WHERE'S THE DRAMA?
Script Tools & Tutorials
8 INT TEXT,CONTEXT & SUBTEXT NIGHT
a study in subtext
The screenwriter experiences his or her characters coming to life when their actions multiply the characters' possible, credible attributes, including their contradictions.
Contradiction is essential for subtext to be present - which means that, in dramatic terms, a character's motivations and actions must be grounded in diverse and incompatible desires and needs. The mere addition of compatible, personal details will not produce this multiplication of meaning, for only part of the life of a character actually exists on the page.
A character’s most profound existence – even at the scripting phase – operates as a creative exchange of understanding between the storyteller and the character, mediated by context and subtext by means of text – but not limited to these. It involves not only those elements of character and story that are fully articulated and materialised, but also those aspects that are vividly implied as a result of the imaginative associations inspired in the mind of the audience by what is stated and shown, as well as whatever is discovered as a result of the storyteller’s willingness to engage with character at a meta-linguistic level.
In terms of story, the multiplication of meaning operates largely as subtext, creating the physical, psychical, emotional and intellectual spaces and distances that evoke imaginative leaps and personal, seemingly privileged, observations that promote identification and involvement. Subtext permits an audience to care about what happens. To the extent that the subtext is apprehended, it becomes the audience’s and the tribe’s contribution to the making of the story.
The notion that the multiplication of meaning begins with the storyteller and what the storyteller is able to show or suggest is a vast delusion. The multiplication of meaning is not only a function of the storyteller’s involvement with the characters; it is also a manifestation of the characters’ facility to stimulate discovery in the storyteller, and more specifically, a manifestation of the characters’ willingness to be involved with the storyteller. Stated in a different way – and borrowing a phrase from Pound – the multiplication of meaning is both the cause and the effect of the storyteller’s discovery and affirmation of those unexpected qualities that make a character and the character’s relationship with the storyteller NEW.
The following stories - all of which are rife with subtext - provide some rather remarkable examples of the dramatic potency of effective subtext that stems from the lives of fully realised characters. Most of them have inspired at least one film adaptation. The story by Ms Glaspell, A Jury of Her Peers, was adapted in the early 1980s and made into a short 27-minute film of the same name, which went on to win an Academy Award.
For many years, Hills Like White Elephants was used as a subtext exercise at AFTRS. Students there in the years 2002 to 2007 may remember shooting scenes of it during their first week at the school.
What all of these stories have in common is a wonderful energy that flows primarily from the way in which each embodies a subtext that carries a great deal of the meaning of the story.
A JURY OF HER PEERS - by Susan Glaspell
http://www.moonstar.com/~a
A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND - by Flannery O'Connor
http://www.moonstar.com/~a
HILLS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANTS - by Ernest Hemingway
http://www.moonstar.com/~a
THE LOTTERY - by Shirley Jackson
http://www.moonstar.com/~a
HANDS - by Sherwood Anderson
http://www.moonstar.com/~a
THE BRIDE COMES TO YELLOW SKY - by Stephen Crane
http://www.moonstar.com/~a
