Subtext: Things Your Characters Shouldn’t Say

How to say, without telling.

Dec 21, 2025

Last article we talked about interiority—getting inside your character’s head, showing the thoughts they can’t help but think.

But here’s the flip side: knowing how to convey meaning without having your characters explicitly state it—aka subtext.

I’ve been seeing a lot of submissions where the characters narrate their feelings like they’re filing an HR complaint.

“I am heartbroken and furious that he cheated. This is the saddest day of my life. I have never felt so betrayed.”

Writers spell out the emotion as if the reader won’t understand unless they underline it three times. And I get it—you want to make sure it lands. But spelling it out doesn’t strengthen the impact—it usually weakens it.

Naming all the emotions and feelings doesn’t necessary set the scene. Often times, the strongest scenes are more nuanced, subtle. They’re shaped by what characters can’t admit, won’t say, or allow themselves to think about directly.

What Subtext Is

Subtext is the emotional reality beneath the surface of what’s being said or thought. It’s the elephant in the room (or scene in this case) that everyone—including the character—sees but refuses to discuss.

Hemingway argued that if a writer understands a subject deeply, they can leave important things unsaid and the reader will still feel them, just as powerfully as if they’d been spelled out. He compared this to an iceberg: only a small portion is visible above the surface, but its mass and movement come from what’s hidden below.

For example (and assume this is in context with the story):
You show: A character straightening a photo frame obsessively.
The reader feels: Grief. Loss of control. The need to keep something fixed when everything else is falling apart.
You show: A character calling their ex, then hanging up before it rings.
The reader feels: Longing. Pride. The pain of wanting someone you can’t have.

It’s the argument about dirty dishes in the sink, that’s actually about the affair. It’s the dialogue that sounds polite but crackles with hostility.

Subtext doesn’t hide emotion—it amplifies it.

The Power of Avoidance

Real people don’t think about their biggest fears in complete, articulate sentences. They don’t narrate their trauma. They don’t examine their deepest shame head-on. They think around it, then flinch away. They distract their minds with other things.

Your character’s mother is dying, but they keep wondering if they paid the phone bill. That is the grief—not despite the avoidance, but because of it.

For example:

Without subtext:

Lisa sat in the hospital waiting room. Her mother was dying. She felt sad and scared. She didn’t want to lose her mom. Why did this have to happen?

With subtext:

Lisa sat in the hospital waiting room, counting ceiling tiles. Twenty-three across, sixteen down. Someone had spilled coffee on the linoleum—a dark stain shaped like Florida. Her mother had taken her there every winter. Hands clenched, she traced the dark stain with her eyes, as if memorizing it could make everything stay the same.

The second version never names the fear or the grief, but it’s implied.

Three Types of Subtext

1. Dialogue:

The couple arguing about whose turn it is to take out the trash, are not arguing about trash. They’re arguing about respect, or resentment, or the affair nobody’s naming.

“You said you’d take it out.”
“I’ve been busy.“
“Right. Busy.“ She said the word with air quotes.
He grabbed his keys. “I’m going to Mike’s.”
“Of course you are.”

Not a single word about what’s actually wrong. Clearly, this couple isn’t ready/able to face the truth—or at least not the consequences of saying it out loud.

2. Thought:

Characters, like real people, are experts at self-deception. They’ll think about a thousand things to avoid the one thing they can’t face.

Your character lost their job but keeps mentally redecorating the living room. Your character’s marriage is ending but they obsess over the color of the placemats.

Example: A character avoiding the reality that her husband asked for a divorce then walked out the door:

She set the table again. The gray placemats were wrong—too dull. She tried the blue ones, then switched them back. He liked neutral colors. He’d said that once. She centered the plates, adjusted the forks so the tines lined up exactly, moved the salt shaker an inch to the left. She lit the candle, blew it out, lit it again. Dinner would be ready soon. He would be home soon.

She never thinks “divorce”, or says she devastated. Her actions and focus on irrelevant details tell us she’s spiraling and thinks a perfectly set table will change his mind—yet he’s not even coming back to see it.

Later we’ll see her sitting at the table with the “candles burned low” and that simple description will tell us everything.

3. Narrative:

Sometimes the narrator—even in close third—needs to be quiet too.

You don’t need to tell us the marriage is failing if you show us the husband making coffee for one. Or show them buying a rotisserie chicken and eating it over three nights.

Overexplained:
The house felt empty now. He missed her terribly and regretted everything he’d said during the divorce.
Subtext:
He stood in the kitchen holding two mugs, then put one back in the cabinet. He burned the coffee again, but drank it anyway.

Like most writing techniques subtext work best when used at the correct time and/or in the correct situation. Here’s a few examples when it doesn’t work:

1. When nothing is at stake

Subtext only works if there’s a reason the character can’t or won’t say/think the thing. If there’s no risk, shame, fear or general consequences, just say it.

2. When you’re being coy for no reason

Subtext isn’t about creating false mystery. It’s about showing how characters protect themselves from painful truths.

If your character has crucial information and there’s no emotional reason they’d avoid thinking about it, just let them think about it.

3. When you forget about the reader

Yes, trust your reader—but give them enough to work with. If your subtext borders on cryptic, you’ve lost them.

The best fiction doesn’t tell us what characters feel. It shows us how they move through the world carrying those feelings—how they deflect, how they protect themselves, how they think about anything except the thing that’s bothering them.

When you trust the reader to feel what isn’t named, they bring their own experiences to the narrative—their grief, their regrets, their betrayals. That unspoken space gives your characters dimension, allows your scenes to resonate, and makes your story unforgettable.

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