heads to figure out what happened.
And, it always comes back to the basics,
the fundamentals.
If you can't make a tackle in football,
all the trick plays and fancy offensive schemes
are not going to help you win games.
(05:59):
Right? You're gonna be losing those games.
And this is where I realized I was
in my own writing.
I was having a blast, and I think
I was doing good work on sentence level
revision of my rough draft,
but something was gnawing at my gut. Something
that said the story still wasn't working
on some
(06:20):
fundamental
level.
Now,
I I had planned so completely and outlined
so completely that, I think I was convincing
myself that all the basics were there. Right?
But I had forgotten about them as I
began this rough draft,
process. So, finally, I paid attention
to that nagging little feeling and decided to
(06:42):
take a step back from that kind of
sentence and word level revision
and look at my basic skills, my fundamentals.
Right? If I was a football team, I'd
be running tackling drills. But, I was looking
at my fundamentals to make sure
that they hadn't slid
backwards.
And often when I do this, I do
it by rereading either a favorite book about
(07:02):
writing,
or I pick up a new one.
Now, I've been studying writing for so long
that there's almost never anything new in the
books that I read. I mean, there are
there are different angles and, you know, different
approaches,
but there's rarely a new revolutionary
idea or a new concept.
And that's true with the book that I
(07:23):
read most recently. I just finished reading The
Story Grid by Sean Coyne.
Now, some of you who may have read
this book,
might be recoiling
a little bit right now,
because it sometimes comes off as very rigid,
very formulaic,
a very formulaic
way of writing a story.
(07:43):
But I'm not sure anybody can make the
argument that that book isn't grounded in fundamental
principles of solid storytelling technique.
So, through reading this book and beginning to
play with some of the techniques that, that
he puts forward in it,
I discovered that I'd gone away from a
vital fundamental.
One of the basics that I thought I
(08:04):
had nailed down and that basic is that
every scene
must move the story forward.
Now through applying some of Sean's techniques,
I was able to see that many of
the scenes I was plowing through and revising
on that sentence level
really needed to be completely
reworked
and a lot of them actually just deleted.
(08:26):
That I was wasting my time trying to
revise them in that way because they weren't,
serving a story function.
So it's one of those discoveries as a
writer that's both, thrilling because I can see
how much better my story can become through
those,
through those that level of revision. But it's
also daunting
because of how much work I still have
(08:48):
ahead of me. In other words, I'm not
as close as I thought I was,
to getting this book,
kind of crafted into its final form. So
I wanna thank you, Sean Coyne, for a
great book and for reminding me that all
the ingenious and creative prose skills in the
world
won't cover up the fact that a book
is missing some of its fundamentals.
(09:19):
So, we're going to be exploring a technique
today that we're calling the third thing.
It's a way to imbue your writing with
that all important and often very mysterious quality
subtext.
Now, rather than give you a textbook definition
of what subtext is,
I wanna share with you how I actually
learned about what it is and and how
(09:41):
it works. So, I mean, after all, we're
storytellers. So it's always better to try to
teach a concept through story, I think. So
I wanna tell you a little bit of
a story
about the moment that I really got
what subtext was and how important it is.
So I don't know about you, but I
can't sleep if it's too quiet. I need
some kind of noise
(10:01):
in the room. And, I used to listen
to music, but as a musician, my mind
would get all caught up in the lyrics
and the chord progressions. And, I'd think about
how the
the musicians,
crafted the arrangement.
And, I couldn't get my mind quiet enough
to sleep.
So, what we did is we tried, switching
on the television which would,
you know, most shows alternate between being really
(10:23):
loud and then really quiet or they have
too many flashing lights or every time it
would change to a new scene, the lighting
would be different. So, it was distracting.
So what we did, we we finally, stumbled
across the perfect solution
for my wife and I. So when we're
ready to go to sleep, we put on
the nineties sitcom Frasier.
Now, first of all, we've seen all the
(10:44):
episodes
so many times that we no longer get
caught up in the story.
And it becomes almost like a gentle background
noise. Something familiar,
in the background. And also,
the scenes are always consistently either in Frasier's
radio station or at
his home. So there's no dramatic
(11:04):
change of lighting
between scenes, so the light is always fairly
even and actually calming. Now, I'm not sure
that's a great habit to get into. Right?
Sleeping with the television on. But we found
that that it works for us and it's
something we've done for years. I think we've,
watched, quote unquote watched,
the whole,
you know, all the series of Frasier's,
(11:25):
I don't know how many times, way too
many times. So,
alright. So here's that seems like a roundabout
way to get to subtext, but here's how
it's all connected to subtext.
So about a year or so ago, we
were staying at a hotel and it means
that we have a TV that we're not
familiar with, how it works.
So I hook up my little Chromebook, computer
to the TV,
(11:46):
and that's how we play Frasier, right, at
at night so that, we can relax and
go to sleep.
So we put on Frasier and we fall
asleep.
And instead of having the TV just turn
off in the middle of the night like
the one at our home does,
the TV at some point in this hotel
switches over somehow, I don't know, to the
Disney Channel in the middle of the night.
(12:08):
So I wake up to the Disney Channel
playing,
on a Saturday morning. Now, if you've ever
watched the Disney Channel,
maybe accidentally or on purpose on a Saturday
morning, you know that it's not,
I'm gonna offend some people, you know it's
not
necessarily quality written television. Right? This is television
that often gets, cranked out very fast.
(12:30):
And,
anyway, enough said about that. If you've seen
it, you know what I mean.
So here I am exhausted from a late
night.
It's the morning. I can't find the remote
because I'm literally just kind of reaching around
the bed, and if it's not there, I'm
too tired to get up and get it.
So I just lay there and
listen to this Disney Channel television show for
a while. Now, I have no idea
(12:53):
what show I'm actually listening to. I wish
that I knew so I could go back
and and kind of study it a little
more in-depth.
But I find myself getting really annoyed
by the show.
Now, of course, I am not the target
market for a Disney Channel show. I get
that. But this was beyond just missing the
target market. There was something about the way
(13:14):
the characters were speaking to each other
that started driving me absolutely crazy.
And I realized what I was hearing
was actually a very important writing lesson in
what not to do.
And what I realized before long was that
the reason it was making me so nuts
and was so absolutely miserable to listen to
(13:36):
was that all the characters
were simply saying exactly what was on their
mind.
So if one character, you know, was in
love with another they'd just say, I love
you.
If that character wasn't in love back they'd
say, Well, I don't love you.
Then one could say something like, I'm hungry.
And, Fred would respond with, Let's go eat.
(13:57):
Right? Now, those weren't the words exactly. But,
that was essentially the level
of the dialogue.
If a character was thinking it, the character
just came right out and said it, plain
as day, word for word. And it was
the worst
piece of dialogue
that I've ever tried to listen to.
Now I'm sure Disney has some good shows.
(14:18):
Actually, I'm not so sure, but again, I'm
not the target market.
But that morning proved to be a huge
writing lesson for me. On some level,
we hate to hear people say exactly what
they're thinking. Now, we think that that's what
we want in life and in our in
our entertainment. Right? We want things to be
clear, concise, and direct,
(14:39):
but we don't actually want that. We're gonna
explore why that is in just a little
in just a little bit. It goes beyond
just that it's not natural,
that that's not the way people actually talk.
What I realized is that it's incredibly
insulting
to the audience
to have
dialogue like
that. Now, we've grown up to become
(15:01):
absolute experts in reading between the lines of
what people say. I'm absolutely convinced
that we communicate more through what we imply
but don't actually say
than what we actually say. Now that
is subtext. Right? What are we implying?
It's beating around the bush, or it's hinting
(15:23):
about something but never quite coming out and
saying it directly. It's revealing just enough
to sneak a message through to someone who
is in tune to receive it. Somebody who's
really listening.
Now, it's one of the hardest things to
do in our writing, the subtext, whether prose
or screenplay,
But it's absolutely
(15:44):
vital
that we figure out how to do it.
Otherwise, our readers are, at least metaphorically,
desperately searching for the remote to change the
channel before you drive them crazy
with your inane,
on the nose dialogue.
So, subtext is a huge
subject and one we could devote episode after
(16:04):
episode to. So, rather than do that today,
rather than try to bite off that much
material, we're going to look at one simple
technique, one of a bunch of techniques,
that can be used to help imbue your
writing with subtext.
It's actually my favorite technique, partially because it's
so effective,
but also because it's one of the easier
(16:24):
ones to teach and then immediately be able
to use in your own writing. Now, a
lot of the credit for the technique in
today's show goes to Robert McKee,
a legend of storytelling. He's the author of
the book, Dialogue,
that you really should own and devour. Read
it over and over again if you wanna
be an expert
on writing dialogue for prose or especially for
(16:45):
screenplay.
I'm hoping though that we can expand on
what he talks about in that book and
give it a little more,
real world application because I've found this technique
so helpful
in my own writing.
So basically, the idea of the third thing
is this.
Have your characters talk about something other
(17:07):
than what they are really wanting to talk
about. And use that thing as a kind
of metaphor
for what they wish they could just come
right out and say. So, in other words,
have them talk about a third thing that
is somehow
safer
to talk about.
So, what I want to do is play
for you a couple of clips. One of
them is from a TV show, it's actually
(17:29):
from Frasier
And, one of them is from a film.
And both of these things do a good
job of illustrating how this concept
of the third thing works.
So, as I mentioned the first one is
from Frasier. I didn't actually plan that. It
just occurred to me that I talked so
much about that at the beginning and now
I have a clip from it, but I
guess that stands to reason for how much
(17:49):
I end up watching the show.
But this clip comes in an episode where
Daphne if if you haven't watched the show,
Daphne's the longtime
live in physical therapist. So she becomes kind
of a member of the family. But she's
getting ready to move out of the house.
And she's leaving behind Frasier and his father,
and they are they're worried about how much
they're gonna miss her. Right? She's become like
(18:11):
a member of the family.
So in this clip that you're going to
hear, they're sitting around a bar and
rather than have them all say kind of
dumb things like, gee, Daphne, I'm really going
to miss you,
listen to how the writers use a third
thing to get the point across.
Now, this first example is a little heavy
handed,
(18:32):
which means it's a little almost too obvious
what they're trying to do here, but it
makes it a particularly good example of the
technique because it's so obvious. So, what you're
about to hear is Marty. He's, Frasier's dad,
the older man that Daphne has been taking
care of. And he's talking about
how much he's going to miss his favorite
beer. Right? That's the third thing is that
this beer is no longer available. So he's
(18:53):
gonna be talking about how much he's gonna
miss this famous beer or this famous his
favorite beer. But I want you to listen
how he uses the beer as a stand
in
for what he really wishes he could say
to Daphne, who's sitting right there at the
bar with them. Here we go.
Anyway, I should be toasting you. I'm gonna
miss you, you rotten old sod.
(19:15):
Valentine okay? Oh, yeah. That's my beer. Yes.
You know, I just found out they're gonna
quit making this stuff. Really? Yeah. Well, there's
an end of an era.
That's right. It's gonna be one sad day
when I get down to my last one.
You know, it's funny. You get used to
having something in your life. It's part of
(19:36):
your day. Just take it for granted.
Then suddenly it's gone, and you realize how
much it meant to you.
Hey. Hey. Hey, guys. Now what you just
heard is a perfect example of what we're
calling the third thing.
(19:57):
What Marty really wants to do is tell
Daphne how much he's going to miss her.
But what he does is use the beer
as a stand in, And because everybody's,
invested in kind of this emotion and this
feeling, they all get it. Right? Including the
audience. Now, that's subtext.
And, it's much more powerful than obvious
(20:18):
on the nose language because it gives your
audience
the opportunity
to figure it out.
Now, the audience is more engaged in the
story because they played a part
in creating meaning.
Now, when you don't use subtext, when you
just use on the nose language, your audience
is passive. They just sit there and take
(20:38):
in your story. There's no role for them
to play. In other words, they're bored. They're
outside of your story. But subtext,
because it works almost like a little puzzle,
invites them in and engages them.
So let's look next at the example that
Robert McKee,
uses in his book because it's an absolutely
(20:58):
beautiful
piece of subtext in dialogue.
In fact, I'm not sure I've seen
a better scene using subtext in this concept
of the third thing. So, it comes from
this film, Sideways,
and it features Paul Giamatti and Virginia Madsen
as the actors.
In this scene, you're basically hearing what is
the tail end of a first date.
(21:19):
The two
are obviously
very interested in each other, but neither is
ready to come right out and say that.
Right? They're just kinda trying to feel each
other out and beat around the bush to
see if they're a good fit.
And they're both scared because they've both been
burned by previous relationships.
Now, that that's way too much to talk
(21:41):
about on a first date. Right? Can you
imagine sitting down on a first date and
suddenly you're talking about how scared you are
of new relationships and all of this other
baggage?
So instead of that, they,
begin to talk about a third thing, and
that third thing is wine.
Now wine is a passion that they both
share. And I want you to listen to
how they use wine
(22:02):
as that third thing, as a stand in
to talk about themselves
and what their fears are and what their
hopes are in a relationship. So first up,
you're gonna hear the Paul Giamatti character,
and he's talking about his love for Pino.
But listen for what he's really
telling
Virginia Madsen about himself.
(22:24):
You
know, can I ask you a personal question,
Miles?
Sure.
Why are you so into Pinot?
I mean, it's like a thing with you.
I don't know. I don't know.
It's a hard grape to grow,
as you know. Right?
(22:46):
So, it's
thin skinned, temperamental,
ripens early.
It's you know, it's not a survivor like
Cabernet,
which can just grow anywhere and,
thrive even when it's neglected.
No, Pinot needs constant care and attention.
You know, and in fact, it can only
(23:06):
grow in these
really specific little tucked away corners of the
world.
And and only
the most
patient and
nurturing of growers
can do it, really.
Only somebody who really takes the time
to understand
(23:28):
P and O's potential
can then coax it into to its fullest
expression.
And then? I mean,
oh, its flavors, they're just the most haunting
and brilliant and
thrilling and subtle and
ancient
on the
(23:52):
planet. No, I mean, you know, cavernous can
be powerful and exalting too, but they seem
prosaic to me for some reason by comparison,
I don't know.
I don't know.
What about you?
What about me?
Alright. Did you hear that?
He's using wine
to tell her that he's basically fragile.
(24:12):
Right? That he
needs someone who is willing to invest some
real time
into him before he's able to reveal
who he truly is. Right? Or or the
potential
that he actually has.
Now, that's not something you could come right
out and tell someone on a first date
without kind of sounding insane, right, and needy.
(24:33):
But through subtext,
she hears that message loud and clear, and
so does the audience.
Right? The audience has had a chance
to create meaning and to solve that little
puzzle which engages them. So now we're gonna
listen to Virginia Madsen's,
her character's response.
Listen for how she feels
(24:54):
about the subtext that she's just heard and
what she wants him to know about her.
Again, it's all cleverly disguised
as a discussion,
simply about wine.
One word of warning here. She does use
the f word at the end of this
passage, and I'm actually gonna repeat that word
a few times as we kind of unpack
this moment of subject. So, if that bothers
(25:15):
you, just be forewarned that that's coming up
in this clip.
I don't know. Why are you in the
wine?
Oh,
I
think I
I originally got into wine through my ex
husband. Uh-huh.
You know, he had this big
sort of show off cellar, you know? Right.
But then I discovered that I had a
(25:37):
really sharp palate. Mhmm. And the more I
drank,
the more I liked what it made me
think about.
Like what?
Like what a fraud
he
was.
No. I mean,
I like to think about the life of
wine. Yeah.
How it's a living thing.
(26:00):
I like to think about
what was going on the year the grapes
were growing,
how the sun was shining
if it rained.
I like to think about
all the people who tended and picked the
grapes.
And if it's an old wine,
how many of them must be dead by
(26:20):
now?
I like how wine continues to evolve.
Like, if I open a bottle of wine
today, it would taste different than if I'd
opened it on any other day.
Because a bottle of wine is actually alive.
And it's
(26:40):
constantly evolving and gaining complexity.
That is until it peaks,
like you're 61.
And then it begins its
steady,
inevitable decline.
Mhmm.
(27:00):
And it tastes so fucking good.
Alright. Now even though that's subtext, it's loud
and clear, isn't it? It's clear that she's
afraid, right? She's been burned before and she's
afraid of that happening again, but it's also
clear that she's willing
to take the risk of falling in love
(27:22):
again, of having another relationship.
So she's been burned by her last marriage,
but she's fascinated by
and really deeply interested in the idea of
being in love. She wants a relationship that's
deep
and alive and evolving,
a profound
kind of lifelong
love.
(27:43):
And listen to the power of that last
line where she says, and it tastes so
fucking good.
Think about the tension
of the situation. So love is in the
air. Right? There's romantic music in the background.
You couldn't see it in the clip, obviously,
but they're alone together kind of on this,
porch,
(28:03):
lots of privacy. And it's the end of
the date. Right? So it's on their minds.
Right? Are we gonna make love? And she
can't just come out and say,
I wanna have sex with you. Right? That
would be too on the nose, too abrupt.
So she continues the third thing idea,
places her hand on his, looks into his
eyes and says,
(28:23):
and it tastes so fucking good.
Right? She's saying in subtext,
and now we should have sex.
Right? You can't miss it. And it's clear
that, the guy gets it. Right? The Paul
Giamatti character gets it.
Because he hears that subtext loud and clear,
but it scares him to death.
Right? He is not ready to take a
(28:45):
risk
of that kind of deep
evolving
love. And we know he's scared because we
can see his
reaction immediately after that line. In fact, he
changes the subject,
and then he asks where the bathroom is.
Right? The moment is gone and the entire
screen or scene plays out as a discussion
just about wine. In fact, I'm gonna play
(29:07):
that little it's just a short little bit.
I want you to hear his reaction
after she delivers that line.
Yeah.
But, you know, I I
I like other ones besides Pinault too. Mhmm.
You know? I mean, lately, I've been really
into Rieslings.
You like Rieslings? Rieslings?
(29:31):
Mhmm. There's a bathroom in the back. Yes.
Let's do the kitchen. I'll be right back.
Alright. So what you've just heard is a
beautiful example of subtext.
Right? The audience member feels like a genius
now
because they understood the code
that was being used. And, the scene is
compelling
and insightful
(29:52):
and beautiful
because everybody involved gets it. Right? We hear
that subtext.
So, here's the best way to approach using
this kind of third thing
subtext.
At least an approach to get started.
All you need to do really is look
for a moment of conflict in your story,
especially where two characters
(30:14):
need to work something out that's hard to
talk about. Right? So maybe they're arguing about
something that's that's very emotional or that has
a lot of fear around it. So then
instead of just having them fight directly about
what's going on,
find a third thing for them to argue
about.
Now as you're writing this, you're going to
worry
that your audience doesn't get it or won't
(30:35):
get it. But you really shouldn't worry about
it because this is the way
we actually talk all the time in subtext.
We're incredibly
nuanced about it and we're experts at decoding
it. So have some faith, and trust in
the intelligence
and the ability of your audience
to understand and unpack subtext because they'll be
(30:57):
able to do it.
So, I want to leave you with one
last example of how this can work. This
actually comes from one of my high school
creative writing students.
This is something I do with them pretty
much every year. I have them work on
this technique of the third thing,
but I'm not gonna read the exact piece
of writing, but I do wanna share with
you the concept,
that one of my students came up with.
(31:18):
So she was writing a fantasy story and,
there was a scene where a king and
a queen
are fighting about their marriage. Right? And so
she wrote this very on the nose. Right?
You don't love me anymore. Yes, I do.
No, you don't. Blah blah blah. Got really
boring and on the nose.
So essentially,
once we talk through it, the king thinks
(31:38):
the marriage is perfectly fine.
And he's kind of in denial
that there's anything wrong with the marriage at
all. But the queen, on the other hand,
thinks that the marriage is failing
and she hates that she cannot get him
to see that there are problems. So once
we kind of talk through what was actually
going on in the scene,
I had her rewrite it. And instead of
(31:59):
an on the nose fight about their marriage,
what she decided to do was have them
fight about their castle instead.
So she started the fight
by, having the queen complain about how drafty
and cold it was in the castle because
it was in such disrepair.
And then the king countered by talking about
how,
(32:19):
oh, but it's majestic and historic and it's
the chinks and the blemishes
that show the evidence of its ability to
stand the test of time to survive. Right?
And this argument went on and on this
way about the castle. Now, that's a beautiful
use of the third thing
because it's going to be clear to any
reader
that is has been following these characters and
(32:41):
can see what's really going on, that they're
actually arguing about their marriage
even though they're using the third thing of
their castle. Right? She's pointing out that, boy,
you don't even see
how in disrepair this castle is, of course,
meaning their marriage. And he says, no. No.
No. It's evidence of how strong,
it is and how it can stand the
(33:01):
test of time. So he's in denial, and
we get all that as the audience.
Another example very quick, that I loved is
of,
a wife who thinks her husband is cheating
on her. Now, you could write that as
kind of a cliche argument. You know, put
them in the bedroom and they're, throwing accusations
at each other. But this writer,
(33:22):
put them in a car
and had them try to decide where to
have dinner. Right? Now this, for anybody who's
married, this is a very common, right? We
we get this situation. We know that this
can sometimes be packed with other things with
subtext.
And so what she does is instead of
having them just argue about, hey, I think
you're cheating on me. No. No. I'm not
(33:42):
cheating on you.
What she does is she has him suggest,
hey, you know, we should go get some
Thai food.
Now this is very out of character for
this guy who consistently eats the same boring
thing every day. So she confronts him. You
know, why would you suddenly want something so
exotic and so different
after all these years of eating at our
(34:03):
same old favorite restaurants?
So and of course, what she's really trying
to get at is whether or not he's
bored with her. Right? Not with their meals,
but with her, and whether or not he's
been seeing other women. Or in this case,
right, why do you suddenly want Thai food?
So she's not trying to find out
not really trying to find out whether he's
actually bored with their restaurant choices as been,
(34:25):
quote, seeing other foods, I guess is a
way to say that.
But the whole thing works on subtext. Right?
So our writing should
be riddled with subtext and like I said
at the start of the show, this is
just one of the techniques
that can be used to help get that
subtext in there. Now, it's not gonna work
in every instance for sure but especially watch
(34:46):
for places
of obvious
conflict to use it. And I think you'll
love how it brings your scenes,
your characters, and your plot lines to life.
Today's wise word comes from the incomparable Toni
(35:07):
Morrison and it's about subtext.
She's going to complicate things a bit for
us, based on what we just talked about,
but that's good. Here she says,
if writing is thinking and discovery and selection
and order and meaning,
it is also awe and reverence and mystery
and magic.
Authors arrive at text and subtext in thousands
(35:30):
of ways,
learning each time they begin anew,
how to recognize a valuable idea, and how
the re how to, read the texture that
accompanies,
reveals, or displays it to its best advantage.
That was Toni Morrison.
Now, I love that in this quote, she
says that authors arrive at text and subtext
(35:51):
in thousands of ways. Now, this is so
true.
Subtext is one of those mysterious, profound,
elusive,
almost magical,
elements of writing
that can lead you to pull your hair
out. But, it also can, get you to
that place where you sit in awe of
what you've just created when you get it
(36:13):
right.
So, today's show hasn't been about the only
way to imbue your story with subtext. It's
been one of a thousand
techniques.
And, if nothing else, hopefully, it serves to
bring the concept more, to the front of
your minds,
and help you look for those opportunities
to give your dialogue,
(36:33):
your characters, your settings,
that much needed subtext
to bring it to life in your readers'
minds.
And our weekly challenge this week is, you
guessed it, to bring a third thing piece
of subtext
into your current work in progress.
(36:55):
So what I want you to do is
find a place in your story
where you've got two characters that are disagreeing
about something. Whether that's an all out fight
or just a small disagreement and look over
how you've written that.
Ask yourself, are they arguing on the nose?
Or, in other words, saying exactly what they
think and feel.
And then, spend a little time
(37:15):
brainstorming a third thing that they could actually
argue about instead and don't jump at the
first thing that comes to your mind. You
really want to dig in until you find
that thing that resonates
with their real disagreement and serves as a
good stand in, almost like a metaphor for
it. Then rewrite your scene with its new
found subject.
(37:37):
Sometimes it'll be exactly
the right move for your scene and bring
it to life. And other times it won't
work. Right? And you'll have to rewrite it
a number of times with different
third things until you find
the right one.
Now this can be a really fun process,
and it'll be the thing that brings those
fights, those moments of conflict to life, the
(37:58):
things that make it feel real, and the
thing that invites your audience in
to help create its meaning. And that's one
of the most powerful things
we can accomplish
as writers.
So that's going to wrap it up for
this week. Watch for our next real time
revision. We're now gonna be releasing those on
Thursdays instead of Mondays and I'll almost certainly
(38:20):
be doing this week's, weekly challenge in my
real time revision. So you'll get to watch
as I take one of my scenes and,
find that third thing for it. So remember,
these Patreon resources are now all free for
everyone,
regardless of if you're a member of the
patreon team or not. So I hope you'll
check those out. Until next week, remember the
(38:40):
best way to improve your craft is by
writing. That's what I'm off to go do
and I hope you're off to do the
same. Let's get some words on paper this
week, and we'll meet up again next week
for another episode of the Inside Creative Writing
podcast.
Thanks for listening to the Inside Creative writing
podcast with your host, writer, and educator,
(39:01):
Brad Reed. We'll be back next week.
Welcome to the inside creative writing podcast.
The weekly discussion of craft and technique for
writers of fiction and creative nonfiction.
And now here's your host, writer and educator,
Brad Reed.
Episode 27,
subtext can be the difference between polished prose
and an amateur sounding story. Today, we look
(00:21):
at one surefire way to add subtext to
your dialogue. We're talking about the third thing.
And welcome back to the Inside Creative Writing
podcast. My name is Brad Reed and I've
got some great news for you before we
jump into today's topic.
As you know, if you've been listening to
the show for a while, I've been working
(00:42):
on building up a Patreon team to support
the show and allow us to offer the
kinds of resources,
that we've got in mind for the show
and the website. Now, we've been putting a
lot of time and effort into things like
our, weekly real time revision videos and other
exclusive resources.
And we've had a lot of fun creating
those for you. But here's the thing.
(01:04):
I kind of feel like Patreon works backwards,
at least for me here with the podcast.
The basic idea of Patreon is that you
support an artist or a resource that you
find valuable
with just a few bucks a month. In
return,
you get access to some rewards and special
content. But that means
that only a very few people get the
(01:26):
benefit of those resources that you're creating as
an artist
and that people have to basically buy in,
even if it's just a few bucks a
month,
before they ever really see what they're going
to be getting. So,
we are changing up how our Patreon team
works and I think this is something that
you're really going to like.
So, starting today,
(01:47):
absolutely everyone has access to all of the
rewards we're creating for our Patreon team for
free
all the
time. Then if you find the rewards valuable,
if they help you with your goals as
a writer, then we simply ask that you
consider supporting the show with a few bucks
a month.
So there's no strings, there's no guilt, just
(02:09):
hey, if you're using the resources and you
like them,
think about helping us keep them coming by,
helping us meet some of our expenses here
at the show. So as little as a
dollar a month,
helps.
And you can cancel that at any time.
So, I wanna invite you all to check
out the now
free to absolutely everyone Patreon rewards
(02:30):
by going to patreon.com/bradreedrights
or by clicking the Patreon link at bradreedwrites.com.
My favorite thing over there is the real
time revision videos
where you get to watch as I put
the techniques that we use on the show,
that we talk about on the show
into action
on my own work in progress, on my
(02:51):
own manuscript. It's a great companion piece to
the podcast.
And now, all of those are free for
you to check out. We've got a bunch
of those up there. So, if you like
the podcast and are interested
to see how I use those in my
actual writing,
free to everybody now are those Patreon resources.
So, I hope you'll check those out.
(03:12):
And, one thing I haven't really done a
great job of with this podcast so far
is
kind of, dropping the curtain a little bit
and letting you see behind the scenes,
of my own writing life. Now, this is
something I actually do quite a bit of
in those real time revision,
Patreon rewards I was talking about, but I
(03:33):
don't do it so much on the podcast.
After hearing back from some of you in
response to our recent listener questionnaire,
I realized that this is something that a
bunch of you would actually appreciate.
And I get that, you know, if you're
going to take
some of my advice on writing, you kinda
wanna know me not just as an educator
or a teacher of writing, but you also
(03:54):
wanna know me as a writer myself.
So, every once in a while, I plan
to just give you a little update on
my current work in progress and my own
kind of successes and struggles, as I'm writing
and revising that. So a bunch of you
told me you'd find that valuable. So now
we're gonna add that little piece in.
We'll go ahead and start today. I'm kind
(04:15):
of in a weird place
with my book right now. I finished the
rough draft
not quite a year ago and have been
plodding along
with a pretty extensive revision since then. It's
been slow going with my teaching schedule and
other commitments that I have, but I've been
generally happy with that progress. I was making
(04:35):
good
forward progress until about a month ago.
As writers, we're always thinking in analogies and
metaphors for our writing. So I often actually
think of my own writing life,
as a kind of metaphor or as a
kind of analogy.
And I think sports, using sports,
often provides an insightful
(04:56):
metaphor
for our writing lives.
And, what I realized is that I'd become
kind of like that football team that gets
so caught up in designing
complex plays or tricky offensive schemes
that I forgot to keep up on those
fundamentals. Right? I forgot to keep running those
tackling drills and I let some of those
(05:18):
fundamentals
slide. Now, here's what I mean by that.
If you follow sports at all,
you've seen that team. Right? And this is
applicable in almost every sport that I've ever
seen. You've seen that team that gets so
caught up in finding the,
ingenious
or clever ways to approach the game that
(05:39):
they stop running basic drills.
Before long, they're losing games and they're just
scratching their heads to figure out what happened.
And, it always comes back to the basics,
the fundamentals.
If you can't make a tackle in football,
all the trick plays and fancy offensive schemes
are not going to help you win games.
(05:59):
Right? You're gonna be losing those games.
And this is where I realized I was
in my own writing.
I was having a blast, and I think
I was doing good work on sentence level
revision of my rough draft,
but something was gnawing at my gut. Something
that said the story still wasn't working
on some
(06:20):
fundamental
level.
Now,
I I had planned so completely and outlined
so completely that, I think I was convincing
myself that all the basics were there. Right?
But I had forgotten about them as I
began this rough draft,
process. So, finally, I paid attention
to that nagging little feeling and decided to
(06:42):
take a step back from that kind of
sentence and word level revision
and look at my basic skills, my fundamentals.
Right? If I was a football team, I'd
be running tackling drills. But, I was looking
at my fundamentals to make sure
that they hadn't slid
backwards.
And often when I do this, I do
it by rereading either a favorite book about
(07:02):
writing,
or I pick up a new one.
Now, I've been studying writing for so long
that there's almost never anything new in the
books that I read. I mean, there are
there are different angles and, you know, different
approaches,
but there's rarely a new revolutionary
idea or a new concept.
And that's true with the book that I
(07:23):
read most recently. I just finished reading The
Story Grid by Sean Coyne.
Now, some of you who may have read
this book,
might be recoiling
a little bit right now,
because it sometimes comes off as very rigid,
very formulaic,
a very formulaic
way of writing a story.
(07:43):
But I'm not sure anybody can make the
argument that that book isn't grounded in fundamental
principles of solid storytelling technique.
So, through reading this book and beginning to
play with some of the techniques that, that
he puts forward in it,
I discovered that I'd gone away from a
vital fundamental.
One of the basics that I thought I
(08:04):
had nailed down and that basic is that
every scene
must move the story forward.
Now through applying some of Sean's techniques,
I was able to see that many of
the scenes I was plowing through and revising
on that sentence level
really needed to be completely
reworked
and a lot of them actually just deleted.
(08:26):
That I was wasting my time trying to
revise them in that way because they weren't,
serving a story function.
So it's one of those discoveries as a
writer that's both, thrilling because I can see
how much better my story can become through
those,
through those that level of revision. But it's
also daunting
because of how much work I still have
(08:48):
ahead of me. In other words, I'm not
as close as I thought I was,
to getting this book,
kind of crafted into its final form. So
I wanna thank you, Sean Coyne, for a
great book and for reminding me that all
the ingenious and creative prose skills in the
world
won't cover up the fact that a book
is missing some of its fundamentals.
(09:19):
So, we're going to be exploring a technique
today that we're calling the third thing.
It's a way to imbue your writing with
that all important and often very mysterious quality
subtext.
Now, rather than give you a textbook definition
of what subtext is,
I wanna share with you how I actually
learned about what it is and and how
(09:41):
it works. So, I mean, after all, we're
storytellers. So it's always better to try to
teach a concept through story, I think. So
I wanna tell you a little bit of
a story
about the moment that I really got
what subtext was and how important it is.
So I don't know about you, but I
can't sleep if it's too quiet. I need
some kind of noise
(10:01):
in the room. And, I used to listen
to music, but as a musician, my mind
would get all caught up in the lyrics
and the chord progressions. And, I'd think about
how the
the musicians,
crafted the arrangement.
And, I couldn't get my mind quiet enough
to sleep.
So, what we did is we tried, switching
on the television which would,
you know, most shows alternate between being really
(10:23):
loud and then really quiet or they have
too many flashing lights or every time it
would change to a new scene, the lighting
would be different. So, it was distracting.
So what we did, we we finally, stumbled
across the perfect solution
for my wife and I. So when we're
ready to go to sleep, we put on
the nineties sitcom Frasier.
Now, first of all, we've seen all the
(10:44):
episodes
so many times that we no longer get
caught up in the story.
And it becomes almost like a gentle background
noise. Something familiar,
in the background. And also,
the scenes are always consistently either in Frasier's
radio station or at
his home. So there's no dramatic
(11:04):
change of lighting
between scenes, so the light is always fairly
even and actually calming. Now, I'm not sure
that's a great habit to get into. Right?
Sleeping with the television on. But we found
that that it works for us and it's
something we've done for years. I think we've,
watched, quote unquote watched,
the whole,
you know, all the series of Frasier's,
(11:25):
I don't know how many times, way too
many times. So,
alright. So here's that seems like a roundabout
way to get to subtext, but here's how
it's all connected to subtext.
So about a year or so ago, we
were staying at a hotel and it means
that we have a TV that we're not
familiar with, how it works.
So I hook up my little Chromebook, computer
to the TV,
(11:46):
and that's how we play Frasier, right, at
at night so that, we can relax and
go to sleep.
So we put on Frasier and we fall
asleep.
And instead of having the TV just turn
off in the middle of the night like
the one at our home does,
the TV at some point in this hotel
switches over somehow, I don't know, to the
Disney Channel in the middle of the night.
(12:08):
So I wake up to the Disney Channel
playing,
on a Saturday morning. Now, if you've ever
watched the Disney Channel,
maybe accidentally or on purpose on a Saturday
morning, you know that it's not,
I'm gonna offend some people, you know it's
not
necessarily quality written television. Right? This is television
that often gets, cranked out very fast.
(12:30):
And,
anyway, enough said about that. If you've seen
it, you know what I mean.
So here I am exhausted from a late
night.
It's the morning. I can't find the remote
because I'm literally just kind of reaching around
the bed, and if it's not there, I'm
too tired to get up and get it.
So I just lay there and
listen to this Disney Channel television show for
a while. Now, I have no idea
(12:53):
what show I'm actually listening to. I wish
that I knew so I could go back
and and kind of study it a little
more in-depth.
But I find myself getting really annoyed
by the show.
Now, of course, I am not the target
market for a Disney Channel show. I get
that. But this was beyond just missing the
target market. There was something about the way
(13:14):
the characters were speaking to each other
that started driving me absolutely crazy.
And I realized what I was hearing
was actually a very important writing lesson in
what not to do.
And what I realized before long was that
the reason it was making me so nuts
and was so absolutely miserable to listen to
(13:36):
was that all the characters
were simply saying exactly what was on their
mind.
So if one character, you know, was in
love with another they'd just say, I love
you.
If that character wasn't in love back they'd
say, Well, I don't love you.
Then one could say something like, I'm hungry.
And, Fred would respond with, Let's go eat.
(13:57):
Right? Now, those weren't the words exactly. But,
that was essentially the level
of the dialogue.
If a character was thinking it, the character
just came right out and said it, plain
as day, word for word. And it was
the worst
piece of dialogue
that I've ever tried to listen to.
Now I'm sure Disney has some good shows.
(14:18):
Actually, I'm not so sure, but again, I'm
not the target market.
But that morning proved to be a huge
writing lesson for me. On some level,
we hate to hear people say exactly what
they're thinking. Now, we think that that's what
we want in life and in our in
our entertainment. Right? We want things to be
clear, concise, and direct,
(14:39):
but we don't actually want that. We're gonna
explore why that is in just a little
in just a little bit. It goes beyond
just that it's not natural,
that that's not the way people actually talk.
What I realized is that it's incredibly
insulting
to the audience
to have
dialogue like
that. Now, we've grown up to become
(15:01):
absolute experts in reading between the lines of
what people say. I'm absolutely convinced
that we communicate more through what we imply
but don't actually say
than what we actually say. Now that
is subtext. Right? What are we implying?
It's beating around the bush, or it's hinting
(15:23):
about something but never quite coming out and
saying it directly. It's revealing just enough
to sneak a message through to someone who
is in tune to receive it. Somebody who's
really listening.
Now, it's one of the hardest things to
do in our writing, the subtext, whether prose
or screenplay,
But it's absolutely
(15:44):
vital
that we figure out how to do it.
Otherwise, our readers are, at least metaphorically,
desperately searching for the remote to change the
channel before you drive them crazy
with your inane,
on the nose dialogue.
So, subtext is a huge
subject and one we could devote episode after
(16:04):
episode to. So, rather than do that today,
rather than try to bite off that much
material, we're going to look at one simple
technique, one of a bunch of techniques,
that can be used to help imbue your
writing with subtext.
It's actually my favorite technique, partially because it's
so effective,
but also because it's one of the easier
(16:24):
ones to teach and then immediately be able
to use in your own writing. Now, a
lot of the credit for the technique in
today's show goes to Robert McKee,
a legend of storytelling. He's the author of
the book, Dialogue,
that you really should own and devour. Read
it over and over again if you wanna
be an expert
on writing dialogue for prose or especially for
(16:45):
screenplay.
I'm hoping though that we can expand on
what he talks about in that book and
give it a little more,
real world application because I've found this technique
so helpful
in my own writing.
So basically, the idea of the third thing
is this.
Have your characters talk about something other
(17:07):
than what they are really wanting to talk
about. And use that thing as a kind
of metaphor
for what they wish they could just come
right out and say. So, in other words,
have them talk about a third thing that
is somehow
safer
to talk about.
So, what I want to do is play
for you a couple of clips. One of
them is from a TV show, it's actually
(17:29):
from Frasier
And, one of them is from a film.
And both of these things do a good
job of illustrating how this concept
of the third thing works.
So, as I mentioned the first one is
from Frasier. I didn't actually plan that. It
just occurred to me that I talked so
much about that at the beginning and now
I have a clip from it, but I
guess that stands to reason for how much
(17:49):
I end up watching the show.
But this clip comes in an episode where
Daphne if if you haven't watched the show,
Daphne's the longtime
live in physical therapist. So she becomes kind
of a member of the family. But she's
getting ready to move out of the house.
And she's leaving behind Frasier and his father,
and they are they're worried about how much
they're gonna miss her. Right? She's become like
(18:11):
a member of the family.
So in this clip that you're going to
hear, they're sitting around a bar and
rather than have them all say kind of
dumb things like, gee, Daphne, I'm really going
to miss you,
listen to how the writers use a third
thing to get the point across.
Now, this first example is a little heavy
handed,
(18:32):
which means it's a little almost too obvious
what they're trying to do here, but it
makes it a particularly good example of the
technique because it's so obvious. So, what you're
about to hear is Marty. He's, Frasier's dad,
the older man that Daphne has been taking
care of. And he's talking about
how much he's going to miss his favorite
beer. Right? That's the third thing is that
this beer is no longer available. So he's
(18:53):
gonna be talking about how much he's gonna
miss this famous beer or this famous his
favorite beer. But I want you to listen
how he uses the beer as a stand
in
for what he really wishes he could say
to Daphne, who's sitting right there at the
bar with them. Here we go.
Anyway, I should be toasting you. I'm gonna
miss you, you rotten old sod.
(19:15):
Valentine okay? Oh, yeah. That's my beer. Yes.
You know, I just found out they're gonna
quit making this stuff. Really? Yeah. Well, there's
an end of an era.
That's right. It's gonna be one sad day
when I get down to my last one.
You know, it's funny. You get used to
having something in your life. It's part of
(19:36):
your day. Just take it for granted.
Then suddenly it's gone, and you realize how
much it meant to you.
Hey. Hey. Hey, guys. Now what you just
heard is a perfect example of what we're
calling the third thing.
(19:57):
What Marty really wants to do is tell
Daphne how much he's going to miss her.
But what he does is use the beer
as a stand in, And because everybody's,
invested in kind of this emotion and this
feeling, they all get it. Right? Including the
audience. Now, that's subtext.
And, it's much more powerful than obvious
(20:18):
on the nose language because it gives your
audience
the opportunity
to figure it out.
Now, the audience is more engaged in the
story because they played a part
in creating meaning.
Now, when you don't use subtext, when you
just use on the nose language, your audience
is passive. They just sit there and take
(20:38):
in your story. There's no role for them
to play. In other words, they're bored. They're
outside of your story. But subtext,
because it works almost like a little puzzle,
invites them in and engages them.
So let's look next at the example that
Robert McKee,
uses in his book because it's an absolutely
(20:58):
beautiful
piece of subtext in dialogue.
In fact, I'm not sure I've seen
a better scene using subtext in this concept
of the third thing. So, it comes from
this film, Sideways,
and it features Paul Giamatti and Virginia Madsen
as the actors.
In this scene, you're basically hearing what is
the tail end of a first date.
(21:19):
The two
are obviously
very interested in each other, but neither is
ready to come right out and say that.
Right? They're just kinda trying to feel each
other out and beat around the bush to
see if they're a good fit.
And they're both scared because they've both been
burned by previous relationships.
Now, that that's way too much to talk
(21:41):
about on a first date. Right? Can you
imagine sitting down on a first date and
suddenly you're talking about how scared you are
of new relationships and all of this other
baggage?
So instead of that, they,
begin to talk about a third thing, and
that third thing is wine.
Now wine is a passion that they both
share. And I want you to listen to
how they use wine
(22:02):
as that third thing, as a stand in
to talk about themselves
and what their fears are and what their
hopes are in a relationship. So first up,
you're gonna hear the Paul Giamatti character,
and he's talking about his love for Pino.
But listen for what he's really
telling
Virginia Madsen about himself.
(22:24):
You
know, can I ask you a personal question,
Miles?
Sure.
Why are you so into Pinot?
I mean, it's like a thing with you.
I don't know. I don't know.
It's a hard grape to grow,
as you know. Right?
(22:46):
So, it's
thin skinned, temperamental,
ripens early.
It's you know, it's not a survivor like
Cabernet,
which can just grow anywhere and,
thrive even when it's neglected.
No, Pinot needs constant care and attention.
You know, and in fact, it can only
(23:06):
grow in these
really specific little tucked away corners of the
world.
And and only
the most
patient and
nurturing of growers
can do it, really.
Only somebody who really takes the time
to understand
(23:28):
P and O's potential
can then coax it into to its fullest
expression.
And then? I mean,
oh, its flavors, they're just the most haunting
and brilliant and
thrilling and subtle and
ancient
on the
(23:52):
planet. No, I mean, you know, cavernous can
be powerful and exalting too, but they seem
prosaic to me for some reason by comparison,
I don't know.
I don't know.
What about you?
What about me?
Alright. Did you hear that?
He's using wine
to tell her that he's basically fragile.
(24:12):
Right? That he
needs someone who is willing to invest some
real time
into him before he's able to reveal
who he truly is. Right? Or or the
potential
that he actually has.
Now, that's not something you could come right
out and tell someone on a first date
without kind of sounding insane, right, and needy.
(24:33):
But through subtext,
she hears that message loud and clear, and
so does the audience.
Right? The audience has had a chance
to create meaning and to solve that little
puzzle which engages them. So now we're gonna
listen to Virginia Madsen's,
her character's response.
Listen for how she feels
(24:54):
about the subtext that she's just heard and
what she wants him to know about her.
Again, it's all cleverly disguised
as a discussion,
simply about wine.
One word of warning here. She does use
the f word at the end of this
passage, and I'm actually gonna repeat that word
a few times as we kind of unpack
this moment of subject. So, if that bothers
(25:15):
you, just be forewarned that that's coming up
in this clip.
I don't know. Why are you in the
wine?
Oh,
I
think I
I originally got into wine through my ex
husband. Uh-huh.
You know, he had this big
sort of show off cellar, you know? Right.
But then I discovered that I had a
(25:37):
really sharp palate. Mhmm. And the more I
drank,
the more I liked what it made me
think about.
Like what?
Like what a fraud
he
was.
No. I mean,
I like to think about the life of
wine. Yeah.
How it's a living thing.
(26:00):
I like to think about
what was going on the year the grapes
were growing,
how the sun was shining
if it rained.
I like to think about
all the people who tended and picked the
grapes.
And if it's an old wine,
how many of them must be dead by
(26:20):
now?
I like how wine continues to evolve.
Like, if I open a bottle of wine
today, it would taste different than if I'd
opened it on any other day.
Because a bottle of wine is actually alive.
And it's
(26:40):
constantly evolving and gaining complexity.
That is until it peaks,
like you're 61.
And then it begins its
steady,
inevitable decline.
Mhmm.
(27:00):
And it tastes so fucking good.
Alright. Now even though that's subtext, it's loud
and clear, isn't it? It's clear that she's
afraid, right? She's been burned before and she's
afraid of that happening again, but it's also
clear that she's willing
to take the risk of falling in love
(27:22):
again, of having another relationship.
So she's been burned by her last marriage,
but she's fascinated by
and really deeply interested in the idea of
being in love. She wants a relationship that's
deep
and alive and evolving,
a profound
kind of lifelong
love.
(27:43):
And listen to the power of that last
line where she says, and it tastes so
fucking good.
Think about the tension
of the situation. So love is in the
air. Right? There's romantic music in the background.
You couldn't see it in the clip, obviously,
but they're alone together kind of on this,
porch,
(28:03):
lots of privacy. And it's the end of
the date. Right? So it's on their minds.
Right? Are we gonna make love? And she
can't just come out and say,
I wanna have sex with you. Right? That
would be too on the nose, too abrupt.
So she continues the third thing idea,
places her hand on his, looks into his
eyes and says,
(28:23):
and it tastes so fucking good.
Right? She's saying in subtext,
and now we should have sex.
Right? You can't miss it. And it's clear
that, the guy gets it. Right? The Paul
Giamatti character gets it.
Because he hears that subtext loud and clear,
but it scares him to death.
Right? He is not ready to take a
(28:45):
risk
of that kind of deep
evolving
love. And we know he's scared because we
can see his
reaction immediately after that line. In fact, he
changes the subject,
and then he asks where the bathroom is.
Right? The moment is gone and the entire
screen or scene plays out as a discussion
just about wine. In fact, I'm gonna play
(29:07):
that little it's just a short little bit.
I want you to hear his reaction
after she delivers that line.
Yeah.
But, you know, I I
I like other ones besides Pinault too. Mhmm.
You know? I mean, lately, I've been really
into Rieslings.
You like Rieslings? Rieslings?
(29:31):
Mhmm. There's a bathroom in the back. Yes.
Let's do the kitchen. I'll be right back.
Alright. So what you've just heard is a
beautiful example of subtext.
Right? The audience member feels like a genius
now
because they understood the code
that was being used. And, the scene is
compelling
and insightful
(29:52):
and beautiful
because everybody involved gets it. Right? We hear
that subtext.
So, here's the best way to approach using
this kind of third thing
subtext.
At least an approach to get started.
All you need to do really is look
for a moment of conflict in your story,
especially where two characters
(30:14):
need to work something out that's hard to
talk about. Right? So maybe they're arguing about
something that's that's very emotional or that has
a lot of fear around it. So then
instead of just having them fight directly about
what's going on,
find a third thing for them to argue
about.
Now as you're writing this, you're going to
worry
that your audience doesn't get it or won't
(30:35):
get it. But you really shouldn't worry about
it because this is the way
we actually talk all the time in subtext.
We're incredibly
nuanced about it and we're experts at decoding
it. So have some faith, and trust in
the intelligence
and the ability of your audience
to understand and unpack subtext because they'll be
(30:57):
able to do it.
So, I want to leave you with one
last example of how this can work. This
actually comes from one of my high school
creative writing students.
This is something I do with them pretty
much every year. I have them work on
this technique of the third thing,
but I'm not gonna read the exact piece
of writing, but I do wanna share with
you the concept,
that one of my students came up with.
(31:18):
So she was writing a fantasy story and,
there was a scene where a king and
a queen
are fighting about their marriage. Right? And so
she wrote this very on the nose. Right?
You don't love me anymore. Yes, I do.
No, you don't. Blah blah blah. Got really
boring and on the nose.
So essentially,
once we talk through it, the king thinks
(31:38):
the marriage is perfectly fine.
And he's kind of in denial
that there's anything wrong with the marriage at
all. But the queen, on the other hand,
thinks that the marriage is failing
and she hates that she cannot get him
to see that there are problems. So once
we kind of talk through what was actually
going on in the scene,
I had her rewrite it. And instead of
(31:59):
an on the nose fight about their marriage,
what she decided to do was have them
fight about their castle instead.
So she started the fight
by, having the queen complain about how drafty
and cold it was in the castle because
it was in such disrepair.
And then the king countered by talking about
how,
(32:19):
oh, but it's majestic and historic and it's
the chinks and the blemishes
that show the evidence of its ability to
stand the test of time to survive. Right?
And this argument went on and on this
way about the castle. Now, that's a beautiful
use of the third thing
because it's going to be clear to any
reader
that is has been following these characters and
(32:41):
can see what's really going on, that they're
actually arguing about their marriage
even though they're using the third thing of
their castle. Right? She's pointing out that, boy,
you don't even see
how in disrepair this castle is, of course,
meaning their marriage. And he says, no. No.
No. It's evidence of how strong,
it is and how it can stand the
(33:01):
test of time. So he's in denial, and
we get all that as the audience.
Another example very quick, that I loved is
of,
a wife who thinks her husband is cheating
on her. Now, you could write that as
kind of a cliche argument. You know, put
them in the bedroom and they're, throwing accusations
at each other. But this writer,
(33:22):
put them in a car
and had them try to decide where to
have dinner. Right? Now this, for anybody who's
married, this is a very common, right? We
we get this situation. We know that this
can sometimes be packed with other things with
subtext.
And so what she does is instead of
having them just argue about, hey, I think
you're cheating on me. No. No. I'm not
(33:42):
cheating on you.
What she does is she has him suggest,
hey, you know, we should go get some
Thai food.
Now this is very out of character for
this guy who consistently eats the same boring
thing every day. So she confronts him. You
know, why would you suddenly want something so
exotic and so different
after all these years of eating at our
(34:03):
same old favorite restaurants?
So and of course, what she's really trying
to get at is whether or not he's
bored with her. Right? Not with their meals,
but with her, and whether or not he's
been seeing other women. Or in this case,
right, why do you suddenly want Thai food?
So she's not trying to find out
not really trying to find out whether he's
actually bored with their restaurant choices as been,
(34:25):
quote, seeing other foods, I guess is a
way to say that.
But the whole thing works on subtext. Right?
So our writing should
be riddled with subtext and like I said
at the start of the show, this is
just one of the techniques
that can be used to help get that
subtext in there. Now, it's not gonna work
in every instance for sure but especially watch
(34:46):
for places
of obvious
conflict to use it. And I think you'll
love how it brings your scenes,
your characters, and your plot lines to life.
Today's wise word comes from the incomparable Toni
(35:07):
Morrison and it's about subtext.
She's going to complicate things a bit for
us, based on what we just talked about,
but that's good. Here she says,
if writing is thinking and discovery and selection
and order and meaning,
it is also awe and reverence and mystery
and magic.
Authors arrive at text and subtext in thousands
(35:30):
of ways,
learning each time they begin anew,
how to recognize a valuable idea, and how
the re how to, read the texture that
accompanies,
reveals, or displays it to its best advantage.
That was Toni Morrison.
Now, I love that in this quote, she
says that authors arrive at text and subtext
(35:51):
in thousands of ways. Now, this is so
true.
Subtext is one of those mysterious, profound,
elusive,
almost magical,
elements of writing
that can lead you to pull your hair
out. But, it also can, get you to
that place where you sit in awe of
what you've just created when you get it
(36:13):
right.
So, today's show hasn't been about the only
way to imbue your story with subtext. It's
been one of a thousand
techniques.
And, if nothing else, hopefully, it serves to
bring the concept more, to the front of
your minds,
and help you look for those opportunities
to give your dialogue,
(36:33):
your characters, your settings,
that much needed subtext
to bring it to life in your readers'
minds.
And our weekly challenge this week is, you
guessed it, to bring a third thing piece
of subtext
into your current work in progress.
(36:55):
So what I want you to do is
find a place in your story
where you've got two characters that are disagreeing
about something. Whether that's an all out fight
or just a small disagreement and look over
how you've written that.
Ask yourself, are they arguing on the nose?
Or, in other words, saying exactly what they
think and feel.
And then, spend a little time
(37:15):
brainstorming a third thing that they could actually
argue about instead and don't jump at the
first thing that comes to your mind. You
really want to dig in until you find
that thing that resonates
with their real disagreement and serves as a
good stand in, almost like a metaphor for
it. Then rewrite your scene with its new
found subject.
(37:37):
Sometimes it'll be exactly
the right move for your scene and bring
it to life. And other times it won't
work. Right? And you'll have to rewrite it
a number of times with different
third things until you find
the right one.
Now this can be a really fun process,
and it'll be the thing that brings those
fights, those moments of conflict to life, the
(37:58):
things that make it feel real, and the
thing that invites your audience in
to help create its meaning. And that's one
of the most powerful things
we can accomplish
as writers.
So that's going to wrap it up for
this week. Watch for our next real time
revision. We're now gonna be releasing those on
Thursdays instead of Mondays and I'll almost certainly
(38:20):
be doing this week's, weekly challenge in my
real time revision. So you'll get to watch
as I take one of my scenes and,
find that third thing for it. So remember,
these Patreon resources are now all free for
everyone,
regardless of if you're a member of the
patreon team or not. So I hope you'll
check those out. Until next week, remember the
(38:40):
best way to improve your craft is by
writing. That's what I'm off to go do
and I hope you're off to do the
same. Let's get some words on paper this
week, and we'll meet up again next week
for another episode of the Inside Creative Writing
podcast.
Thanks for listening to the Inside Creative writing
podcast with your host, writer, and educator,
(39:01):
Brad Reed. We'll be back next week.
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