There’s a particular kind of quiet that settles over a reader when a book really gets its hooks in. It’s not the absence of sound—more like a presence, a held breath between paragraphs, the weight of what’s been left unsaid. I’m not sure anyone understands this better than Miriam Thorne. Her new novel, The Pauses Between, has people talking, but not about plot twists. They’re talking about the stillness. I sat with Miriam in her study, sunlight slanting across the desk, to ask why the most powerful moments in fiction often live in the spaces where words drop away.
The Sound of a Character Thinking
Miriam laughed when I told her I’d flagged seventeen passages with sticky notes that just said “the silence here.” “I love that you counted,” she said, pouring tea. “Silence in fiction isn’t a stylistic tic—it’s psychological. When a character stops talking, that’s when they start being honest with themselves. And if we’re doing our jobs, that’s when the reader leans in.”
She pointed to a scene where her protagonist, a cartographer losing her eyesight, sits in her kitchen after getting difficult news. For two pages, nothing happens. A clock ticks. Coffee cools. “An editor wanted me to cut it,” Miriam said. “She told me nothing was happening. But everything was happening. The character was rebuilding her interior world in that quiet. Cut it, and you gut the emotional center of the book.”
Trusting the Reader to Fill the Space
This is where, Miriam says, a lot of writers lose their nerve. “We’re so scared of boring people that we over-explain. We think if we’re not actively entertaining, we’re failing. But readers don’t need constant noise. They need room to breathe, to project their own stuff onto the page.” She mentioned some research on narrative transportation—something about readers engaging more deeply when they get interpretive space—but then waved it off. “I don’t write to studies. I write to that feeling you get when someone tells you something hard and you just sit there together, not talking, but understanding everything.”
The Architecture of a Pause
I asked Miriam how she actually builds silence on the page. Is it white space? Short sentences? She shook her head. “It’s about rhythm. A long, flowing sentence that suddenly stops. A paragraph that breaks somewhere unexpected. Dialogue where the response is just a gesture, described in precise, unhurried detail. You’re signaling: slow down. This matters.”
She pulled a beat-up copy of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead off the shelf. “Robinson is the master. A character says something devastating, and then the narrator just… looks at a window. That looking isn’t filler. It’s emotional processing in real time. The silence is the event.”
In her own work, Miriam uses what she calls “anchoring details” during quiet moments—a dripping faucet, light shifting on a wall, the texture of a blanket. “These aren’t random. They’re the character’s mind grabbing for something tangible while everything intangible rearranges itself. That’s how we actually move through hard moments. We don’t have tidy internal monologues. We notice the chip in the mug.”
When Silence Becomes a Character
In The Pauses Between, silence starts to feel like an active presence. “That was intentional,” Miriam said. “The protagonist is losing her sight, so she becomes hyper-aware of what’s not visible, what’s not said. Her husband’s silences get louder than his words. The quiet of the landscape turns almost accusatory. By the end, I want the reader to feel that silence is the most honest character in the book.”
She added that this effect needs careful handling. “If every silence is heavy with meaning, none of them land. Some silences in the book are peaceful. Some are companionable. Some are terrifying. The mix is what makes it feel true. Life isn’t one flavor of quiet.”
The Editor’s Anxiety and the Writer’s Conviction
I was curious about the pushback she’d mentioned. How do you defend silence to someone whose job is, partly, to keep pages turning? Miriam set her cup down. “You have to be able to say why the silence is there. Not just ‘it feels right,’ but what it’s doing structurally. In my case, that kitchen scene is the fulcrum. Everything before it leads to that moment of stillness; everything after is a consequence of what she decides in it. Without that scene, the plot would feel unearned.”
She gave a small, wry smile. “I also pointed out that the scene is only two pages. It feels longer because the attention is dense, but it’s actually brief. Sometimes the fear of silence is way out of proportion to the word count.”
Teaching Readers to Listen
I asked Miriam whether she thinks modern readers, accustomed to constant stimulation, are losing the ability to sit with literary stillness. She thought about it. “I think we underestimate readers. Constantly. Yes, we’re all distracted. But the hunger for depth hasn’t gone anywhere. If anything, it’s sharper. When a book gives you permission to be still, it’s a relief. Like a deep breath you didn’t know you needed.”
She brought up the rising popularity of quiet, introspective fiction—Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, Jon Fosse’s work. “There’s a real appetite for fiction that trusts silence. It’s not a niche. It’s a human need. We spend so much of our lives drowning in noise. A novel that honors the quiet is doing something almost countercultural, and people respond.”
The Writer’s Own Silence
Before we wrapped up, I asked Miriam about her own relationship with quiet. Does she need silence to write? “I need external quiet,” she said, “but my mind is never silent. That’s the trick—creating an environment where the internal noise can settle into something coherent. I write early, before the world starts talking. It’s not about being precious. It’s about giving the work the same respect I hope readers will give it.”
She paused, then added something I’m still turning over. “The silence in the writing process and the silence on the page are connected. If I’m not comfortable with my own quiet, I can’t write it honestly. You have to believe that what happens in stillness is worth catching.”
FAQ: Silence in Literary Fiction
How is silence different from simple description or scene-setting?
Silence in literary fiction is purposeful stillness with emotional or narrative weight. Description sets a scene; silence creates a pause where internal shifts happen. It’s the difference between describing a room and making the reader feel the tension of what’s not being said inside it.
Does using silence risk losing the reader’s attention?
It can, if it’s not earned. Effective silence is set up by the preceding narrative. Readers will stay with a quiet moment if they sense it matters—if it’s where a character changes, decides, or breaks. The trick is making the silence active rather than empty.
Can silence be overused in a novel?
Absolutely. If every chapter ends with a long, meaningful pause, the effect weakens. Silence works best in contrast to sound and action. A novel needs rhythm—bursts of intensity and pockets of reflection. Silence is a tool, not a default setting.
How can aspiring writers practice writing silence effectively?
Miriam suggests studying writers who do it well (Marilynne Robinson, James Salter) and then trying an exercise: write a scene where a character receives life-changing news, but don’t let them speak or think in words. Convey the emotional impact entirely through physical detail, pacing, and the environment. It’s hard, but it teaches you to trust subtext.
As I left Miriam’s study, the late afternoon light had gone golden and the house was very still. I caught myself listening to my own footsteps on the wooden floor, aware of the space between them. That’s the gift of a writer who understands silence—she sends you back into the world a little more tuned to the quiet that was always there.
