On a hushed afternoon, I sat with novelist Claire Reston, whose new book, The Pauses Between, has been rattling around literary circles for its stubborn reliance on silence—not as a gap, but as a weight. Reston’s prose is careful, almost withholding, and her pacing makes you wait. Over tea in her sunlit study, we talked about how the unsaid can steer a story, shape a person, and get under a reader’s skin.
Finding Voice in the Void
Eliza Gale: Claire, your novel trusts the reader to sit still for long stretches. What hooked you on silence as a literary tool?
Claire Reston: It goes back to my grandmother. She wasn’t cold, exactly, but she could say more with a pause or a sideways glance than most people manage with a paragraph. I noticed that the biggest things between people often happen without words. Fiction, though, tends to babble—endless chatter, overstuffed interior monologues. I wanted to write something that mirrored how we actually feel: in fragments, in stillness, in the things we can’t bring ourselves to voice.
That pull sent me to Harold Pinter’s plays, where a pause can feel like a third character. In prose, silence can push back. It gives the reader room to build alongside you.
The Reader’s Role in the Quiet
Eliza: Early in The Pauses Between, two estranged siblings sit on a porch for almost three pages without a word. It’s tight with tension, but also weirdly tender. How do you know what a reader will stomach?
Claire: I don’t think about stomachs. I think about invitations. If the emotional stakes are humming, the reader leans forward. In that scene, the siblings’ past is so loaded that a single word might crack everything open. The silence holds the grief and the love at once. I gambled that the reader would feel that pressure and fill the gap with their own unsaid history.
It’s a gamble, sure. Some early readers begged me to stuff in more internal thought. But when I tried, the scene went flat. Silence in fiction only works when it’s earned—not a hollow, but a container.
Silence as Character and Structure
We shifted from the porch to the bones of the novel. Reston built her book in three parts, each named after a different brand of quiet: Hush, Stillness, and Echo.
Eliza: Walk me through that structure. How did silence become your organizing principle?
Claire: It hit me during a residency in a remote cabin. I got obsessed with how the silence changed over the day—morning had a waiting sort of hush, afternoon a sleepy one, night a deep, listening dark. I wondered: what if a novel’s spine followed that? Hush holds secrets; Stillness is the moment before a bomb goes off; Echo is the aftermath. Each part’s silence has its own texture.
That forced me to tighten up. If a character is defined by what she won’t say, you have to build her through gestures, weather, how others flinch around her. It’s like drawing with the empty space.
The Unreliable Narrator of Silence
Eliza: Your main character, Lena, is often silent because she was trained to be, not because she chooses it. How does that make her silence unreliable?
Claire: Lena figured out young that speaking brought punishment. Her silence is armor, but it warps her vision. She reads other people’s pauses with paranoia. The reader has to sift through: is she reading the room right, or just projecting? Silence becomes a tricky narrator—it hints at meanings that might not be there.
I leaned on research about families where silence is law. The psychologist Evan Imber-Black has written smart stuff about how secrets shape a household. For Lena, silence is both a cage and, eventually, a way out.
Crafting Silence on the Page
We got into the weeds of technique. As a writer, I wanted to know how you render quiet in a medium built from noise.
Eliza: How do you actually write silence? Punctuation? White space? Something messier?
Claire: All of it. White space on the page is a big one. A stubby paragraph after a long one signals a catch in the breath. I use em-dashes for snapped-off speech, and sometimes I just let a sentence die without a period’s dignity. But the real engine is rhythm. You set up a pattern of sound, then you crack it. The crack is where the silence sits.
I also lean on small noises—a fridge hum, a clock chewing time. Those become the backdrop that makes a character’s quiet feel huge. In one chapter, the only sounds are Lena’s footsteps and a far-off dog. That thin soundtrack makes her inner silence almost loud.
Dialogue as a Dance Around Silence
Eliza: Your dialogue circles around what’s not being said. How do you layer in subtext?
Claire: I picture dialogue as a dance where both people are always a half-step off. Most folks don’t say what they mean, especially when things are raw. They crack jokes, ask sideways questions, deflect. In revision, I gut any line that announces the obvious feeling. If a character is furious, I don’t let her say “I’m angry.” I have her scrub a glass too hard or let a phone ring itself out.
Subtext is the story simmering underneath. It’s what the reader catches without being told. And that takes trust—trust that the reader is sharp enough to pick up the scent.
The Cultural Dimensions of Quiet
Reston’s novel is anchored in rural Minnesota, but its quiet ripples outward. We talked about how silence lands differently across cultures.
Eliza: In some places, silence reads as respect; elsewhere, it looks like stonewalling. Did you wrestle with those angles?
Claire: I did. Lena’s family has Finnish roots, and there’s a cultural ease with quiet that can get mislabeled as cold. I wanted to honor that without flattening it into a stereotype. In one scene, a neighbor from a warmer, more talkative background misreads Lena’s stillness as hostility when it’s really just shyness. Those cross-cultural misfires are gold for fiction.
I thought about gender, too. Women’s silence has often been forced, but it can also be a quiet kind of rebellion. Lena’s mother uses silence like a blade; Lena eventually reclaims it as a choice. That arc mattered to me.
Silence and the Reader’s Inner Life
As the afternoon thinned, I asked Reston what she hopes readers take from the quiet pockets in her work.
Eliza: What does silence give a reader that chattier fiction can’t?
Claire: I think it gives them back themselves. When a book goes quiet, the reader’s own mind floods in. That can be uncomfortable, but it can also crack something open. We’re hardly ever given permission to just be still. A novel that holds that space is a small gift—it says, “Your inner life counts. Your reflections are part of this.”
She paused, and the room seemed to catch its breath. Then she grinned. “See? You’re already filling the pause.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is silence an important element in literary fiction?
Silence in literary fiction works as a narrative tool that thickens emotional resonance and pulls the reader in as a participant. While genre fiction often sprints after plot, literary fiction uses quiet to dig into character psychology, subtext, and thematic weight. When a writer trusts the reader to interpret pauses and unspoken tensions, the story turns into a shared act, making the experience more personal and reflective.
How can writers effectively incorporate silence into their own work?
Writers can weave in silence by playing with rhythm, sensory cues, and subtext. Try varying paragraph lengths to create visual pauses, use small background sounds to frame still moments, and write dialogue that circles the truth rather than blurting it. Studying plays and poetry helps, too—their compressed language naturally stresses the unsaid. The trick is making silence feel earned, rooted in character and circumstance, not just empty white space.
Does silence in fiction risk alienating readers?
It can, if it’s handled clumsily. Silence pushes readers away when it lacks emotional stakes or feels like a writerly stunt. But when it’s tied to real character experience and clear narrative context, quiet moments often pull readers closer. The aim isn’t to withhold for the sake of difficulty, but to open a space where readers can pour in their own understanding, which makes the reading feel more intimate and sticky.
What is the difference between silence and emptiness in a story?
Silence in a story is a charged absence—it carries tension, feeling, or meaning. Emptiness is just a lack of substance, where nothing lands and the reader drifts off. In strong literary fiction, silence is never truly empty; it’s stuffed with what characters can’t or won’t say. It’s a deliberate choice that shapes pacing and deepens immersion, while emptiness usually signals undercooked scenes or foggy intent.
