I read a great article a few months ago about subtext in scenes. It has to do withe creating tension between people in a scene who don't come right out and say what they are talking about but instead talk around the issue or completely avoid it.
As a reader, you can feel the tension on the page as the protagonists dance around each other
In this scene from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Daisy is married to Tom and goes to visit Gatsby (her former love) in his mansion. This is the first time she has visited him since he became wealthy-- something he did becuase wealth was so important to her.
Gatsby shows Daisy his shirts:
“I’ve got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.”
He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them one by one before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft, rich heap mounted higher—shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple green and lavender and faint orange with monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly with a strained sound Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.
“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—such beautiful shirts before.”
Is Daisy really crying about shirts? No. She's crying because Gatsby attained the wealth she craved but never believed he could attain. She regrets that she married Tom and didn't have faith in Gatsby and his ambition. This is the power of subtext.
