The subtext exercise: argue about something else

Two people argue about a pan that has been soaking for three days, and the scene is really about one of them leaving. That is the subtext exercise in one line. This post shows how to write it as three short deliverables (an on-the-nose draft, a subtext draft and a one-page subtext map), how to choose the two subjects, and which produced scenes to close-read while you work.

What the subtext exercise is

"On the nose" is the note every new screenwriter gets sooner or later. The Shore Scripts workbook Mastering Subtext defines it plainly: characters who are "not hiding anything" and say exactly what they mean, feel and want. Subtext is the opposite. It is what the scene is really about, carried underneath what the characters are actually talking about.

The drill that trains it has many versions, and they share one constraint: there is something the characters are not allowed to say. A few versions you can find published:

• Evan Placey's Arvon exercise Subtext: running into an ex gives A the subtext "I miss you" and B the subtext "I've met someone else and we're engaged", and neither may say it.
• Charles Harris, in his nine steps to dialogue with subtext, suggests two characters with something they mustn't mention, such as two prisoners waiting to be hanged who talk about the weather, their last meal and a mouse in the cell.
• Theatrefolk's playwriting lesson on subtext has students write a 1–2-page scene in which two characters do a household chore with an underlying emotion beneath their conversation.
• The Scripta docs on subtext call it the restriction technique: if the characters are fighting about money, they have to argue about something else.

The version in this post, "argue about something else", is the sharpest of these for screenwriters. It forces a surface argument with real stakes, not just polite small talk around a secret, and a surface argument gives actors something to play.

Where it shows up in courses

Subtext usually gets taught in the dialogue unit, and the exercise that follows is a short dialogue scene. A published University of Florida syllabus for RTV 3108 Screenwriting pairs a class on writing effective dialogue ("exposition, subtext, losing empty dialogue") with an in-class dialogue scene (syllabus PDF). A University of Utah Asia Campus syllabus for Film 3820 schedules a "Lecture: Subtext", then holds table reads of the assignments in the weeks that follow (syllabus PDF). Gotham Writers' Screenwriting I covers subtext in its dialogue week, and the College of New Jersey's COM 325 master syllabus lists "text/subtext" and "hiding exposition" in its dialogue session (PDF).

None of these documents spells out the exact three-part deliverable below. That part is our synthesis of the published workshop exercises: Shore Scripts' Exercise 6 ("Go overboard", "Now Revise", "Then Hide"), Harris's advice to write the "text" first, and the Arvon exercise's step of naming each character's subtext before you write.

The drill: three deliverables in about two hours

Set a timer for each part. The time limits keep you from polishing the wrong draft.

1. The on-the-nose version (1–2 pages, 20 minutes). Write the scene with everyone saying exactly what they mean. Be blatant. Shore Scripts' Exercise 6 tells you to "write the worst scene you possibly can", with hidden agendas exposed and exposition everywhere. This draft is your raw material. It tells you what the scene has to carry.
2. The subtext version (2–3 pages, 60 minutes). Same characters, same situation and the same outcome, but the real subject is banned. They fight about something concrete in the room instead. Every exchange should push, dodge, hide or accidentally reveal the real subject.
3. The subtext map (half a page to a page, 15 minutes). Write it after the draft, as a check on the draft rather than a plan for it.

The map should include:

• each character's objective in the scene, and what they fear will happen if they say it out loud;
• the surface subject and the real subject;
• who wins the surface argument and who wins the real one;
• the breakthrough moment, the one line or action where the real subject comes closest to the surface;
• three lines whose literal meaning differs from what they mean in the scene.

Then read the two versions aloud, or better, have two friends read them. The Arvon exercise ends the same way: read it back and notice how you got the subtext across. Was it word choice, a pause, an action, an unfinished sentence, a repetition?

Choosing the two subjects

Most failed subtext scenes fail here, before a line is written.

The real subject should be something both characters know about (or one suspects) and neither can afford to name. Shore Scripts' first reason for subtext is a character with too much to lose by being direct. Losing face, the relationship, a job or the argument itself all count.

The surface subject needs three properties:

• Concrete. It's an object or task in the room, not "communication" or "respect".
• Escalating. It can plausibly get louder: something to count, compare or keep score of.
• Rhymes with the real one. Shore Scripts' change-the-subject exercise asks that the diversion stay "thematically connected". A fight about who gets the last of the milk when the real subject is money works. A fight about the weather when the real subject is money mostly doesn't.

Some pairings to steal or adapt:

Last, split the win. Decide who wins the surface argument and who wins the real one, and make them different people. Winning the dishes and losing the marriage is the kind of irony the drill is built to produce.

A worked example: Anna, Ben and the soaking pan

Here is the drill run end to end on an original scene: a kitchen, night, two characters.

The real subject: Ben has accepted a job in another city without asking Anna. She found out from an email left open on the laptop. He doesn't know she knows.

The surface subject: a roasting pan Ben left "to soak" on Sunday. It's Wednesday.

Version 1: on the nose

It's clear, and it's dead. Nothing is left for an actor to find because the lines have already said it all. But now you know the beats the subtext version has to hit: accusation, justification, fear.

Version 2: argue about something else

Same beats: the accusation ("since Sunday"), the justification ("it needs to soak"), the fear ("you never asked"). The breakthrough is an action, not a line. Anna packs the pan, which admits she knows, and lets him go without either of them saying the city's name.

The subtext map

If you can't fill a row, the draft has a gap. The most common empty row is "fear": without it, there's no reason for the characters not to just say it, and the scene reads as coy instead of tense.

The box above opens the Scene outline with one kitchen scene and two characters in ScripTao, which is free, needs no sign-up and keeps your work in your browser. Use your own real subject; the dishes are only a starting point.

Close-read three produced scenes first

Before you draft, read one of these scenes and write a two-line map of it: surface subject, real subject. Don't copy the dialogue. Look at how the surface topic is chosen so that almost every line works on both levels.

"Hills Like White Elephants". An American man and a young woman wait for the train to Madrid at a Spanish station. Per the Wikipedia summary, they only discuss the operation indirectly. It turns on her line "They look like white elephants" and his flat "I've never seen one". The story is short, it's mostly one conversation, and it's in the US public domain: Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain lists Men Without Women among the works that entered it in 2023. That makes it a good text to adapt as a screen scene for practice, too (see the adaptation exercise).

Sideways, the Pinot speech. In the screenplay (a May 2003 draft), Maya asks "Why are you so into Pinot?" and Miles answers that it's "thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early" and needs patient, nurturing growers to reach its potential. He's describing himself. Maya's reply about wine as a living thing that evolves and then peaks is her answer to him, and the stage direction says outright that "the moment is right". Then Miles asks where the bathroom is. The Shore Scripts workbook uses this scene for the same point. Here, the surface subject is the confession.

The Apartment, the last scene. Baxter tells Fran he loves her. As Slashfilm's reading of the ending quotes it: "I love you, Miss Kubelik… I absolutely adore you." She hands him the cards and says "Shut up and deal" (Wikipedia plot). She never says it back, and the game of gin rummy says it for her. Study it for your breakthrough moment: one character can break the rule if the other answers in the surface language.

One more reference for the on-the-nose version: in Annie Hall (screenplay by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman), trivial small talk on a balcony is revealed by "mental subtitles" to be an escalating flirtation (Wikipedia). It's the joke version of this exercise. The subtitles are your subtext map, printed on screen.

How to check your subtext version

• Could a stranger say what it's about? Hand the scene to someone who hasn't seen your map and ask what the scene is really about. If they can't guess, you've buried it too deep. The Scripta docs make the same point: subtext so buried the audience can't sense it "effectively does not exist".
• Does the surface argument escalate on its own terms? If you deleted the real subject from your head, would the fight about the pan still build? If not, it's filler and not a fight.
• Did anybody explain? Look for lines starting "The thing is…", "What I'm really saying…", or any sentence that names a feeling. Cut them, or turn them into an action.
• Is it too subtle for the story? Harris suggests making an important point more than once, in different ways, each a little less subtle than the last. That's useful when a reader in your workshop misses it entirely.

The on-the-nose draft isn't wasted. Harris notes that his first drafts, like those of the writers he talked to, are "full of dialogue that is unsubtle and too direct". The subtext comes in the rewrite. That's also why this pairs well with the rewriting exercises.

Common mistakes

• Choosing a surface subject with no stakes. Weather, traffic and small talk give actors nothing to fight over. Pick something one of them can win.
• Making the real subject a secret only one character knows. That's dramatic irony, which is useful but different (see the dramatic irony drill in the TV writing exercises). For this drill, both should at least suspect.
• Hiding everything in parentheticals. A stage direction like (bitterly) on every line is the on-the-nose version moved into the parentheses. Give the actors actions instead.
• No turn. A subtext scene still needs to end somewhere different from where it started. If the power doesn't move, run it through the goal, conflict, turn check.

Where to go next

If the dialogue keeps leaking the subtext, take the words away entirely with the silent scene exercise. Shore Scripts' Exercise 7 does the same thing: strip a pivotal scene of dialogue and see what survives. If you can't name a character's fear on the map, work on the character first with want, need and wound. For the whole set of exercises courses assign, start at screenwriting exercises film schools actually assign. For longer reading, Robert McKee's Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage, and Screen (2016), his follow-up to Story, breaks down scenes from Macbeth to Breaking Bad.

FAQ

Can you give me an example of subtext in dialogue?

In Sideways, Miles explains that Pinot noir is "thin-skinned, temperamental" and needs a patient grower. On the surface he's talking about grapes. Underneath, he's describing himself to a woman he likes. The line works on both levels at once, and that's the test for any line of subtext.

What are some good exercises for writing dialogue with subtext?

Four that work: argue about something else (this post); Arvon's "running into an ex", where each character has a sentence they're never allowed to say; Harris's two characters with a forbidden topic; and Shore Scripts' blatant-first rewrite, where you write the scene on the nose and then hide it.

How do I add subtext to dialogue I've already written?

Write down, next to each line, what the character actually means. Then find something concrete in the scene the characters could argue about instead, and move the fight there. Keep the beats and the outcome, and replace each direct statement with a tactic: a dodge, a question answered with a question, a change of subject, or an action.

Is on-the-nose dialogue always bad?

No. Shore Scripts points out that coming straight out and saying it "can create very powerful moments", and gives Nemo's "I hate you" in Finding Nemo as an example. The problem is dialogue that's direct all the time. In this drill, the on-the-nose draft is a required step.

What is the 3-line rule in screenwriting?

It's a readability rule of thumb, not a formatting requirement. It usually means keeping each block of dialogue, or each paragraph of action, to about three lines. A Script Reader Pro reply on dialogue formatting calls it "just a general rule", and a Go Into The Story post notes there's "no official rule" on paragraph length, only readers' expectations. Short speeches help subtext anyway, since long ones tend to explain.

How long should a subtext scene be?

For practice, 2–3 pages. That's enough room for the surface argument to escalate and turn, and short enough to rewrite twice in one sitting.