What is Subtext?
What you leave a lot out of in the dialogue is Subtext.
Pushing this just beneath the surface of the dialogue is what makes plays exciting and helps keep audiences in their seats.
Subtext is the unspoken thoughts and motives of your characters -- what they really think and believe.
In well-written dialogue, Subtext seldom breaks through the surface of
the dialogue except in moments of extreme Conflict.
At other times, it colours the dialogue. Another way of looking at this . . .
Subtext is Content Underneath The Spoken Dialogue
And subtext gives the performers something to do. If you let your characters
tell each other everything they think or feel, actors can't do what they're
trained to do best: revealing through gesture, intonation, and expression,
the real essence of a character.
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EXAMPLE OF SUBTEXT FROM THE INTERNET
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Radio Soap (serial drama) - HOW TO MAKE IT
Five-minute episodes - or short episodes
Step by step instruction from Alan Beck.
Learn about radio drama on this site along with my book - Beck, Alan, Radio Acting, London: A & C Black (1997) ISBN 0-7136-4631-4
This is how to make a short-form soap - entertaining (above all) and you can include issues (issues that could influence the listeners' behaviour).
Further: production, scripting, web site, marketing, focus group meetings, drop-in script, copyright material logging, trails, soap launch.
LINKS WITH OTHER SITE
Radio Drama - directing, acting, technical, learning & teaching, researching, styles, genres
This is a complete curriculum of scripts, techniques, advice, sound files - effects and atmoses (with no copyright and so free to use), detailed script commentaries, etc. -
Contact: [email protected]
This site's address: http://www.savoyhill.co.uk/soap/index.html