Workshop Your WIP: Finding Subtext in Your Characters' Actions and Words | 1.21.25 - 1.28.25
Happening now and all week long in Jo's Community Corner
Howdy, workshoppers! How’s it going?
Over the past few weeks, Lauren Veloski’s REAL TALK workshop has shown us that some the best dialogue is actually about what doesn’t get said.
Ahh yes, that sweet, sweet, subtext…
Here’s a great tip from Lesson 1: This will change how you write dialogue forever:
“When speaking ace dialogue, your characters are almost always (consciously or unconsciously) doing one of these things: hiding, gloating, lying, pretending, avoiding, disguising, conflating, confusing, appeasing, flirting, minimizing, amplifying, pacifying, alluding to, provoking…”
And there plenty more tips in Lessons 2 and 3 for how to layer up that subtext, step-by-step, so your characters are never quite saying what they mean, but that underlying emotion or intention comes through loud and clear.
So with all that in mind, here are some Community Corner questions for you to ponder and discuss this week…
What is your character hiding?
Figuring out why your fictional people do the things they do can be so useful in determining:
how they react to different situations
how they engage with other characters
what they might say, think or do next
Which all comes down to subtext, yet again.
There are some fascinating in-depth breakdowns of this kind of character psychology in Lauren’s workshop, using mis-matched, deflecting, multi-layered dialogue.
So, using all that great subtexty knowledge, from the workshop, riddle me this:
In your current WIP, what is the thing your protagonist finds it reeeeeally hard to say, or ask for, or confront?
What is all that subtext covering up? What big internal realisation are they heading for? And why are they avoiding it?
Stick ‘em on the fictional therapist’s couch and tell us all about it…
And if you see another comment that catches your interest, please share the love, build the community, and offer up some thoughts or feedback on someone else’s post, too!
I came back to that list of what dialogue does several times last week for my WIP! What I find is that I kind of have to write one of the "bottom layers" on a rough draft. And the "floors" only come out for me on revision. My current WIP is really tricky because the main character is a stuffed animal (lol) but another thing I found that helps is making sure the character a really strong voice. One you find their voice, you get a better handle on how they disguise: whether they resort to cruelty, humor, bossing someone around, changing the subject, etc. That's what helped me to think about, anyway!
I thought of this example from a story I wrote last year: (I hope it's okay to share)
MC and her boyfriend are sitting on a roof watching/marking UFOs for Project Blue Book, on one of his last nights before he leaves for training for Vietnam. The first few drafts of the scene, they were talking about how she wants him to dodge, and he staunchly refuses bc of "honor". And it was a fine scene, emotional, but very much on the nose, all out in the open. Nothing special, basically. And I kept feeling like, MC doesn't talk like this. She keeps her feelings, especially fear, buried so far down she doesn't fully understand them. Even though she loves this guy she would not just come out and say it. And she can't just like, gain a new personality in his presence.
What happened on subsequent drafts was that she kept saying she sees a UFO to annoy him, and he keeps patiently explaining it's not truly a UFO, UFOs aren't actually real, they're cargo planes or something that the Air Force tracks. But the whole scene took on this new, dreamlike dynamic where both of them are desperately trying to mask their terror of his departure: her bc she doesn't want to be alone, and him bc he feels he needs to go in order to do something worthy of her. And the UFOs they discussed became something more elusive in the scene: it became hope for their future, love. So at the end of the scene, when he says he thinks the UFO they missed might be real, it *hits*. At least for my own personal entertainment, lol.
Anyway I know that wasn't my WIP but I don't think I had the full grasp of how subtext works when I wrote that story, and now I feel I can go back and see *why* it worked. And where I might push it more. Sorry for talking about myself here but I hope someone finds that example helpful!
I am a very literal-minded person who tends to only say exactly what I mean (the exception being when there is a pun or some sort of word-play that can be made then I am compelled to make it.) To me, to speak in sub-text is either lying or being passive aggressive (childhood trauma, anyone?). Because of this, I often miss-read subtext both in real life and in fiction. I tend take what people say at face value. No wonder so many stories I write are about robots or aliens!
In my current WIP, my protagonist has lived a bit of a sheltered life and I've given her this trait. Since the story is in first person from her POV, I explore her realizations that people don't always say what they mean and sometimes are outright lying. Writing the dialogue for the character who is lying to her is definitely a challenge, though!