The Extinction of Subtext
I went to the Robert McKee "Story" seminar last weekend, and the point that most stood out in my mind was his emphasis on the elimination of "writing on the nose," which occurs when a character says exactly what he is feeling. This immediately took me back to a wonderful Saturday Night Live skit from a few years' back, in which they played upon quarterback Joe Montana's reputation for sincerity. A guy comes home with his date, hoping to get her in the sack, and finds his dorky roommate (Montana) is home. "Hey, Joe, how's it goin'?," he says, then he puts on a thoughtful expression as the voiceover says Damn! I hope I can get rid of him so I can get some sex. Then they flash on the woman, who says, "It's great to meet you, Joe," as her thought/voiceover says Damn! I hope we can get rid of him so I can get some sex. Then Joe tells the woman "It's really wonderful to meet you!" as his thought/voiceover says It's really wonderful to meet you! The skit ends as Joe finally makes his way upstairs, announcing to the other two, "Well, I'm going upstairs to masturbate now," followed by his voiceover/thought, I'm going upstairs to masturbate now.
Beside the great courage it took for Montana to take part in such a skit, it's also a great illustration of text and subtext. Every art depends on conflict and resolution (think of that sweet moment in music when a dissonant chord finds its home key), and the tension between what a character says and what he means is absolutely essential to the story.
McKee was talking about screenwriting, of course - in which you really don't have the luxury of popping into your character's head all the time - and complained about novelists, "who have it easy." But do we? I can't tell you how many novels I've left half-read in recent years because they felt obligated to tell me every freakin' thing that was going through the character's head (Anita Shreve's "The Pilot's Wife" is a great example). Let's put it this way: if you tell the reader absolutely everything, there's nothing for the reader to do, and he becomes passive and lethargic. That's why mystery readers tend to get so fanatically hooked on their genre. There's always something to figure out, and they love the fact that their writers expect them to think.
For just this reason, Kent Haruf and the late Raymond Carver are two of my absolute favorites. Rather than tell you everything about their characters, they are more inclined to illustrate their character's actions and words (and as McKee pointed out, "words are actions") and let you decide what they mean. And oh! Does this make things confusing? I got news for you. There is no more puzzling figure in literature than Hamlet, and if you hadn't noticed, he gets a lot of attention. (Another epigram, this one from Fitzgerald: "Action is character.")
I'm editing a murder mystery right now in which the author - bless his heart - is fond of accompanying his dialogues with italic thoughts. Sort of like this:
I have to to play it cool now, thought Jessie. Try to entice Carlos into dropping some more information. "So, what makes you think I care at all about the robbery?"
Oh, she's after something, thought Carlos. I'd better change the subject. "Not so much as you care about the Green Bay Packers," he said.
Okay, I make fun, and this device is okay occasionally - but in this case, this crap goes on for pages. Isn't that annoying? Fortunately for the readers, I have blue-penciled every single thought. If the author has done his work (and he has), they'll be able to read this dialogue and damn well figure it out for themselves.
McKee finished his thoughts on subtext by analyzing the ending of "Ordinary People," in which the father (Donald Sutherland) tells the mother (Mary Tyler Moore) that she'd better start loving their troubled son (Timothy Hutton) or get out of the house. I remember thinking it odd that this was one of my favorite movies, and yet I didn't remember any of that being said. Two days later, I happened on the ending of that very movie on the television, and realized that McKee had been talking entirely about subtext. Tyler Moore and Sutherland, in fact, said none of that - but that was what they meant. And in the gap between text and subtext lies magic.
Beside the great courage it took for Montana to take part in such a skit, it's also a great illustration of text and subtext. Every art depends on conflict and resolution (think of that sweet moment in music when a dissonant chord finds its home key), and the tension between what a character says and what he means is absolutely essential to the story.
McKee was talking about screenwriting, of course - in which you really don't have the luxury of popping into your character's head all the time - and complained about novelists, "who have it easy." But do we? I can't tell you how many novels I've left half-read in recent years because they felt obligated to tell me every freakin' thing that was going through the character's head (Anita Shreve's "The Pilot's Wife" is a great example). Let's put it this way: if you tell the reader absolutely everything, there's nothing for the reader to do, and he becomes passive and lethargic. That's why mystery readers tend to get so fanatically hooked on their genre. There's always something to figure out, and they love the fact that their writers expect them to think.
For just this reason, Kent Haruf and the late Raymond Carver are two of my absolute favorites. Rather than tell you everything about their characters, they are more inclined to illustrate their character's actions and words (and as McKee pointed out, "words are actions") and let you decide what they mean. And oh! Does this make things confusing? I got news for you. There is no more puzzling figure in literature than Hamlet, and if you hadn't noticed, he gets a lot of attention. (Another epigram, this one from Fitzgerald: "Action is character.")
I'm editing a murder mystery right now in which the author - bless his heart - is fond of accompanying his dialogues with italic thoughts. Sort of like this:
I have to to play it cool now, thought Jessie. Try to entice Carlos into dropping some more information. "So, what makes you think I care at all about the robbery?"
Oh, she's after something, thought Carlos. I'd better change the subject. "Not so much as you care about the Green Bay Packers," he said.
Okay, I make fun, and this device is okay occasionally - but in this case, this crap goes on for pages. Isn't that annoying? Fortunately for the readers, I have blue-penciled every single thought. If the author has done his work (and he has), they'll be able to read this dialogue and damn well figure it out for themselves.
McKee finished his thoughts on subtext by analyzing the ending of "Ordinary People," in which the father (Donald Sutherland) tells the mother (Mary Tyler Moore) that she'd better start loving their troubled son (Timothy Hutton) or get out of the house. I remember thinking it odd that this was one of my favorite movies, and yet I didn't remember any of that being said. Two days later, I happened on the ending of that very movie on the television, and realized that McKee had been talking entirely about subtext. Tyler Moore and Sutherland, in fact, said none of that - but that was what they meant. And in the gap between text and subtext lies magic.
