When I was offered the chance to review The Story Book by David Baboulene, I was impressed to discover that David was writing a Ph.D. thesis on subtext with the conclusion that readers and audiences prefer stories with deeper levels of subtext.
In The Story Book, David clears up the mystery of subtext in a few lines:
“Most writers think they must write subtext in order to deliver an underlying story. This is wrong... If the story is created using knowledge gaps, then the real story is received in subtext.”*David explains that the disparity between what the author, characters, and reader knows, or thinks they know, is what delivers the subtext. There are twelve types of “knowledge gap”, but these all fall into one of two categories: Revelation Gaps and Privilege Gaps.
Revelation gaps are common in mystery stories, where the detective is (hopefully) a few steps ahead of the reader and teases the reader into reading more deeply for clues. Privilege gaps are found in thrillers where the reader often gains advance knowledge of impending danger, for example, and “watches” in suspense to see if the protagonist will fall into the author’s trap.
The reason these two genres, in particular, are so popular is due to the work that the reader has to do to follow the story. Think of subtext as a little bit of mystery in each scene, with a variation on who understands the clues the most (reader or character). Subtext works because it engages the reader and when a reader is guessing, assuming, and thinking about a story s/he enjoys that story so much more.
* Page 30, The Story Book by David Baboulene, DreamEngine Media Ltd., 2010
You can read more of my review of The Story Book and my conversation with David on HearWriteNow. David can be contacted through his website or blog. You can follow David's blog book tour here.
The Story Book by David Baboulene is available from Amazon UK, and on Kindle from Amazon.com
Chapter 4 of The Story Book reviewed by Elsa Neal of HearWriteNow.com. A review copy of The Story Book was sent to the reviewer by the author.