Turn OFF Your Freaking Subtitles

I read an article in the online magazine called Pocket¹ that got me thinking. The article, by Devin Gordon, was “Why Is Everyone Watching TV With the Subtitles On?”² 

Something just clicked.

WE WRITERS DO THE SAME THING!

Sometimes — HALT! Read “sometimes” as often! — OFTEN,  it's the verb we choose that is the button which turns our story’s subtitles on …

The premise of Mr. Gordon’s article deals with the psychology behind the question in the title of his article. 

However, I have another use for the phenomenon called subtitles. We can call my use a metaphor if you like. And if I can beg your patience, we'll get to that in a moment. But to fully understand it, we need to listen in on a little of Mr. Gordon’s development of subtitles in movies and on TV.

“Now,” [while subtitles are on] Gordon observes, “instead of focusing my attention on the performances, the costumes, the cinematography, the painstakingly mixed sound, and how it all works together to tell a story and transport me into an alternate world [emphasis, mine], my eyes keep getting yanked downward to read words I can already hear.”

Devin Gordon has a friend whose name is Ken, and he is an actor. One day, they discussed subtitles:

" ' Once the subtitles are on the screen, my friend Ken said, you feel, subconsciously, that there’s somebody else in the room. There’s a third person, and they’re telling you what’s being said — they’re being very quiet, they’re minding their own business, but they’re here.' "

Now, make no doubt about it, this “third person”, this elephant in the room, is a godsend for the hearing impaired. Even if they’re adept at reading lips, they might miss certain important cue sounds, like the rumble of thunder, the blaring of a horn, or words spoken when the actor’s back is turned, even the fart in a passionate love scene — if the movie is produced by the likes of Woody Allen.

But while TV subtitles perform an essential function for the hearing impaired, THEY HAVE NO PLACE in your well-crafted stories, where your SOLE PURPOSE as a writer should be to transport me, the reader, into an alternate world.

I call these verb choices  —  these subtitles in the reader’s mind  —  wannabe story assassins.

5 Bumbling Story Wannabe Assassins and Their Cousins

There are 5 sibling wannabe assassins every writer should be on the lookout for. (More than 5 exist — probably a hundred — but they’re all cousins, some distant.) Let me introduce you to the five:

Saw. Heard. Felt. Tasted. Smelled.

Why are they wannabes?

Whereas genuine assassins are defined by their effectiveness — they know their target intimately, they are swift, and they are deadly — ours are rather bumblers. They are masters of disguise, I’ll give them that. They blend in so well with their environment of words that you don’t often know they are on the job until the job’s done. 

But here is the difference. 

When they’re done, their target lies flat and disabled — but not quite dead — and that’s the important part. Your characters will need the work of an emergency room doctor to get them back on their feet, hardy, ready to do their job.

The doctor? That’s you!

If you haven’t already, you’ll probably want to jot these wannabe assassins down while keeping an eye out for their cousins, equally as annoying in their disabling tactics. Again, the five are: Saw. Heard. Felt. Tasted. Smelled.

But wait! Why are they assassins? Hasn’t every writing maven advised you to incorporate all the senses into your writing? Of course they have. And they’re right. Use the senses. But don’t name the senses. The moment you do that your senses start operating as subtitles to jolt the reader — to jolt me out of the alternate world you’d so painstakingly created for me.

Consider the following example:

<<Henry crouched beside a bush on the riverbank and watched the sun slip down between the two peaks. He was relieved it would be dark soon. He felt the crisp fall air numb his cheeks and knuckles. He knew that hiding here was cowardly, but they’d be waiting for him at home! Behind him, he heard the sound of pebbles crunching under car wheels and he realized he wasn’t alone.>>

The Wannabes At Work

At first glance, it looks okay. But look more closely. As soon as you ascribe one of the five senses as belonging to the POV (point of view) character, you, as the writer, are distancing him or her from me, the reader. “Henry watched the sun slip down …”

Before all this “watching”, you had cleverly deposited me on the riverbank with Henry. I liked being on the riverbank with Henry. In fact, I wanted to BE Henry on that riverbank — thanks to the deliciosity of your writing … until now.

Your senses start operating as subtitles to jolt me out of the alternate world you’d created for me.

Then … no sooner had you plopped me beside him than you urged me to watch him watch the sun slip down. Now, have you ever seen one of those cartoon characters whose entire body starts vibrating, then the identical, but ghosty, character begins to separate from the original, until, with a little *pop* two characters are sitting side-by-side? Well, that ghosty character was once one with Henry. But he’s now me, the reader.

And I’m a little miffed!

Let’s modify that scene slightly and see if we don’t give it more zip:

<<Henry crouched beside a bush on the riverbank [as] the sun slipped down between the two peaks. It would be dark soon. The crisp fall air numbed his cheeks and knuckles. Hiding here was cowardly, but they’d be waiting for him at home! Behind him, pebbles crunched under car wheels. He wasn’t alone.>>

The Cousins of the 5 Sibling Wannabes

If there were only the 5 sibling wannabes to deal with; if their cousins weren’t also weaving in and out of sentences, doing their mischief, you, the writer, could almost catch your characters in mid-fall, hoist them up, give them a vitamin jolt and be on your way. But to show you what you’re contending with, here’s a more comprehensive list — still nowhere near exhaustive:

You already met Saw. Now meet his first cousins, Perceived, Watched, Noticed, Looked.

Then, you have Heard with her most identifiable cousins Listened to, and Sounds like.

Here’s Felt and his cousin, Touched.

Meanwhile, Tasted cavorts beside her well-dressed cousin, Savored.

Finally, there’s Smelled, and his wannabe cousins, Sniffed, Inhaled, and Breathed.

And Now … From the Thinking and Emoting Side of the Family

Not to be overlooked, there’s a whole slew of cousins and second cousins born from the Thinking and Emoting side of the family. As you might guess, they are a large family, with a lot of questionable inbreeding. Here are just a sampling:

Thought. Perceived. Wished. Hoped. Wondered. Believed. Regarded. Wanted. Noticed. Realized. Decided.

You should take these cousins and second-cousin wannabe assassins seriously. Though they may have slept through most the lectures on killing off characters, they are still moderately effective, slogging through your sentences, whacking a knee-cap here, an elbow there.

When to Scout Out the Wannabes and Their Cousins

The creative process is marvelous and often delicate as fine lace when you are under its spell — and I’m not using “under its spell” lightly, as any creator who’s experienced being in the flow will tell you. Don’t squander those precious magical minutes or hours doing the work of refining and polishing.

Allow your first draft to be untamed, raw, and unscabbed. Test the gods. Challenge their authority. Push the margins of right and wrong to the very edge of propriety. Shove them into the abyss if you need to. You get the idea: throw off the chains. Be free.

Once the first draft is completed, however, and you’ve showered and refreshed your wardrobe, it’s time to encounter the wannabes. There are THREE ways you can ferret out your assassin verbs.

1. You can scour your manuscript from beginning to end, highlighting each assassin as you encounter him or her. Depending on the length of your manuscript, that can be daunting. Afterwards, of course, you don your armor and go to battle with each one.
2. Or you can use the “find” function on Microsoft Word. I prefer this method. BUT WHAT IF you are creating directly on FanStory, or any other internet site?
3. Piece of delicious cake! While pushing the CTRL function key (lower left), push the “F” key. Voila! See the box in the upper right? That is the Find Box. Say you choose the word “heard”. To the right of it you’ll see the fraction 1/5. Only worry about the last number … 5. That's the number of times "heard" can be found in your manuscript. Scroll down until you find the first, highlighted usually in yellow.

In the world of assassins, even wannabes, there are counter-assassins, good guys working right there in the midst of your stories. As you’ll notice when you go through the sibling-verbs and cousin-verbs in your story, not all of them yank your readers out of their alternate world. Some deserve to be there — they’ve earned their place in the sentence.

Here is an example of each, from my published story, “James Dean, You Broke My Mother's Heart”³ [Disclaimer: I get lazy, too. While I’ve known of the siblings and their cousins a long time, I, like many writers, fall heir to sloth and sometimes post without fully vetting them.]

... Assassins

<< “In reality, [I felt] only just a little uncomfortable by authority — but not torn apart.” >>
Changed to:
<< “In reality, authority made me a little uncomfortable — but not torn apart.”>>

<< “But something kept me from it. [I watched] her jaw trembling as she turned, stumbled through the laundry room and out the door into the backyard.” >>
Changed to:
<< “But something kept me from it. Her jaw trembled as she turned, stumbled through the laundry room, and out the door into the backyard.” >>
 

… And the Counter Assassins — the Good Guys At Work

Here’s an example of the “counter-assassins” (the good guys) in action, also from the same story:

<< “And as I watched my words suck the oxygen right out of her, I realized my folly — my stupidity.”>>
Here, I wanted to have the reader watch my words suck the oxygen right out of her. The emphasis needed to be on watching my words … not the depletion of oxygen. Likewise, a little later:
<< “Instead, I watched through the kitchen window, I pulled back the curtains and looked out at her …” >>
By having him watch her through the kitchen window and look out at her … I hoped to capture the contrast between his inner turmoil (“I need to follow after her. I need to call her back. I need to tell her what a fool — what an idiot I was!” ) and the James Dean role I knew I was playing, but couldn’t seem to stop.
 

THE WRAP-UP

A bit of a confession … You can find several excellent sources online (linked in the references below) who do a good job explaining “distancing verbs” or “filtering verbs”. I read their articles and incorporated some of their ideas.

However, sometimes we can become a bit jaded by having it explained the same way, again and again. I chose to introduce what I hoped would be a fresh way of viewing the subject from the standpoint of subtitling found in movies and TV. Keeping with the movie theme, I created several villains, calling them bumbling assassins, because they can kill — not kill the writing itself (in that sense, they are second-rate bumblers and knee-whackers) but kill excellence in writing — writing that should bound, romp, and even fly!

I hope you found my treatment both interesting and helpful.

JS

###

References:

¹ Pocket was the name of an online compendium of articles and stories, recently discontinued.
² “Why Is Everyone Watching TV With the Subtitles On?” By Devin Gordon, The Atlantic, June 6, 2023
³ “James Dean—You Broke My Mama’s Heart”, By Jay Squires, The Narrative Arc, 11/1/23 [https://medium.com/the-narrative-arc/james-dean-you-broke-my-mamas-heart-ed8f68ee5121?sk=ef80affc4287afcf0a4ee0b220152bcb]

1. How to Avoid Using Filters in Writing
2. How To Eliminate Distance In Deep Point of View
3. STRENGTHEN YOUR PROSE: DISTANCING VERBS