Subtext

Subtext is "the underlying or implicit meaning that, while not explicitly stated, is understood by an audience." The word says where it lives: content "sub," that is "under," in the sense of "hidden beneath" the verbatim wording, which readers must gather by "reading between the lines." A meaning stated explicitly is not subtext, and the article names the failure mode, writing faulted as too "on the nose," characters meaning what they literally have said, which undermines dramatic tension. Konstantin Stanislavski developed the modern acting concept, popularizing "unspoken intentions and internal motivations beneath dialogue," and Hemingway "utilized subtext in his works."

For the novelist subtext is the layer beneath every dialogue scene: what characters want and will not say. It is the working depth of the iceberg theory, omission pressing meaning under the surface, and free indirect discourse is one prose engine for it, narration carrying what the character never announces.