So now that we have a broad overview of how these different elements work, you can understand that subtext is really a tension between what’s happening on the surface and what’s happening underneath.

And if you want to write great subtext it isn’t about getting technically good, although there are technical tricks that we can teach you. It’s really about connecting to that pressure in yourself to feel both the wave and the undertone in your own emotions as you write, to feel the two things happening at the same time with the characters.

What’s happened to all three of these characters in Succession that is causing all this subtext is that all three of their statuses have been lowered.

All three of these characters have found themselves exiled to the outside while the real stuff happens inside.

Structurally, the real stuff that the audience is interested in, on a secondary structure leve, is knowing what’s happening with Logan and Connor and Roman and Kendall and Shiv.

But also, more importantly, on a primary structural level, those characters, Marcia and Willa and Tom, want to be in that room.

They want to be as important as the people that they’ve married, or are marrying, or are connected to romantically. And the circumstances have clearly proven to them that they are not.

All of these three characters find themselves in a place where their status is demoted. And so, all three of these characters are trying to feel better about themselves.

Now we’re going to play a little clip from that scene so you can listen to it, and I’m going to do a deep breakdown of it (read transcript)

So, Marcia’s first line. Marcia looks over at Willa, the prostitute, and Marcia is feeling crappy about herself. She doesn’t like being outside, sitting next to a prostitute and a future husband who she thinks is below her step-daughter. She doesn’t like being exiled from her husband’s side.

What Marcia does is begin a status game with Willa. And you can feel from the very first line the pressure between what’s happening on the surface and what’s happening underneath.

Marcia says to Willa, “Tell me, do you think you’ll always do what you do?” And Willa, of course, is a little taken aback. She can’t imagine that Marcia would be talking to her about being a prostitute right now.

So Willa tries to redirect. She says, “What, with theatre?” And Marcia clarifies, because Marcia, in fact, does want to point out that Willa is a prostitute right now, because Marcia wants to lower Willa’s status in order to feel better about herself.

So Marcia’s primary objective is to get Willa to admit she’s a prostitute. The secondary objective that is creating the subtext is to increase her own status by lowering Willa’s.

Poor Willa says, “What, with theatre?” And Marcia says, “Yes, and what you do for money…” which is not what Willa wants to hear.

And Willa says, “Uhhuh. Uh, well you know I like my life, and you know I kind of just go with the flow, so yeah I think I’ll just, you know, slide right over into producing or writing or directing…”

There’s a primary objective once again.

The primary objective for Willa is to deflect this conversation away from her prostitution. The primary objective is to refocus the conversation and to brand herself as the writer/director/producer of theatre: the artist rather than the prostitute. So that’s what’s happening on the primary level.

And on the secondary level what Willa is trying to do is increase her status in order to feel better about herself. She’s trying to increase her status in the eyes of Marcia and Tom.

Even though Tom isn’t saying anything, Tom is so important in this scene because Tom is the audience. Tom is the person in front of whom this drama is playing out, in front of whom Willa can be raised or lowered in status.

So you have Marcia trying to knock Willa’s status down, and you have Willa trying to raise her status up.

But that isn’t what either of these characters are thinking!

Marcia is thinking, “I’m going to make her admit she’s a prostitute.”

And Willa is thinking, “I’m going to try to prove that I’m an aspiring artist and that in fact I’m moving up to the big time… I’m sliding right over into producing/writing/directing. I’m getting more. I’m going to be more of an artist than I am today.”

So, having failed in her first attempt to get Willa to admit she’s a prostitute— so that Marcia can feel better about herself, so that Marcia can punish Willa for being the person who she has to sit outside with in exile, so that Marcia can punish Willa for feeling like her own status has been diminished— Marcia tries a different tactic.

Marcia’s primary objective is the same. She wants to get Willa to admit that she’s a prostitute, so that Willa can feel worse about herself and be punished, so that Marcia can have justice, so that Marcia can raise her status and feel better about herself.

But watch this new tactic she takes.

She says, “I knew a woman in Paris. She did what you do. She was very intelligent.”

So, isn’t this a wonderful little rope-a-dope move here?

You can feel that secondary objective still underneath, but she’s trying a new technique: instead of being mean she’s going to be nice. She’s going to suck Willa in and gain her confidence.

So at first, when she says, “I knew a woman in Paris. She did what you do,” Willa is thinking, “Oh my God, is she going to talk about prostitution or writing?” But once Marcia says, “She was very intelligent,” Willa relaxes. She says, “Oh thank you, oh my God!”

Willa starts to think, “I might actually be connecting here. Maybe it worked. Maybe this woman is actually seeing me as an artist. Maybe she wasn’t actually trying to call me out as a prostitute at all. Maybe she doesn’t actually know. Maybe she just suspects…”

And Willa’s whole emotion changes because now there’s a primary objective, which is to connect, to feel the praise of a mother figure, to actually feel connected to the family: primary objective. Secondary objective—protect myself because I don’t know if this woman has got a right hook coming for me.

And Marcia has a new primary objective, which is, “I want to get to know her,” but the same secondary objective, which is to force Willa to admit she’s a prostitute to make her feel worse about herself so Marcia can feel better.

Marcia continues with this tactic since it’s working. She says, “And do you want children?” Willa thinks, “Oh my God!” This is a little bit complicated. She says, “Um I don’t know. Um, maybe one day,” because there’s a part of her going, “Oh my God, is she actually accepting me as a potential future daughter-in-law? Is she actually welcoming me into the family?”

So there’s a primary objective, which is to be accepted into this family, and there’s a secondary objective, which is to protect herself.

So Marcia sucks her in a little deeper, “Don’t wait. That’s all I will say.”

And for one moment it starts to seem like maybe this is Willa’s chance to actually be accepted. Maybe this is her chance to actually be part of the family. Maybe being exiled out here is actually going to start a connection, because after all, here is this mother figure giving her advice.

Of course Tom jumps in.

Tom says, “The old biological clock starts ticking. You could always freeze.” Primary objective, change the subject.

Tom has been watching this uncomfortable conversation and his primary objective is to change the conversation from “Willa is a prostitute” to “let’s talk about eggs.”

Marcia isn’t going to let that happen.So her primary objective shifts. Her new primary objective is to shut Tom up, and her secondary objective is to put Tom in his place, to raise her status by lowering Tom’s.

“It’s a way of putting off life,” she says. Let’s put the kibosh on that idea.

Tom, who has also been exiled and isn’t feeling great about himself, takes this moment to try to reassert his point of view, “Well, I’d like Shiv to freeze. Embryos, not eggs. Little bit of me in the bank. Thought about that?”

So, having failed to get what he wants from Marcia, after having his status diminished, Tom tries to help: primary objective. Secondary objective: raise his status by giving some advice to Willa.

At which point Willa says, “Ah! So much advice. Wow!” because she is, in fact, feeling overwhelmed. She’s feeling both the text and the subtext, the primary and the secondary objective.

Willa is feeling on the one hand this family might be accepting her and might be welcoming her in, and at the same time she’s feeling the pressure that at any moment one of these people could turn on her and hurt her.

She’s feeling in herself the primary objective of connecting, and the secondary objective of protecting.

And just as Willa feels most overwhelmed, Marcia comes back. Primary objective: to return to her story about her friend from Paris. Secondary objective: to put Willa in her place and get the justice she wanted from the very beginning, to lower Willa’s status and raise her own.

And watch how she sucks her in.

“You know, my friend from Paris who was your way, she actually was murdered. It was nothing to do with her being a prostitute. It was to do with a restaurant that went poof.”

And you could see what she does here.

She’s been struggling this whole scene to get Willa to admit the truth. She’s tried a bunch of different tactics, and when it doesn’t work she goes in for the kill. If Willa is not going to admit it, she’s going to say it herself.

You can feel at that moment the completion, right? Now it’s out in the open: Willa isn’t a part of this family, Willa isn’t being welcomed with open arms, Willa is being diminished and threatened.

You can feel at that moment the power dynamic rise.

Marcia has the upper hand over both of these characters, and that’s what brings the scene to a completion.

In lesser hands, this is a boring scene.

This is a scene where a character tells a story about a character who we don’t even know, who isn’t even in the episode. It’s a scene in which a bunch of characters discuss embryos versus eggs, and where the big bombshell is a bombshell that we already know! Everybody knows that Willa is a prostitute. All three of these people know it. Willa knows it, Tom knows it, Marcia knows it. Everybody in the family knows it.

On the surface, in the text, there is no bombshell. There is no structure. There’s nothing going on but a bunch of talk.

But the pressure between what’s happening on the surface and what’s happening underneath, the want, the emotional need, and the status games that are happening between these characters, give a level of fireworks to this little tiny moment that makes what’s happening on the outside feel as important as what’s happening on the inside.

Now, here’s what’s very important: you can’t do this by thinking about it.

You can’t create this kind of structure by carefully planning the primary and secondary objective.

If you do that, your writing is going to be less like life.

If you do it purely consciously, purely by planning, what’s going to happen is that your writing is going to feel technical. Because that isn’t how this happens in real life.

The truth is, in real life, you have subtext all the time.

You have pressure between what you’re doing on the surface and what you’re going for underneath.

You’re pursuing emotional needs that you aren’t even aware of all the time. You’re pursuing objectives that don’t match with your conscious objectives all the time.

We always have these multiple layers happening in us, and we’re not usually planning them, just like Marcia isn’t fully planning them.

Marcia doesn’t know at the end of the scene that she’s going to hit Willa with the zinger. Marcia knows that she’s going to keep on maneuvering until she gets a way to get that zinger in.

So if you think about subtext purely as a technique— and again, there are a million techniques that you can learn about subtext and that I’d be delighted to teach you— but if you think about subtext purely as technique, what you’re going to end up with is something that doesn’t reflect what happens in the real world.

But if you think of subtext as something you do all the time…

If you start to notice the subtext in you and the different layers of texture in your primary and secondary objective…

If you begin to recognize the different levels of texture between what you think you want and what you’re actually pursuing, between what you’re saying and what’s bubbling under the surface…

If you learn to connect to the feeling under the surface at the same time the character is pursuing what they want on the surface…

If you learn to feel both of those wants at the same time as you write, to dip and dodge just like Marcia and Tom and Willa, until you find your place to strike, until the moment opens up where the secondary objective can actually be met…

If you allow that to happen, then the rest of the work is just craft.

The rest of the work is just working out of that intuitive model that you’ve created, that intuitive rough draft—which is going to be dripping with subtext—and then compressing and honing and shaping the lines in order to bring that subtext to the future, in order to bring that subtext to the surface.

 

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*Edited for length and clarity