Screenwriting : Todd Field's astonishing TAR screenplay ... and what it owes to Ernest Hemingway by Yusuf Toropov

Hi, Yusuf Toropov. I use the Iceberg Theory in action and dialogue sometimes, but I didn't know it had a name. One of the things I do when developing characters is figure out what their life goals are, not just their story goals. Sometimes their life goals don't show up in the scripts, but knowing the goals helps me come up with things for the characters and stories.

Yes, that's exactly the kind of thing he's doing here.

it's also called the Theory of Omission. Meaning you create something and then decide when it makes strategic sense not to include it. Particularly important with visual storytellig. Here's one of my favorite graphics on this. (I didn't create the graphic.)

“If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.” -- Ernest Hemingway