Get to the Heart of Your Scene in 1 Step with Supertext

In a recent presentation, linguist Steven Pinker asked his audience why, in the movie Fargo, a motorist who has been pulled over by a cop displays his license in a wallet that has a fifty-dollar bill sticking out of it, and says to the officer something along the lines of, "I was hoping we could take care of this right here in Fargo." Obviously the motorist was offering a bribe. So obviously, in fact, that one might ask why the scofflaw didn't simply say, "Here's a fifty-dollar bribe to forget the whole thing."

Well, there are a lot of reasons; I'm sure you could come up with five right now. But Pinker's point was that expressing the offer of a bribe as the expression of a simple desire to facilitate bookkeeping made good use of the English language's ability to be vague.

The motorist's statement technically leaves plenty of room for interpretation. If perchance the motorist really did want to pay his fine on the spot, he's not guilty of attempting to bribe a peace officer. Perhaps the fiddy was sticking out of the wallet by accident.

On a deeper level of communication, offering a straight-shooting cop a bribe could be considered insulting, resulting, not only in arrest for attempted bribery, but anything else the cop could trump up. On the other hand, if the cop is crooked, he might appreciate being offered a pay-off without it seeming that way on the record.

Dropping even deeper into the pit of linguistic meaning, the cop might appreciate -- consciously or unconsciously -- being given the power to decide whether this, technically, is a bribe offer. In essence the motorist is saying, "You're in charge here. It's your call as to what we're doing is legal or illegal. You are the law." By placing himself in a subservient position, the motorist is doing what many animals do when they expose their bellies during an encounter with a more powerful adversary: they are avoiding harm by declaring a winner before the fight has begun.

Far from being a drawback, vagueness is the soul of human communication. As scriptwriters, we make constant use of this quality via text and subtext. Good use of subtext -- the meaning that is implied rather than stated -- is in fact the stomach of good dialog writing. (I say "stomach" instead of "heart" because there are many other good nexuses of good dialog writing, rather like the multiple stomachs of a cow. And if you're successful at it, it's a cash cow.)

Proper use of subtext, unlike text, can accomplish two important jobs at the same time. It communicates the true relationships between the characters in the scene, such as the hierarchy in the traffic stop scene above. And, perhaps more importantly, it communicates the relationship between the author and the audience. By being vague with the cop, the motorist is gifting extra power to the cop: he's in charge. And by being vague with the audience, the scriptwriter is handing momentary control of the reins to the listener.

"Ah," the guy in the theater seat smiles to himself, "He doesn't really want to take care of the fine. He's offering the cop a bribe!" The whole thing is so elementary, it takes place in a flash in the back of the mind. But in that instant, the viewer feels that he has figured something out -- one of the best ways to engage an audience. You're making the listener feel good by telling him he's in charge. He's at least as smart as you, maybe smarter. He's a grown-up: he doesn't need everything spelled out for him; he can observe the evidence and, in a trice, solve the puzzle. And they say movies and TV shows aren't interactive!

Of course there are an infinite number of ways to use subtext, as many as there are ways to use text itself.

A valuable practice, I've found, is to tackle a scene by writing the subtext first. This forces you to recognize the true meaning of your scene, and to avoid using subtext as text -- the very definition of bad scriptwriting.

Try it. Instead of striving for conversational, naturalistic dialog, write exactly what you want your characters' dialog to mean to the audience, whether the character would be conscious of that meaning or not. The example at the top might go something like this:

COP: You out-of-towners think our rules don't apply to you. I fucking hate you types. I hope you try and pull something so I can ram this book up your ass. I'm pissed at my wife, but I'm going to take it out on you.

DRIVER: Fantastic, a Cro-Magnon cop. Well, I'm not above sucking a little cock to get out of a ticket. Oh, please Mister Policeman! Don't harm me! Here, I discreetly offer you money! I'm smarter than everyone I meet. I wonder why that is?

You get the idea. I call it supertext because you've laid it atop the spot where your dialog will live. It's especially helpful to break writer's block.

Once you have your supertext, write your scene for real. Throw all your wonderful curve balls, sinkers and screwballs. That's how you avoid letting the batter getting wood on the ball too easily. As a result, when he gets it, he feels intrigued, surprised, delighted, self-satisfied.

Just make sure that when you're done, every word of sub-dialog is hidden in plain sight. Then leave the rest to your partner: the audience.