Friday, July 26, 2013

Subtext

So my writing assignment this week for Alice Osborn's class is 2 pages of dialogue, with particular attention to avoiding "said" tags and using subtext. She sent us, as an example, a short story by Hemingway. In the story, a couple is discussing an operation, which according to Wikipedia, is abortion. Now, I didn't get it. I was completely flummoxed and had no clue that it was abortion they were discussing. I was so distracted by trying to figure out what they were discussing that I missed a lot of the imagery. Am I stupid? I like to think I'm not. But this subtext was just too "sub" for me.
What I've learned is that I am probably too obvious in my dialogue. I'll be working on that. I'll post my assignment after I've gotten some feedback.

 

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