Subtext

What isn’t being said?

A person cannot speak unless they have a thought. A person does not have a thought unless they have a need. This is never more true than in dramatic writing. Characters in a script speak because they want something.

Another way to think of it: the average person speaks at 150 words per minute(wpm) while the average brain thinks at 3,000 wpm! In other words, our brains are assessing, calculating and making decisions much faster than we can utter the words to communicate those thoughts.

As the writer who creates these characters, when you have them speak you need to know not only (1)what they want but (2) what they think they want, (3) what they think will happen if they ask for it, (4) what they think will happen if they don’t, (5) what they think they can achieve by asking and (6) what they won’t — all of which is happening 20 times faster than what’s said aloud.

This is the hardest challenge of writing good dialogue.

Rarely do people know exactly what they want and rarely do they say it. When they do, it is often under duress and after having been pushed to profound emotional extreme.

The exception to this rule would be villains. Often times, what makes villains so sexy is that they know who they are and embrace themselves in ways no normal person can. As a…