To illustrate the topic I wish to present, I’ll quote a review for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which complains that
In Rowling’s novels, characters deliver a mix of clever repartee and thudding exposition. Here Thorne [...] defaults to the latter. The result is a play that fails to utilize the most elementary of playwright’s tools: subtext. Characters say exactly what they feel, explain exactly what is happening, and warn about what they’re going to do before they do it.
My everyday failure to handle indirect statements may relate to this (as well as the disagreements I’ve had with literature majors, and my own difficulties when writing): I have no patience for subtext. People saying exactly what they feel is the way I wish the world worked. Is there something wrong with me?
Have you spent time with people practicing Radical Honesty? I didn’t get how it worked from reading articles about it but in practice the folks in that community are quite nice.
Subtext is harder to understand than communicating clearly, and so subtext can be enjoyable and signal intelligence in the same way that playing chess is more fun and shows more intelligence than playing tic-tac-toe.
I far prefer subtext in a story to in real life. In a story the worst thing that can happen is for you to beleive that ‘animal farm’ really is about a bunch of animals. In real life the worst that can happen is that the pilot doesn’t realise that when the navigator says ‘the weather radar certainly is useful’ the subtext is that the weather is too sever to fly in, and promptly flies the plane into a mountain. This actually happened.
Maybe it’s easier to perceive the subtext when you are an average human interacting with average humans. Then the inferential distances are much smaller, so it is easier to guess each other’s thoughts.
Possibly, yes. Humans have evolved to account for a lot of subtexts, often in the form of theory of mind and empathy. It’s considered poor form in a novel (as per the “show, don’t tell” motto); I guess in a play, where you can visibly see emotions in the actors’ faces, it’s even more redundant and dull.
To illustrate the topic I wish to present, I’ll quote a review for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which complains that
My everyday failure to handle indirect statements may relate to this (as well as the disagreements I’ve had with literature majors, and my own difficulties when writing): I have no patience for subtext. People saying exactly what they feel is the way I wish the world worked. Is there something wrong with me?
Have you spent time with people practicing Radical Honesty? I didn’t get how it worked from reading articles about it but in practice the folks in that community are quite nice.
No such community exists near me.
Subtext is harder to understand than communicating clearly, and so subtext can be enjoyable and signal intelligence in the same way that playing chess is more fun and shows more intelligence than playing tic-tac-toe.
I far prefer subtext in a story to in real life. In a story the worst thing that can happen is for you to beleive that ‘animal farm’ really is about a bunch of animals. In real life the worst that can happen is that the pilot doesn’t realise that when the navigator says ‘the weather radar certainly is useful’ the subtext is that the weather is too sever to fly in, and promptly flies the plane into a mountain. This actually happened.
Maybe it’s easier to perceive the subtext when you are an average human interacting with average humans. Then the inferential distances are much smaller, so it is easier to guess each other’s thoughts.
Possibly, yes.
Humans have evolved to account for a lot of subtexts, often in the form of theory of mind and empathy.
It’s considered poor form in a novel (as per the “show, don’t tell” motto); I guess in a play, where you can visibly see emotions in the actors’ faces, it’s even more redundant and dull.