It’s time for acting class with Cajun, but first thing’s first- what the hell is subtext?
In the acting world, subtext is the underlying meaning behind spoken words as interpreted by an actor. What does that mean? Basically, you’re adding additional meaning to your spoken words by the way you say them. I’ll give you an example.
Let’s say I have the following scene in which I’m about to act:
JACK and SOPHIE are alone in the kitchen. Sophie is crying and Jack is comforting her.
JACK: “Sophie, everything is going to be okay. I just want you to know that I love you.”
Now if I’m going to play JACK in this scene there is information I’m going to need to know in order to apply the proper subtext to my dialogue, such as:
• What is the relationship between Jack and Sophie? If they are family then the line would be spoken much differently than if they were lovers.
• What happened immediately beforehand? What if this scene took place right after they had sex? How would you reflect that in the above line of dialogue?
This is all information that can be implied with the proper subtext.
So what does this have to do with game? Everything!
On bootcamp I tell students all the time that “it doesn’t matter what you say, it’s how you say it!” Women are masters of subtext. They understand that there is loads of information hidden in the way something is said. That’s why women can get so bitchy over seemingly trivial things that guys say; they know what we’re thinking!
So how do you use subtext effectively? I’ll give you an example of something I do.
Let’s say you’re in a club and you see a good set. Now in any given group at the venue, realistically, the subtext of your dialogue is going to be “I’m trying to win you over and make you like me.” A lot of guys subconsciously use this subtext when they open and are often rejected. Why? Because the women read into your subtext and knew exactly what you were doing. This is why you will hear “Is that a line?” so often, even if she hadn’t heard it before.
A better way to approach is to use the subtext of your opener. This is how most successful pickup artists operate. For example, my opener involves me asking women if I look like a drug dealer, so the subtext is simply that it’s bothering me that I look like a drug dealer, and I need their opinion. When I say the opener I put myself in the mind frame that it just happened to me so that my subtext is believable. This is what I did for a long time and it’s how I got good at opening. But, it’s boring and doesn’t really create attraction… there is a better way.
The best way to approach, in my experience, is to look at the venue as a stage (stop laughing) and look at each group as a scene you can enter. Instead of using the above mind frames when opening I’m going to use the subtext of a completely made up scenario that makes me exude attractiveness. So I’m going to approach the group under the subtext of “I just slept with all of these women” and I will communicate that to them by the way I speak, not by the words I’m saying. All of my dialogue will remain the same as it normally is.
So what happens? Remember how I said women are masters of subtext? Well, in this case you’re going to be glad that they are. If you communicate the subtext right, they are going to catch on very quickly and you will create attraction almost immediately. Women love guys that they can’t quite figure out, and if you go in acting like you just slept with them then you are basically a social enigma.
Students say things like “I don’t understand, you were talking to them about robots for three minutes and then all of a sudden they were making out with you. How the hell did that happen?” Using subtext is how it happened. You don’t always have to use the subtext of “I just slept with these women.” You can use whatever you want, but this is an example of one that communicates positive things about you and will make you more attractive to them.
