I'm a huge fan of this film, and examples of subtext are scattered throughout: Olivia Wenscombe: You married her. You had a child with her. Alfred Borden: Yes. Part of me did. But the other part... the other part didn't. The part that found you, the part that's sitting here right now. Olivia Wenscombe: You could be in some other cafe saying the same thing about me right now. It's inhuman to be so cold.

My favourite film of all time. Gets richer and more wonderful every time I watch it - all down to the subtext, of course. Hadn't thought about it in these terms before, but maybe that's the difference between a film you only want to see once and a film you can keep coming back to - the amount of subtext?

Nice one, Vic. So much going on underneath the words, layers of meaning and emotion in this moment.

Debbie, I suspect you're right. Not only subtext tied to dialogue, but the intention tied to actions. When we traffic in that in our writing, we create layers of meaning. The text, the subtext, and all sorts of layers in between. It's like I tell my students: In a story, when something happens, something else happens, too. It's up to us to find out what that something else is.