How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Subtext
Some years ago, I was part of a creative team tasked with writing a launch campaign for Cadillac. Six or so full-page newspaper ads, each about three or four hundred words. A lot of ink, a lot of pressure, and the vague but ever-present knowledge that an army of luxury-car enthusiasts might be judging my adjective choices.
It was, in other words, a creative writing challenge disguised as advertising.
This was back when car ads still occasionally read like literature. You know, before headlines became hashtags and clients demanded that all emotion be expressed in emojis. The job felt like a chance to do something smart, grown-up, and vaguely Mad-Men-adjacent. The only problem was: how do you create something that feels that intelligent?
So I did what most copywriters do when feeling insecure. I went hunting for greatness by osmosis. I read every print campaign I admired, from Volkswagen’s wry minimalism to The Economist’s red-and-white wit, hoping a little of their magic would rub off.
And that’s when I discovered an ad that hit me right between the synapses: Harley-Davidson’s legendary “Peanuts” spread, written by Jim Nelson and art-directed by John Smith at Carmichael Lynch.
It’s two pages of simple copy and image that made Harley riders nod knowingly and everyone else wonder why they were missing out on.
Strategically bulletproof, creatively stunning. But there was something more. It whispered instead of shouting. It suggested.
What struck me most wasn’t what the ad said, but what it didn’t. Hidden in it was and one of the best tips for fiction writers. Any writer, really. It taught me that in communication, whether you’re selling motorcycles, luxury sedans, or inner torment in novel form, the gaps are where the meaning lives.
The Power of Gaps
In the “Peanuts” ad, the headline captures all the emotional impact you feel when you’re alone on a Harley, throttle open, world blurring past. And yet not one of those words appears anywhere in the text.
That’s what great creative thinking does: it invites the audience to leap. It assumes they’re clever enough to make the connection. The ad doesn’t spell out freedom; it trusts you to feel it.
That was the first time I truly understood what “subtext” meant , not as a literary term, but as an emotional transaction. You communicate something by not saying it. Writing great dialogue, like the best advertising, comes from finding those silences between words.
And once you see that, you start noticing it everywhere
Subtext Makes Dialogue Crackle
If you want to learn how to write better dialogue, pay attention to subtext. Real human conversation is rarely about what it appears to be about. People almost never say exactly what they mean. (Except perhaps when ordering coffee.) What’s said is only the surface; what’s meant swims deep below it, like a shark in loafers.
When you approach writing dialogue for your characters that way, you get believable exchanges. It should two currents at once. The literal one, and the emotional one humming just beneath. In many ways, writing great dialogue helps develop your characters more fully.
Take this exchange from The Godfather: Michael Corleone is confronting Kay, his girlfriend.
Michael: My father is no different than any other powerful man , any man who’s responsible for other people.
Kay: You know how naïve you sound? Senators and presidents don’t have men killed.
Michael: Oh. Now who’s being naïve, Kay?
On the surface, it’s polite disagreement. Underneath, it’s the tectonic shift of Michael’s moral descent, the moment he quietly steps into his father’s shoes, and the family business. The irony cuts sharper than any admission could. Those three lines are a masterclass in how to write believable characters
That’s subtext: when the words are doing one job, and the silence another.
The Detective and the Drinker
When I was writing my first novel, Half Made Up, I wanted to capture that same friction, the collision between what’s said and what’s meant. In one scene, my protagonist Andy MacKay (gambler, chain-smoker, part-time moral disaster) is sparring with Detective Inspector Romford, who views him as a walking liability in a murder investigation.
Here’s how part of it goes; Romford speaks first.
“I’m not questioning your right to go wherever you like,” he shot back. “At least for now.”
He stood up, looming for effect. “But we can’t have you interfering with our official inquiries.”
“So you are conducting one?” I scoffed. “Are you going to find out who killed my friend? Are you going to find these Islamist yahoos and deliver justice?”
He ignored me, raising his voice. “Listen here, MacKay. I won’t tolerate interference from you or anyone else.”
I stood, too, but kept my voice low. “Inspector, listen to me,” I said. “A friend asked me for help. As he lay dying, I made a promise to him.”
Poking his finger into my chest, he went from irritated to incandescent. “MacKay, get this. I won’t have you playing amateur detective.”
“Inspector, it’s not my place to play amateur detective.”
“Good,” he said, smugly gathering his papers.
I smiled. “I’ll leave that to you.”
On the surface, it’s a simple power struggle. Underneath, it’s a chess match with words. Each move is calculated to assert control, test loyalty, and wound pride. Romford warns. Andy mocks. Each refuses to acknowledge the other’s authority. Neither answers questions directly. It’s a polite duel with blunt instruments.
The tension isn’t in the volume of their voices, but in the gaps, the spaces between the words where both men reveal who they are.
Subtext: Beneath the surface, both are probing for dominance while pretending civility. The real conversation is unspoken.
Contradiction: Each response dodges the literal question. The meaning is carried in implication, not exposition.
Tone: Andy’s calm undercuts Romford’s fury; Romford’s bluster exposes insecurity. Tone, not text, reveals character.
Body Language: Standing up, finger-pointing, ignoring , these aren’t stage directions, they’re emotional punctuation marks.
You can’t write dialogue like that by accident. It’s built , or rather, sculpted away from , the obvious.
How to Write Dialogue That Feels Alive
When I’m writing dialogue, I think about what Jim Nelson said about the Harley ad.
“This ad didn’t come from me. It came from the thousands of ads I’d studied, from an agency environment that was highly competitive, from a client that demanded the best. I was just the one in the right place at the right time to write it down.”
That sounds mystical, but it’s not. It’s about environment. You fill your creative lungs with great examples until something intuitive bubbles up. Then you capture it before it escapes.
My own process is much less poetic but equally dependent on gaps and ghosts
1. Write the surface first. Let your characters talk the way people actually talk , messy, repetitive, full of “uhs,” “buts,” and changes of direction. Don’t worry about meaning yet.
2. Ask what the scene wants. Every conversation should move the story forward , even if just by revealing who’s lying to whom.
3. Add the unsaid. Layer in body language, tone, interruptions, silences. These cues whisper the real story.
4. Step away. Let it marinate. The subconscious edits better than caffeine.
5. Trim. The final draft should say more with less. Leave the gaps where readers can step in and infer.
When you get it right, you’ll feel the current humming beneath the words. That’s when you know your dialogue isn’t just saying something; it’s doing something.
Why AI Can’t Fake It
What follows one of those writing lessons for new authors that’s less inspirational quote and more survival tip.
I’ve tinkered with AI dialogue tools. You know, curious, perhaps masochistically, to see what they’d make of Andy MacKay. The result was, what? Tidy. Too tidy. Like a ventriloquist who’d memorized the words but never felt the argument.
AI can string sentences together, even mimic tone. But it can’t access the unspoken universe that gives dialogue life the “Peanuts ad” energy, the sideways glance, the moral slippage that makes Michael Corleone’s voice go cold.
Because subtext doesn’t come from syntax; it comes from intent. And machines don’t have that. They don’t know what it feels like to loathe someone politely or promise something you already plan to break.
You could feed ChatGPT a thousand prompts as detailed as IKEA assembly instructions (“Write dialogue suggesting betrayal but also repressed affection, in the style of The Godfather, but with more seafood metaphors”). It would still miss that spark of contradiction.
That’s because great dialogue, like great art direction or great jazz, depends on the one thing algorithms can’t fake: human messiness.
The Fiction Connection
What writing Cadillac ads really taught me was how to write people who talk like people.Good dialogue isn’t about horsepower or clever lines, it’s about creating a gap big enough for the reader’s imagination to drive through.
You don’t tell them what to feel; you let them arrive there themselves. The power lies in the pause between lines, the charge that hangs in the silence. The best dialogue hums with restraint. It says less and means more. Writing it is like tuning an engine. Too much exposition and you flood it; too little and it stalls. Because conversation isn’t just words. It’s tone, timing, gesture, and implication, the small universes that orbit every exchange
That’s how you can make your dialogue really sing. Your characters stop speaking at each other and start speaking around something, exactly the way real people do when what they mean is too risky to say out loud.
The Final Word (and the Unsayable One)
If I learned anything from Cadillac, Harley-Davidson, and one too many late nights tweaking ad copy, it’s this: Good writing is about control. Great writing is about restraint. It’s about knowing what not to say. Trusting your reader to complete the thought. The spaces between words, like the gaps between gears in a finely tuned engine, are what make everything run smoothly.
And if you get it right, your dialogue , like a Harley on an open road or a Cadillac gliding down a city boulevard , won’t need to shout. It’ll just purr, effortlessly, carrying the reader along for the ride
This essay is one of a collection of pieces documenting the bedlam involved in writing and self-publishing my ongoing genre fiction series: The Misjudgements of Andy MacKay, available on Amazon.