Editorial May 14, 2001 Issue

The subtext of a life

Russ Gerber

The other day I was reminded of Rose. As a boy I was in her Sunday School class.

You understand so much more about people when you take a deeper look at their lives. Linda Seger, author of Creating Unforgettable Characters, refers to this as perceiving the subtext of someone's life: "Subtext is what the character is really saying beneath and between the lines."^{Creating Unforgettable Characters (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1990), p. 148 .}